Страница:
that she would have liked to cast anchor.
It may, perhaps, have struck her that to have been
honest and humble, to have done her duty, and to have
marched straightforward on her way, would have brought
her as near happiness as that path by which she was
striving to attain it. But--just as the children at Queen's
Crawley went round the room where the body of their
father lay--if ever Becky had these thoughts, she was
accustomed to walk round them and not look in. She
eluded them and despised them--or at least she was
committed to the other path from which retreat was now
impossible. And for my part I believe that remorse is the
least active of all a man's moral senses--the very easiest to
be deadened when wakened, and in some never wakened
at all. We grieve at being found out and at the idea of
shame or punishment, but the mere sense of wrong makes
very few people unhappy in Vanity Fair.
So Rebecca, during her stay at Queen's Crawley, made as
many friends of the Mammon of Unrighteousness as she
could possibly bring under control. Lady Jane and her
husband bade her farewell with the warmest
demonstrations of good-will. They looked forward with
pleasure to the time when, the family house in Gaunt
Street being repaired and beautified, they were to meet
again in London. Lady Southdown made her up a packet of
medicine and sent a letter by her to the Rev. Lawrence
Grills, exhorting that gentleman to save the brand who
"honoured" the letter from the burning. Pitt accompanied
them with four horses in the carriage to Mudbury, having
sent on their baggage in a cart previously, accompanied
with loads of game.
"How happy you will be to see your darling little boy
again!" Lady Crawley said, taking leave of her kinswoman.
"Oh so happy!" said Rebecca, throwing up the green eyes.
She was immensely happy to be free of the place, and yet
loath to go. Queen's Crawley was abominably stupid, and
yet the air there was somehow purer than that which she
had been accustomed to breathe. Everybody had been dull,
but had been kind in their way. "It is all the influence of a
long course of Three Per Cents," Becky said to herself, and
was right very likely.
However, the London lamps flashed joyfully as the stage
rolled into Piccadilly, and Briggs had made a beautiful fire
in Curzon Street, and little Rawdon was up to welcome
back his papa and mamma.
CHAPTER XLII
Which Treats of the Osborne Family
Considerable time has elapsed since we have seen our
respectable friend, old Mr. Osborne of Russell Square. He
has not been the happiest of mortals since last we met him.
Events have occurred which have not improved his
temper, and in more in stances than one he has not been
allowed to have his own way. To be thwarted in this
reasonable desire was always very injurious to the old
gentleman; and resistance became doubly exasperating
when gout, age, loneliness, and the force of many
disappointments combined to weigh him down. His stiff
black hair began to grow quite white soon after his son's
death; his-face grew redder; his hands trembled more and
more as he poured out his glass of port wine. He led his
clerks a dire life in the City: his family at home were not
much happier. I doubt if Rebecca, whom we have seen
piously praying for Consols, would have exchanged her
poverty and the dare-devil excitement and chances of her
life for Osborne's money and the humdrum gloom which
enveloped him. He had proposed for Miss Swartz, but had
been rejected scornfully by the partisans of that lady, who
married her to a young sprig of Scotch nobility. He was a
man to have married a woman out of low life and bullied
her dreadfully afterwards; but no person presented herself
suitable to his taste, and, instead, he tyrannized over his
unmarried daughter, at home. She had a fine carriage and
fine horses and sat at the head of a table loaded with the
grandest plate. She had a cheque-book, a prize footman to
follow her when she walked, unlimited credit, and bows
and compliments from all the tradesmen, and all the
appurtenances of an heiress; but she spent a woeful time.
The little charity-girls at the Foundling, the sweeperess at
the crossing, the poorest under-kitchen-maid in the
servants' hall, was happy compared to that unfortunate
and now middle-aged young lady.
Frederick Bullock, Esq., of the house of Bullock, Hulker, and
Bullock, had married Maria Osborne, not without a great
deal of difficulty and grumbling on Mr. Bullock's part.
George being dead and cut out of his father's will,
Frederick insisted that the half of the old gentleman's
property should be settled upon his Maria, and indeed, for
a long time, refused, "to come to the scratch" (it was Mr.
Frederick's own expression) on any other terms. Osborne
said Fred had agreed to take his daughter with twenty
thousand, and he should bind himself to no more. "Fred
might take it, and welcome, or leave it, and go and be
hanged." Fred, whose hopes had been raised when George
had been disinherited, thought himself infamously
swindled by the old merchant, and for some time made as
if he would break off the match altogether. Osborne
withdrew his account from Bullock and Hulker's, went on
'Change with a horsewhip which he swore he would lay
across the back of a certain scoundrel that should be
nameless, and demeaned himself in his usual violent
manner. Jane Osborne condoled with her sister Maria
during this family feud. "I always told you, Maria, that it
was your money he loved and not you," she said,
soothingly.
"He selected me and my money at any rate; he didn't
choose you and yours," replied Maria, tossing up her head.
The rapture was, however, only temporary. Fred's father
and senior partners counselled him to take Maria, even
with the twenty thousand settled, half down, and half at
the death of Mr. Osborne, with the chances of the further
division of the property. So he "knuckled down," again to
use his own phrase, and sent old Hulker with peaceable
overtures to Osborne. It was his father, he said, who would
not hear of the match, and had made the difficulties; he
was most anxious to keep the engagement. The excuse was
sulkily accepted by Mr. Osborne. Hulker and Bullock were
a high family of the City aristocracy, and connected with
the "nobs" at the West End. It was something for the old
man to be able to say, "My son, sir, of the house of Hulker,
Bullock, and Co., sir; my daughter's cousin, Lady Mary
Mango, sir, daughter of the Right Hon. The Earl of
Castlemouldy." In his imagination he saw his house
peopled by the "nobs." So he forgave young Bullock and
consented that the marriage should take place.
It was a grand affair--the bridegroom's relatives giving the
breakfast, their habitations being near St. George's,
Hanover Square, where the business took place. The "nobs
of the West End" were invited, and many of them signed
the book. Mr. Mango and Lady Mary Mango were there,
with the dear young Gwendoline and Guinever Mango as
bridesmaids; Colonel Bludyer of the Dragoon Guards (eldest
son of the house of Bludyer Brothers, Mincing Lane),
another cousin of the bridegroom, and the Honourable Mrs.
Bludyer; the Honourable George Boulter, Lord Levant's son,
and his lady, Miss Mango that was; Lord Viscount
Castletoddy; Honourable James McMull and Mrs. McMull
(formerly Miss Swartz); and a host of fashionables, who
have all married into Lombard Street and done a great
deal to ennoble Cornhill.
The young couple had a house near Berkeley Square and a
small villa at Roehampton, among the banking colony
there. Fred was considered to have made rather a
mesalliance by the ladies of his family, whose grandfather
had been in a Charity School, and who were allied through
the husbands with some of the best blood in England. And
Maria was bound, by superior pride and great care in the
composition of her visiting-book, to make up for the
defects of birth, and felt it her duty to see her father and
sister as little as possible.
That she should utterly break with the old man, who had
still so many scores of thousand pounds to give away, is
absurd to suppose. Fred Bullock would never allow her to
do that. But she was still young and incapable of hiding her
feelings; and by inviting her papa and sister to her third-
rate parties, and behaving very coldly to them when they
came, and by avoiding Russell Square, and indiscreetly
begging her father to quit that odious vulgar place, she did
more harm than all Frederick's diplomacy could repair, and
perilled her chance of her inheritance like a giddy heedless
creature as she was.
So Russell Square is not good enough for Mrs. Maria, hay?"
said the old gentleman, rattling up the carriage windows as
he and his daughter drove away one night from Mrs.
Frederick Bullock's, after dinner. "So she invites her father
and sister to a second day's dinner (if those sides, or
ontrys, as she calls 'em, weren't served yesterday, I'm
d--d), and to meet City folks and littery men, and keeps
the Earls and the Ladies, and the Honourables to herself.
Honourables? Damn Honourables. I am a plain British
merchant I am, and could buy the beggarly hounds over
and over. Lords, indeed!--why, at one of her swarreys I
saw one of 'em speak to a dam fiddler--a fellar I despise.
And they won't come to Russell Square, won't they? Why,
I'll lay my life I've got a better glass of wine, and pay a
better figure for it, and can show a handsomer service of
silver, and can lay a better dinner on my mahogany, than
ever they see on theirs--the cringing, sneaking, stuck-up
fools. Drive on quick, James: I want to get back to Russell
Square--ha, ha!" and he sank back into the corner with a
furious laugh. With such reflections on his own superior
merit, it was the custom of the old gentleman not
unfrequently to console himself.
Jane Osborne could not but concur in these opinions
respecting her sister's conduct; and when Mrs. Frederick's
first-born, Frederick Augustus Howard Stanley Devereux
Bullock, was born, old Osborne, who was invited to the
christening and to be godfather, contented himself with
sending the child a gold cup, with twenty guineas inside it
for the nurse. "That's more than any of your Lords will
give, I'LL warrant," he said and refused to attend at the
ceremony.
The splendour of the gift, however, caused great
satisfaction to the house of Bullock. Maria thought that her
father was very much pleased with her, and Frederick
augured the best for his little son and heir.
One can fancy the pangs with which Miss Osborne in her
solitude in Russell Square read the Morning Post, where
her sister's name occurred every now and then, in the
articles headed "Fashionable Reunions," and where she had
an opportunity of reading a description of Mrs. F. Bullock's
costume, when presented at the drawing room by Lady
Frederica Bullock. Jane's own life, as we have said,
admitted of no such grandeur. It was an awful existence.
She had to get up of black winter's mornings to make
breakfast for her scowling old father, who would have
turned the whole house out of doors if his tea had not been
ready at half-past eight. She remained silent opposite to
him, listening to the urn hissing, and sitting in tremor
while the parent read his paper and consumed his
accustomed portion of muffins and tea. At half-past nine
he rose and went to the City, and she was almost free till
dinner-time, to make visitations in the kitchen and to scold
the servants; to drive abroad and descend upon the
tradesmen, who were prodigiously respectful; to leave her
cards and her papa's at the great glum respectable houses
of their City friends; or to sit alone in the large drawing-
room, expecting visitors; and working at a huge piece of
worsted by the fire, on the sofa, hard by the great
Iphigenia clock, which ticked and tolled with mournful
loudness in the dreary room. The great glass over the
mantelpiece, faced by the other great console glass at the
opposite end of the room, increased and multiplied
between them the brown Holland bag in which the
chandelier hung, until you saw these brown Holland bags
fading away in endless perspectives, and this apartment of
Miss Osborne's seemed the centre of a system of
drawing-rooms. When she removed the cordovan leather
from the grand piano and ventured to play a few notes on
it, it sounded with a mournful sadness, startling the dismal
echoes of the house. George's picture was gone, and laid
upstairs in a lumber-room in the garret; and though there
was a consciousness of him, and father and daughter often
instinctively knew that they were thinking of him, no
mention was ever made of the brave and once darling son.
At five o'clock Mr. Osborne came back to his dinner, which
he and his daughter took in silence (seldom broken, except
when he swore and was savage, if the cooking was not to
his liking), or which they shared twice in a month with a
party of dismal friends of Osborne's rank and age. Old Dr.
Gulp and his lady from Bloomsbury Square; old Mr.
Frowser, the attorney, from Bedford Row, a very great
man, and from his business, hand-in-glove with the "nobs
at the West End"; old Colonel Livermore, of the Bombay
Army, and Mrs. Livermore, from Upper Bedford Place; old
Sergeant Toffy and Mrs. Toffy; and sometimes old Sir
Thomas Coffin and Lady Coffin, from Bedford Square. Sir
Thomas was celebrated as a hanging judge, and the
particular tawny port was produced when he dined with
Mr. Osborne.
These people and their like gave the pompous Russell
Square merchant pompous dinners back again. They had
solemn rubbers of whist, when they went upstairs after
drinking, and their carriages were called at half past ten.
Many rich people, whom we poor devils are in the habit of
envying, lead contentedly an existence like that above
described. Jane Osborne scarcely ever met a man under
sixty, and almost the only bachelor who appeared in their
society was Mr. Smirk, the celebrated ladies' doctor.
I can't say that nothing had occurred to disturb the
monotony of this awful existence: the fact is, there had
been a secret in poor Jane's life which had made her father
more savage and morose than even nature, pride, and
over-feeding had made him. This secret was connected
with Miss Wirt, who had a cousin an artist, Mr. Smee, very
celebrated since as a portrait-painter and R.A., but who
once was glad enough to give drawing lessons to ladies of
fashion. Mr. Smee has forgotten where Russell Square is
now, but he was glad enough to visit it in the year 1818,
when Miss Osborne had instruction from him.
Smee (formerly a pupil of Sharpe of Frith Street, a
dissolute, irregular, and unsuccessful man, but a man with
great knowledge of his art) being the cousin of Miss Wirt,
we say, and introduced by her to Miss Osborne, whose
hand and heart were still free after various incomplete
love affairs, felt a great attachment for this lady, and it is
believed inspired one in her bosom. Miss Wirt was the
confidante of this intrigue. I know not whether she used to
leave the room where the master and his pupil were
painting, in order to give them an opportunity for
exchanging those vows and sentiments which cannot be
uttered advantageously in the presence of a third party; I
know not whether she hoped that should her cousin
succeed in carrying off the rich merchant's daughter, he
would give Miss Wirt a portion of the wealth which she
had enabled him to win--all that is certain is that Mr.
Osborne got some hint of the transaction, came back from
the City abruptly, and entered the drawing-room with his
bamboo cane; found the painter, the pupil, and the
companion all looking exceedingly pale there; turned the
former out of doors with menaces that he would break
every bone in his skin, and half an hour afterwards
dismissed Miss Wirt likewise, kicking her trunks down the
stairs, trampling on her bandboxes, and shaking his fist at
her hackney coach as it bore her away.
Jane Osborne kept her bedroom for many days. She was
not allowed to have a companion afterwards. Her father
swore to her that she should not have a shilling of his
money if she made any match without his concurrence;
and as he wanted a woman to keep his house, he did not
choose that she should marry, so that she was obliged to
give up all projects with which Cupid had any share.
During her papa's life, then, she resigned herself to the
manner of existence here described, and was content to be
an old maid. Her sister, meanwhile, was having children
with finer names every year and the intercourse between
the two grew fainter continually. "Jane and I do not move
in the same sphere of life," Mrs. Bullock said. "I regard her
as a sister, of course"--which means--what does it mean
when a lady says that she regards Jane as a sister?
It has been described how the Misses Dobbin lived with
their father at a fine villa at Denmark Hill, where there
were beautiful graperies and peach-trees which delighted
little Georgy Osborne. The Misses Dobbin, who drove often
to Brompton to see our dear Amelia, came sometimes to
Russell Square too, to pay a visit to their old acquaintance
Miss Osborne. I believe it was in consequence of the
commands of their brother the Major in India (for whom
their papa had a prodigious respect), that they paid
attention to Mrs. George; for the Major, the godfather and
guardian of Amelia's little boy, still hoped that the child's
grandfather might be induced to relent towards him and
acknowledge him for the sake of his son. The Misses
Dobbin kept Miss Osborne acquainted with the state of
Amelia's affairs; how she was living with her father and
mother; how poor they were; how they wondered what
men, and such men as their brother and dear Captain
Osborne, could find in such an insignificant little chit; how
she was still, as heretofore, a namby-pamby milk-and-
water affected creature--but how the boy was really the
noblest little boy ever seen--for the hearts of all women
warm towards young children, and the sourest spinster is
kind to them.
One day, after great entreaties on the part of the Misses
Dobbin, Amelia allowed little George to go and pass a day
with them at Denmark Hill--a part of which day she spent
herself in writing to the Major in India. She congratulated
him on the happy news which his sisters had just
conveyed to her. She prayed for his prosperity and that of
the bride he had chosen. She thanked him for a thousand
thousand kind offices and proofs of stead fast friendship to
her in her affliction. She told him the last news about little
Georgy, and how he was gone to spend that very day with
his sisters in the country. She underlined the letter a great
deal, and she signed herself affectionately his friend,
Amelia Osborne. She forgot to send any message of
kindness to Lady O'Dowd, as her wont was--and did not
mention Glorvina by name, and only in italics, as the
Major's BRIDE, for whom she begged blessings. But the
news of the marriage removed the reserve which she had
kept up towards him. She was glad to be able to own and
feel how warmly and gratefully she regarded him--and as
for the idea of being jealous of Glorvina (Glorvina, indeed!),
Amelia would have scouted it, if an angel from heaven had
hinted it to her. That night, when Georgy came back in the
pony-carriage in which he rejoiced, and in which he was
driven by Sir Wm. Dobbin's old coachman, he had round
his neck a fine gold chain and watch. He said an old lady,
not pretty, had given it him, who cried and kissed him a
great deal. But he didn't like her. He liked grapes very
much. And he only liked his mamma. Amelia shrank and
started; the timid soul felt a presentiment of terror when
she heard that the relations of the child's father had seen
him.
Miss Osborne came back to give her father his dinner. He
had made a good speculation in the City, and was rather in
a good humour that day, and chanced to remark the
agitation under which she laboured. "What's the matter,
Miss Osborne?" he deigned to say.
The woman burst into tears. "Oh, sir," she said, "I've seen
little George. He is as beautiful as an angel--and so like
him!" The old man opposite to her did not say a word, but
flushed up and began to tremble in every limb.
CHAPIER XLIII
In Which the Reader Has to Double the Cape
The astonished reader must be called upon to transport
himself ten thousand miles to the military station of
Bundlegunge, in the Madras division of our Indian empire,
where our gallant old friends of the --th regiment are
quartered under the command of the brave Colonel,
Sir Michael O'Dowd. Time has dealt kindly with that
stout officer, as it does ordinarily with men who have
good stomachs and good tempers and are not perplexed
over much by fatigue of the brain. The Colonel plays a
good knife and fork at tiffin and resumes those weapons
with great success at dinner. He smokes his hookah after
both meals and puffs as quietly while his wife scolds
him as he did under the fire of the French at Waterloo. Age
and heat have not diminished the activity or the eloquence
of the descendant of the Malonys and the Molloys. Her
Ladyship, our old acquaintance, is as much at home at
Madras as at Brussels in the cantonment as under the
tents. On the march you saw her at the head of the
regiment seated on a royal elephant, a noble sight.
Mounted on that beast, she has been into action with tigers
in the jungle, she has been received by native princes, who
have welcomed her and Glorvina into the recesses of their
zenanas and offered her shawls and jewels which it went
to her heart to refuse. The sentries of all arms salute her
wherever she makes her appearance, and she touches her
hat gravely to their salutation. Lady O'Dowd is one of the
greatest ladies in the Presidency of Madras--her quarrel
with Lady Smith, wife of Sir Minos Smith the puisne judge,
is still remembered by some at Madras, when the Colonel's
lady snapped her fingers in the Judge's lady's face and said
SHE'D never walk behind ever a beggarly civilian. Even
now, though it is five-and-twenty years ago, people
remember Lady O'Dowd performing a jig at Government
House, where she danced down two Aides-de-Camp, a
Major of Madras cavalry, and two gentlemen of the Civil
Service; and, persuaded by Major Dobbin, C.B., second in
command of the --th, to retire to the supper-room, lassata
nondum satiata recessit.
Peggy O'Dowd is indeed the same as ever, kind in act and
thought; impetuous in temper; eager to command; a tyrant
over her Michael; a dragon amongst all the ladies of the
regiment; a mother to all the young men, whom she tends
in their sickness, defends in all their scrapes, and with
whom Lady Peggy is immensely popular. But the
Subalterns' and Captains' ladies (the Major is unmarried)
cabal against her a good deal. They say that Glorvina gives
herself airs and that Peggy herself is ill tolerably
domineering. She interfered with a little congregation
which Mrs. Kirk had got up and laughed the young men
away from her sermons, stating that a soldier's wife had no
business to be a parson--that Mrs. Kirk would be much
better mending her husband's clothes; and, if the regiment
wanted sermons, that she had the finest in the world, those
of her uncle, the Dean. She abruptly put a termination to a
flirtation which Lieutenant Stubble of the regiment had
commenced with the Surgeon's wife, threatening to come
down upon Stubble for the money which he had borrowed
from her (for the young fellow was still of an extravagant
turn) unless he broke off at once and went to the Cape on
sick leave. On the other hand, she housed and sheltered
Mrs. Posky, who fled from her bungalow one night,
pursued by her infuriate husband, wielding his second
brandy bottle, and actually carried Posky through the
delirium tremens and broke him of the habit of drinking,
which had grown upon that officer, as all evil habits will
grow upon men. In a word, in adversity she was the best
of comforters, in good fortune the most troublesome of
friends, having a perfectly good opinion of herself always
and an indomitable resolution to have her own way.
Among other points, she had made up her mind that
Glorvina should marry our old friend Dobbin. Mrs. O'Dowd
knew the Major's expectations and appreciated his good
qualities and the high character which he enjoyed in his
profession. Glorvina, a very handsome, fresh-coloured,
black-haired, blue-eyed young lady, who could ride a
horse, or play a sonata with any girl out of the County
Cork, seemed to be the very person destined to insure
Dobbin's happiness--much more than that poor good little
weak-spur'ted Amelia, about whom he used to take on so.--
"Look at Glorvina enter a room," Mrs. O'Dowd would say,
"and compare her with that poor Mrs. Osborne, who
couldn't say boo to a goose. She'd be worthy of you, Major--
you're a quiet man yourself, and want some one to talk for
ye. And though she does not come of such good blood as
the Malonys or Molloys, let me tell ye, she's of an ancient
family that any nobleman might be proud to marry into."
But before she had come to such a resolution and determined to
subjugate Major Dobbin by her endearments, it must be owned
that Glorvina had practised them a good deal elsewhere. She had
had a season in Dublin, and who knows how many in Cork,
Killarney, and Mallow? She had flirted with all the marriageable
officers whom the depots of her country afforded, and all the
bachelor squires who seemed eligible. She had been
engaged to be married a half-score times in Ireland,
besides the clergyman at Bath who used her so ill. She had
flirted all the way to Madras with the Captain and chief
mate of the Ramchunder East Indiaman, and had a season
at the Presidency with her brother and Mrs. O'Dowd, who
was staying there, while the Major of the regiment was in
command at the station. Everybody admired her there;
everybody danced with her; but no one proposed who was
worth the marrying--one or two exceedingly young
subalterns sighed after her, and a beardless civilian or two,
but she rejected these as beneath her pretensions--and
other and younger virgins than Glorvina were married
before her. There are women, and handsome women too,
who have this fortune in life. They fall in love with the
utmost generosity; they ride and walk with half the
Army-list, though they draw near to forty, and yet the
Misses O'Grady are the Misses O'Grady still: Glorvina
persisted that but for Lady O'Dowd's unlucky quarrel with
the Judge's lady, she would have made a good match at
Madras, where old Mr. Chutney, who was at the head of
the civil service (and who afterwards married Miss Dolby,
a young lady only thirteen years of age who had just
arrived from school in Europe), was just at the point of
proposing to her.
Well, although Lady O'Dowd and Glorvina quarrelled a
great number of times every day, and upon almost every
conceivable subject--indeed, if Mick O'Dowd had not
possessed the temper of an angel two such women
constantly about his ears would have driven him out of his
senses--yet they agreed between themselves on this point,
that Glorvina should marry Major Dobbin, and were
determined that the Major should have no rest until the
arrangement was brought about. Undismayed by forty or
fifty previous defeats, Glorvina laid siege to him. She sang
Irish melodies at him unceasingly. She asked him so
frequently and pathetically, Will ye come to the bower?
that it is a wonder how any man of feeling could have
resisted the invitation. She was never tired of inquiring, if
Sorrow had his young days faded, and was ready to listen
and weep like Desdemona at the stories of his dangers and
his campaigns. It has been
said that our honest and dear old friend used to perform
on the flute in private; Glorvina insisted upon having duets
with him, and Lady O'Dowd would rise and artlessly quit
the room when the young couple were so engaged.
Glorvina forced the Major to ride with her of mornings. The
whole cantonment saw them set out and return. She was
constantly writing notes over to him at his house,
borrowing his books, and scoring with her great
pencil-marks such passages of sentiment or humour as
awakened her sympathy. She borrowed his horses, his
servants, his spoons, and palanquin--no wonder that public
rumour assigned her to him, and that the Major's sisters in
England should fancy they were about to have a sister-in-
law.
Dobbin, who was thus vigorously besieged, was in the
meanwhile in a state of the most odious tranquillity. He
used to laugh when the young fellows of the regiment
joked him about Glorvina's manifest attentions to him.
"Bah!" said he, "she is only keeping her hand in--she
practises upon me as she does upon Mrs. Tozer's piano,
because it's the most handy instrument in the station. I am
much too battered and old for such a fine young lady as
Glorvina." And so he went on riding with her, and copying
music and verses into her albums, and playing at chess
with her very submissively; for it is with these simple
amusements that some officers in India are accustomed to
while away their leisure moments, while others of a less
domestic turn hunt hogs, and shoot snipes, or gamble and
smoke cheroots, and betake themselves to brandy-and-
water. As for Sir Michael O'Dowd, though his lady and her
sister both urged him to call upon the Major to explain
himself and not keep on torturing a poor innocent girl in
that shameful way, the old soldier refused point-blank to
have anything to do with the conspiracy. "Faith, the Major's
big enough to choose for himself," Sir Michael said; "he'll
ask ye when he wants ye"; or else he would turn the
matter off jocularly, declaring that "Dobbin was too young
to keep house, and had written home to ask lave of his
mamma." Nay, he went farther, and in private
communications with his Major would caution and rally
him, crying, "Mind your oi, Dob, my boy, them girls is bent
on mischief--me Lady has just got a box of gowns from Europe, and there's a pink satin for Glorvina, which will finish ye, Dob, if it's in the power of woman or satin to move ye."
But the truth is, neither beauty nor fashion could conquer
him. Our honest friend had but one idea of a woman in his
head, and that one did not in the least resemble Miss
Glorvina O'Dowd in pink satin. A gentle little woman in black,
with large eyes and brown hair, seldom speaking, save when
spoken to, and then in a voice not the least resembling
Miss Glorvina's--a soft young mother tending an infant
and beckoning the Major up with a smile to look at him--a
rosy-cheeked lass coming singing into the room in Russell
Square or hanging on George Osborne's arm, happy and
loving--there was but this image that filled our honest
Major's mind, by day and by night, and reigned over it
always. Very likely Amelia was not like the portrait the
Major had formed of her: there was a figure in a book of
fashions which his sisters had in England, and with which
William had made away privately, pasting it into the lid
of his desk, and fancying he saw some resemblance to
Mrs. Osborne in the print, whereas I have seen it, and
can vouch that it is but the picture of a high-waisted
gown with an impossible doll's face simpering over it--
and, perhaps, Mr. Dobbin's sentimental Amelia was no
more like the real one than this absurd little print which
he cherished. But what man in love, of us, is better
informed?--or is he much happier when he sees and owns his
delusion? Dobbin was under this spell. He did not bother
his friends and the public much about his feelings, or
indeed lose his natural rest or appetite on account
of them. His head has grizzled since we saw him last, and
a line or two of silver may be seen in the soft brown hair
likewise. But his feelings are not in the least changed or
oldened, and his love remains as fresh as a man's
recollections of boyhood are.
We have said how the two Misses Dobbin and Amelia, the
Major's correspondents in Europe, wrote him letters from
England, Mrs. Osborne congratulating him with great candour
and cordiality upon his approaching nuptials with Miss O'Dowd.
"Your sister has just kindly visited me," Amelia wrote
in her letter, "and informed me of an INTERESTING EVENT,
upon which I beg to offer my MOST SINCERE CONGRATULATIONS.
I hope the young lady to whom I hear you are to
be UNITED will in every respect prove worthy of one who
is himself all kindness and goodness. The poor widow has
only her prayers to offer and her cordial cordial wishes
for YOUR PROSPERITY! Georgy sends his love to HIS DEAR GODPAPA
and hopes that you will not forget him. I tell
him that you are about to form OTHER TIES, with one who
I am sure merits ALL YOUR AFFECTION, but that, although
such ties must of course be the strongest and most
sacred, and supersede ALL OTHERS, yet that I am sure the
widow and the child whom you have ever protected and
loved will always HAVE A CORNER IN YOUR HEART" The letter,
which has been before alluded to, went on in this
strain, protesting throughout as to the extreme satisfaction
of the writer.
This letter, .which arrived by the very same ship which
brought out Lady O'Dowd's box of millinery from London
(and which you may be sure Dobbin opened before any
one of the other packets which the mail brought him),
put the receiver into such a state of mind that Glorvina,
and her pink satin, and everything belonging to her became
perfectly odious to him. The Major cursed the talk
of women, and the sex in general. Everything annoyed
him that day--the parade was insufferably hot and
wearisome. Good heavens! was a man of intellect to waste
his life, day after day, inspecting cross-belts and putting
fools through their manoeuvres? The senseless chatter
of the young men at mess was more than ever jarring.
What cared he, a man on the high road to forty, to
know how many snipes Lieutenant Smith had shot, or
what were the performances of Ensign Brown's mare? The
jokes about the table filled him with shame. He was too
old to listen to the banter of the assistant surgeon and
the slang of the youngsters, at which old O'Dowd, with
his bald head and red face, laughed quite easily. The
old man had listened to those jokes any time these
thirty years--Dobbin himself had been fifteen years hearing
them. And after the boisterous dulness of the mess-table,
the quarrels and scandal of the ladies of the regiment!
It was unbearable, shameful. "O Amelia, Amelia,"
he thought, "you to whom I have been so faithful--
you reproach me! It is because you cannot feel for me
that I drag on this wearisome life. And you reward me
after years of devotion by giving me your blessing upon
my marriage, forsooth, with this flaunting Irish girl!"
Sick and sorry felt poor William; more than ever
wretched and lonely. He would like to have done with
life and its vanity altogether--so bootless and unsatisfactory
the struggle, so cheerless and dreary the prospect
seemed to him. He lay all that night sleepless, and
yearning to go home. Amelia's letter had fallen as a
blank upon him. No fidelity, no constant truth and passion,
could move her into warmth. She would not see
that he loved her. Tossing in his bed, he spoke out to her.
"Good God, Amelia!" he said, "don't you know that I
only love you in the world--you, who are a stone to me
--you, whom I tended through months and months of
illness and grief, and who bade me farewell with a smile
on your face, and forgot me before the door shut between
us!" The native servants lying outside his verandas beheld
with wonder the Major, so cold and quiet ordinarily,
at present so passionately moved and cast down. Would
she have pitied him had she seen him? He read over and
over all the letters which he ever had from her--letters
of business relative to the little property which he had
made her believe her husband had left to her--brief notes
of invitation--every scrap of writing that she had ever
sent to him--how cold, how kind, how hopeless, how
selfish they were!
Had there been some kind gentle soul near at hand who
could read and appreciate this silent generous heart, who
knows but that the reign of Amelia might have been over,
and that friend William's love might have flowed into a
kinder channel? But there was only Glorvina of the jetty
ringlets with whom his intercourse was familiar, and this
dashing young woman was not bent upon loving the
Major, but rather on making the Major admire HER--a
most vain and hopeless task, too, at least considering
the means that the poor girl possessed to carry
it out. She curled her hair and showed her shoulders
at him, as much as to say, did ye ever see such jet
ringlets and such a complexion? She grinned at him so
that he might see that every tooth in her head was
sound--and he never heeded all these charms. Very soon
after the arrival of the box of millinery, and perhaps indeed
in honour of it, Lady O'Dowd and the ladies of
the King's Regiment gave a ball to the Company's
Regiments and the civilians at the station. Glorvina
sported the killing pink frock, and the Major, who attended
the party and walked very ruefully up and down
the rooms, never so much as perceived the pink garment.
Glorvina danced past him in a fury with all the young
subalterns of the station, and the Major was not in the
least jealous of her performance, or angry because Captain
Bangles of the Cavalry handed her to supper. It was
not jealousy, or frocks, or shoulders that could move him,
and Glorvina had nothing more.
So these two were each exemplifying the Vanity of this
life, and each longing for what he or she could not get.
Glorvina cried with rage at the failure. She had set her
mind on the Major "more than on any of the others,"
she owned, sobbing. "He'll break my heart, he will,
Peggy," she would whimper to her sister-in-law when
they were good friends; "sure every one of me frocks
must be taken in--it's such a skeleton I'm growing."
Fat or thin, laughing or melancholy, on horseback or the
music-stool, it was all the same to the Major. And the
Colonel, puffing his pipe and listening to these complaints,
would suggest that Glory should have some black frocks
out in the next box from London, and told a mysterious
story of a lady in Ireland who died of grief for the loss of
her husband before she got ere a one.
While the Major was going on in this tantalizing way,
not proposing, and declining to fall in love, there came
another ship from Europe bringing letters on board, and
amongst them some more for the heartless man. These
were home letters bearing an earlier postmark than that
of the former packets, and as Major Dobbin recognized
among his the handwriting of his sister, who always
crossed and recrossed her letters to her brother--gathered
together all the possible bad news which she could
collect, abused him and read him lectures with sisterly
frankness, and always left him miserable for the day after
"dearest William" had achieved the perusal of one of her
epistles--the truth must be told that dearest William did
not hurry himself to break the seal of Miss Dobbin's
letter, but waited for a particularly favourable day and
mood for doing so. A fortnight before, moreover, he
had written to scold her for telling those absurd stories
to Mrs. Osborne, and had despatched a letter in reply
to that lady, undeceiving her with respect to the reports
concerning him and assuring her that "he had no sort of
present intention of altering his condition."
Two or three nights after the arrival of the second
package of letters, the Major had passed the evening
pretty cheerfully at Lady O'Dowd's house, where Glorvina
thought that he listened with rather more attention
than usual to the Meeting of the Wathers, the Minsthrel
Boy, and one or two other specimens of song with which
she favoured him (the truth is, he was no more listening
to Glorvina than to the howling of the jackals in the
moonlight outside, and the delusion was hers as usual),
and having played his game at chess with her (cribbage
with the surgeon was Lady O'Dowd's favourite evening
pastime), Major Dobbin took leave of the Colonel's family
at his usual hour and retired to his own house.
There on his table, his sister's letter lay reproaching
him. He took it up, ashamed rather of his negligence
regarding it, and prepared himself for a disagreeable hour's
communing with that crabbed-handed absent relative.
. . . It may have been an hour after the Major's departure
from the Colonel's house--Sir Michael was sleeping
the sleep of the just; Glorvina had arranged her
black ringlets in the innumerable little bits of paper, in
which it was her habit to confine them; Lady O'Dowd,
too, had gone to her bed in the nuptial chamber, on the
ground-floor, and had tucked her musquito curtains
round her fair form, when the guard at the gates of the
Commanding-Officer's compound beheld Major Dobbin,
in the moonlight, rushing towards the house with a swift
step and a very agitated countenance, and he passed the
sentinel and went up to the windows of the Colonel's
bedchamber.
"O'Dowd--Colonel!" said Dobbin and kept up a great
shouting.
"Heavens, Meejor!" said Glorvina of the curl-papers,
putting out her head too, from her window.
"What is it, Dob, me boy?" said the Colonel, expecting
there was a fire in the station, or that the route had
come from headquarters.
"I--I must have leave of absence. I must go to England
--on the most urgent private affairs," Dobbin said.
"Good heavens, what has happened!" thought Glorvina,
trembling with all the papillotes.
"I want to be off--now--to-night," Dobbin continued;
and the Colonel getting up, came out to parley with him.
In the postscript of Miss Dobbin's cross-letter, the
Major had just come upon a paragraph, to the following
effect:--"I drove yesterday to see your old ACQUAINTANCE,
Mrs. Osborne. The wretched place they live at, since
they were bankrupts, you know--Mr. S., to judge from
a BRASS PLATE on the door of his hut (it is little better)
is a coal-merchant. The little boy, your godson, is
certainly a fine child, though forward, and inclined to be
saucy and self-willed. But we have taken notice of him
as you wish it, and have introduced him to his aunt,
Miss O., who was rather pleased with him. Perhaps his
grandpapa, not the bankrupt one, who is almost doting,
but Mr. Osborne, of Russell Square, may be induced to
relent towards the child of your friend, HIS ERRING AND
SELF-WILLED SON. And Amelia will not be ill-disposed to
give him up. The widow is CONSOLED, and is about to
marry a reverend gentleman, the Rev. Mr. Binny, one
of the curates of Brompton. A poor match. But Mrs. O.
is getting old, and I saw a great deal of grey in her hair--
she was in very good spirits: and your little godson overate
himself at our house. Mamma sends her love with
that of your affectionate, Ann Dobbin."
CHAPTER XLIV
A Round-about Chapter between London and
Hampshire
Our old friends the Crawleys' family house, in Great
Gaunt Street, still bore over its front the hatchment which
had been placed there as a token of mourning for Sir
Pitt Crawley's demise, yet this heraldic emblem was in
itself a very splendid and gaudy piece of furniture, and
all the rest of the mansion became more brilliant than it
had ever been during the late baronet's reign. The black
outer-coating of the bricks was removed, and they
appeared with a cheerful, blushing face streaked with white:
the old bronze lions of the knocker were gilt handsomely,
the railings painted, and the dismallest house in Great
Gaunt Street became the smartest in the whole quarter,
before the green leaves in Hampshire had replaced those
yellowing ones which were on the trees in Queen's Crawley
Avenue when old Sir Pitt Crawley passed under them
for the last time.
A little woman, with a carriage to correspond, was
perpetually seen about this mansion; an elderly spinster,
accompanied by a little boy, also might be remarked
coming thither daily. It was Miss Briggs and little Rawdon,
whose business it was to see to the inward renovation
of Sir Pitt's house, to superintend the female band
engaged in stitching the blinds and hangings, to poke
and rummage in the drawers and cupboards crammed
with the dirty relics and congregated trumperies of a
couple of generations of Lady Crawleys, and to take
inventories of the china, the glass, and other properties
in the closets and store-rooms.
Mrs. Rawdon Crawley was general-in-chief over these
arrangements, with full orders from Sir Pitt to sell, barter,
confiscate, or purchase furniture, and she enjoyed herself
not a little in an occupation which gave full scope to her
taste and ingenuity. The renovation of the house was
determined upon when Sir Pitt came to town in November
to see his lawyers, and when he passed nearly a week in
Curzon Street, under the roof of his affectionate brother
and sister.
He had put up at an hotel at first, but, Becky, as soon
as she heard of the Baronet's arrival, went off alone to
greet him, and returned in an hour to Curzon Street
with Sir Pitt in the carriage by her side. It was impossible
sometimes to resist this artless little creature's hospitalities,
so kindly were they pressed, so frankly and amiably
offered. Becky seized Pitt's hand in a transport of
gratitude when he agreed to come. "Thank you," she
said, squeezing it and looking into the Baronet's eyes,
who blushed a good deal; "how happy this will make
Rawdon!" She bustled up to Pitt's bedroom, leading
on the servants, who were carrying his trunks thither. She
came in herself laughing, with a coal-scuttle out of
her own room.
A fire was blazing already in Sir Pitt's apartment (it
was Miss Briggs's room, by the way, who was sent
upstairs to sleep with the maid). "I knew I should bring
you," she said with pleasure beaming in her glance. Indeed,
she was really sincerely happy at having him for a guest.
It may, perhaps, have struck her that to have been
honest and humble, to have done her duty, and to have
marched straightforward on her way, would have brought
her as near happiness as that path by which she was
striving to attain it. But--just as the children at Queen's
Crawley went round the room where the body of their
father lay--if ever Becky had these thoughts, she was
accustomed to walk round them and not look in. She
eluded them and despised them--or at least she was
committed to the other path from which retreat was now
impossible. And for my part I believe that remorse is the
least active of all a man's moral senses--the very easiest to
be deadened when wakened, and in some never wakened
at all. We grieve at being found out and at the idea of
shame or punishment, but the mere sense of wrong makes
very few people unhappy in Vanity Fair.
So Rebecca, during her stay at Queen's Crawley, made as
many friends of the Mammon of Unrighteousness as she
could possibly bring under control. Lady Jane and her
husband bade her farewell with the warmest
demonstrations of good-will. They looked forward with
pleasure to the time when, the family house in Gaunt
Street being repaired and beautified, they were to meet
again in London. Lady Southdown made her up a packet of
medicine and sent a letter by her to the Rev. Lawrence
Grills, exhorting that gentleman to save the brand who
"honoured" the letter from the burning. Pitt accompanied
them with four horses in the carriage to Mudbury, having
sent on their baggage in a cart previously, accompanied
with loads of game.
"How happy you will be to see your darling little boy
again!" Lady Crawley said, taking leave of her kinswoman.
"Oh so happy!" said Rebecca, throwing up the green eyes.
She was immensely happy to be free of the place, and yet
loath to go. Queen's Crawley was abominably stupid, and
yet the air there was somehow purer than that which she
had been accustomed to breathe. Everybody had been dull,
but had been kind in their way. "It is all the influence of a
long course of Three Per Cents," Becky said to herself, and
was right very likely.
However, the London lamps flashed joyfully as the stage
rolled into Piccadilly, and Briggs had made a beautiful fire
in Curzon Street, and little Rawdon was up to welcome
back his papa and mamma.
CHAPTER XLII
Which Treats of the Osborne Family
Considerable time has elapsed since we have seen our
respectable friend, old Mr. Osborne of Russell Square. He
has not been the happiest of mortals since last we met him.
Events have occurred which have not improved his
temper, and in more in stances than one he has not been
allowed to have his own way. To be thwarted in this
reasonable desire was always very injurious to the old
gentleman; and resistance became doubly exasperating
when gout, age, loneliness, and the force of many
disappointments combined to weigh him down. His stiff
black hair began to grow quite white soon after his son's
death; his-face grew redder; his hands trembled more and
more as he poured out his glass of port wine. He led his
clerks a dire life in the City: his family at home were not
much happier. I doubt if Rebecca, whom we have seen
piously praying for Consols, would have exchanged her
poverty and the dare-devil excitement and chances of her
life for Osborne's money and the humdrum gloom which
enveloped him. He had proposed for Miss Swartz, but had
been rejected scornfully by the partisans of that lady, who
married her to a young sprig of Scotch nobility. He was a
man to have married a woman out of low life and bullied
her dreadfully afterwards; but no person presented herself
suitable to his taste, and, instead, he tyrannized over his
unmarried daughter, at home. She had a fine carriage and
fine horses and sat at the head of a table loaded with the
grandest plate. She had a cheque-book, a prize footman to
follow her when she walked, unlimited credit, and bows
and compliments from all the tradesmen, and all the
appurtenances of an heiress; but she spent a woeful time.
The little charity-girls at the Foundling, the sweeperess at
the crossing, the poorest under-kitchen-maid in the
servants' hall, was happy compared to that unfortunate
and now middle-aged young lady.
Frederick Bullock, Esq., of the house of Bullock, Hulker, and
Bullock, had married Maria Osborne, not without a great
deal of difficulty and grumbling on Mr. Bullock's part.
George being dead and cut out of his father's will,
Frederick insisted that the half of the old gentleman's
property should be settled upon his Maria, and indeed, for
a long time, refused, "to come to the scratch" (it was Mr.
Frederick's own expression) on any other terms. Osborne
said Fred had agreed to take his daughter with twenty
thousand, and he should bind himself to no more. "Fred
might take it, and welcome, or leave it, and go and be
hanged." Fred, whose hopes had been raised when George
had been disinherited, thought himself infamously
swindled by the old merchant, and for some time made as
if he would break off the match altogether. Osborne
withdrew his account from Bullock and Hulker's, went on
'Change with a horsewhip which he swore he would lay
across the back of a certain scoundrel that should be
nameless, and demeaned himself in his usual violent
manner. Jane Osborne condoled with her sister Maria
during this family feud. "I always told you, Maria, that it
was your money he loved and not you," she said,
soothingly.
"He selected me and my money at any rate; he didn't
choose you and yours," replied Maria, tossing up her head.
The rapture was, however, only temporary. Fred's father
and senior partners counselled him to take Maria, even
with the twenty thousand settled, half down, and half at
the death of Mr. Osborne, with the chances of the further
division of the property. So he "knuckled down," again to
use his own phrase, and sent old Hulker with peaceable
overtures to Osborne. It was his father, he said, who would
not hear of the match, and had made the difficulties; he
was most anxious to keep the engagement. The excuse was
sulkily accepted by Mr. Osborne. Hulker and Bullock were
a high family of the City aristocracy, and connected with
the "nobs" at the West End. It was something for the old
man to be able to say, "My son, sir, of the house of Hulker,
Bullock, and Co., sir; my daughter's cousin, Lady Mary
Mango, sir, daughter of the Right Hon. The Earl of
Castlemouldy." In his imagination he saw his house
peopled by the "nobs." So he forgave young Bullock and
consented that the marriage should take place.
It was a grand affair--the bridegroom's relatives giving the
breakfast, their habitations being near St. George's,
Hanover Square, where the business took place. The "nobs
of the West End" were invited, and many of them signed
the book. Mr. Mango and Lady Mary Mango were there,
with the dear young Gwendoline and Guinever Mango as
bridesmaids; Colonel Bludyer of the Dragoon Guards (eldest
son of the house of Bludyer Brothers, Mincing Lane),
another cousin of the bridegroom, and the Honourable Mrs.
Bludyer; the Honourable George Boulter, Lord Levant's son,
and his lady, Miss Mango that was; Lord Viscount
Castletoddy; Honourable James McMull and Mrs. McMull
(formerly Miss Swartz); and a host of fashionables, who
have all married into Lombard Street and done a great
deal to ennoble Cornhill.
The young couple had a house near Berkeley Square and a
small villa at Roehampton, among the banking colony
there. Fred was considered to have made rather a
mesalliance by the ladies of his family, whose grandfather
had been in a Charity School, and who were allied through
the husbands with some of the best blood in England. And
Maria was bound, by superior pride and great care in the
composition of her visiting-book, to make up for the
defects of birth, and felt it her duty to see her father and
sister as little as possible.
That she should utterly break with the old man, who had
still so many scores of thousand pounds to give away, is
absurd to suppose. Fred Bullock would never allow her to
do that. But she was still young and incapable of hiding her
feelings; and by inviting her papa and sister to her third-
rate parties, and behaving very coldly to them when they
came, and by avoiding Russell Square, and indiscreetly
begging her father to quit that odious vulgar place, she did
more harm than all Frederick's diplomacy could repair, and
perilled her chance of her inheritance like a giddy heedless
creature as she was.
So Russell Square is not good enough for Mrs. Maria, hay?"
said the old gentleman, rattling up the carriage windows as
he and his daughter drove away one night from Mrs.
Frederick Bullock's, after dinner. "So she invites her father
and sister to a second day's dinner (if those sides, or
ontrys, as she calls 'em, weren't served yesterday, I'm
d--d), and to meet City folks and littery men, and keeps
the Earls and the Ladies, and the Honourables to herself.
Honourables? Damn Honourables. I am a plain British
merchant I am, and could buy the beggarly hounds over
and over. Lords, indeed!--why, at one of her swarreys I
saw one of 'em speak to a dam fiddler--a fellar I despise.
And they won't come to Russell Square, won't they? Why,
I'll lay my life I've got a better glass of wine, and pay a
better figure for it, and can show a handsomer service of
silver, and can lay a better dinner on my mahogany, than
ever they see on theirs--the cringing, sneaking, stuck-up
fools. Drive on quick, James: I want to get back to Russell
Square--ha, ha!" and he sank back into the corner with a
furious laugh. With such reflections on his own superior
merit, it was the custom of the old gentleman not
unfrequently to console himself.
Jane Osborne could not but concur in these opinions
respecting her sister's conduct; and when Mrs. Frederick's
first-born, Frederick Augustus Howard Stanley Devereux
Bullock, was born, old Osborne, who was invited to the
christening and to be godfather, contented himself with
sending the child a gold cup, with twenty guineas inside it
for the nurse. "That's more than any of your Lords will
give, I'LL warrant," he said and refused to attend at the
ceremony.
The splendour of the gift, however, caused great
satisfaction to the house of Bullock. Maria thought that her
father was very much pleased with her, and Frederick
augured the best for his little son and heir.
One can fancy the pangs with which Miss Osborne in her
solitude in Russell Square read the Morning Post, where
her sister's name occurred every now and then, in the
articles headed "Fashionable Reunions," and where she had
an opportunity of reading a description of Mrs. F. Bullock's
costume, when presented at the drawing room by Lady
Frederica Bullock. Jane's own life, as we have said,
admitted of no such grandeur. It was an awful existence.
She had to get up of black winter's mornings to make
breakfast for her scowling old father, who would have
turned the whole house out of doors if his tea had not been
ready at half-past eight. She remained silent opposite to
him, listening to the urn hissing, and sitting in tremor
while the parent read his paper and consumed his
accustomed portion of muffins and tea. At half-past nine
he rose and went to the City, and she was almost free till
dinner-time, to make visitations in the kitchen and to scold
the servants; to drive abroad and descend upon the
tradesmen, who were prodigiously respectful; to leave her
cards and her papa's at the great glum respectable houses
of their City friends; or to sit alone in the large drawing-
room, expecting visitors; and working at a huge piece of
worsted by the fire, on the sofa, hard by the great
Iphigenia clock, which ticked and tolled with mournful
loudness in the dreary room. The great glass over the
mantelpiece, faced by the other great console glass at the
opposite end of the room, increased and multiplied
between them the brown Holland bag in which the
chandelier hung, until you saw these brown Holland bags
fading away in endless perspectives, and this apartment of
Miss Osborne's seemed the centre of a system of
drawing-rooms. When she removed the cordovan leather
from the grand piano and ventured to play a few notes on
it, it sounded with a mournful sadness, startling the dismal
echoes of the house. George's picture was gone, and laid
upstairs in a lumber-room in the garret; and though there
was a consciousness of him, and father and daughter often
instinctively knew that they were thinking of him, no
mention was ever made of the brave and once darling son.
At five o'clock Mr. Osborne came back to his dinner, which
he and his daughter took in silence (seldom broken, except
when he swore and was savage, if the cooking was not to
his liking), or which they shared twice in a month with a
party of dismal friends of Osborne's rank and age. Old Dr.
Gulp and his lady from Bloomsbury Square; old Mr.
Frowser, the attorney, from Bedford Row, a very great
man, and from his business, hand-in-glove with the "nobs
at the West End"; old Colonel Livermore, of the Bombay
Army, and Mrs. Livermore, from Upper Bedford Place; old
Sergeant Toffy and Mrs. Toffy; and sometimes old Sir
Thomas Coffin and Lady Coffin, from Bedford Square. Sir
Thomas was celebrated as a hanging judge, and the
particular tawny port was produced when he dined with
Mr. Osborne.
These people and their like gave the pompous Russell
Square merchant pompous dinners back again. They had
solemn rubbers of whist, when they went upstairs after
drinking, and their carriages were called at half past ten.
Many rich people, whom we poor devils are in the habit of
envying, lead contentedly an existence like that above
described. Jane Osborne scarcely ever met a man under
sixty, and almost the only bachelor who appeared in their
society was Mr. Smirk, the celebrated ladies' doctor.
I can't say that nothing had occurred to disturb the
monotony of this awful existence: the fact is, there had
been a secret in poor Jane's life which had made her father
more savage and morose than even nature, pride, and
over-feeding had made him. This secret was connected
with Miss Wirt, who had a cousin an artist, Mr. Smee, very
celebrated since as a portrait-painter and R.A., but who
once was glad enough to give drawing lessons to ladies of
fashion. Mr. Smee has forgotten where Russell Square is
now, but he was glad enough to visit it in the year 1818,
when Miss Osborne had instruction from him.
Smee (formerly a pupil of Sharpe of Frith Street, a
dissolute, irregular, and unsuccessful man, but a man with
great knowledge of his art) being the cousin of Miss Wirt,
we say, and introduced by her to Miss Osborne, whose
hand and heart were still free after various incomplete
love affairs, felt a great attachment for this lady, and it is
believed inspired one in her bosom. Miss Wirt was the
confidante of this intrigue. I know not whether she used to
leave the room where the master and his pupil were
painting, in order to give them an opportunity for
exchanging those vows and sentiments which cannot be
uttered advantageously in the presence of a third party; I
know not whether she hoped that should her cousin
succeed in carrying off the rich merchant's daughter, he
would give Miss Wirt a portion of the wealth which she
had enabled him to win--all that is certain is that Mr.
Osborne got some hint of the transaction, came back from
the City abruptly, and entered the drawing-room with his
bamboo cane; found the painter, the pupil, and the
companion all looking exceedingly pale there; turned the
former out of doors with menaces that he would break
every bone in his skin, and half an hour afterwards
dismissed Miss Wirt likewise, kicking her trunks down the
stairs, trampling on her bandboxes, and shaking his fist at
her hackney coach as it bore her away.
Jane Osborne kept her bedroom for many days. She was
not allowed to have a companion afterwards. Her father
swore to her that she should not have a shilling of his
money if she made any match without his concurrence;
and as he wanted a woman to keep his house, he did not
choose that she should marry, so that she was obliged to
give up all projects with which Cupid had any share.
During her papa's life, then, she resigned herself to the
manner of existence here described, and was content to be
an old maid. Her sister, meanwhile, was having children
with finer names every year and the intercourse between
the two grew fainter continually. "Jane and I do not move
in the same sphere of life," Mrs. Bullock said. "I regard her
as a sister, of course"--which means--what does it mean
when a lady says that she regards Jane as a sister?
It has been described how the Misses Dobbin lived with
their father at a fine villa at Denmark Hill, where there
were beautiful graperies and peach-trees which delighted
little Georgy Osborne. The Misses Dobbin, who drove often
to Brompton to see our dear Amelia, came sometimes to
Russell Square too, to pay a visit to their old acquaintance
Miss Osborne. I believe it was in consequence of the
commands of their brother the Major in India (for whom
their papa had a prodigious respect), that they paid
attention to Mrs. George; for the Major, the godfather and
guardian of Amelia's little boy, still hoped that the child's
grandfather might be induced to relent towards him and
acknowledge him for the sake of his son. The Misses
Dobbin kept Miss Osborne acquainted with the state of
Amelia's affairs; how she was living with her father and
mother; how poor they were; how they wondered what
men, and such men as their brother and dear Captain
Osborne, could find in such an insignificant little chit; how
she was still, as heretofore, a namby-pamby milk-and-
water affected creature--but how the boy was really the
noblest little boy ever seen--for the hearts of all women
warm towards young children, and the sourest spinster is
kind to them.
One day, after great entreaties on the part of the Misses
Dobbin, Amelia allowed little George to go and pass a day
with them at Denmark Hill--a part of which day she spent
herself in writing to the Major in India. She congratulated
him on the happy news which his sisters had just
conveyed to her. She prayed for his prosperity and that of
the bride he had chosen. She thanked him for a thousand
thousand kind offices and proofs of stead fast friendship to
her in her affliction. She told him the last news about little
Georgy, and how he was gone to spend that very day with
his sisters in the country. She underlined the letter a great
deal, and she signed herself affectionately his friend,
Amelia Osborne. She forgot to send any message of
kindness to Lady O'Dowd, as her wont was--and did not
mention Glorvina by name, and only in italics, as the
Major's BRIDE, for whom she begged blessings. But the
news of the marriage removed the reserve which she had
kept up towards him. She was glad to be able to own and
feel how warmly and gratefully she regarded him--and as
for the idea of being jealous of Glorvina (Glorvina, indeed!),
Amelia would have scouted it, if an angel from heaven had
hinted it to her. That night, when Georgy came back in the
pony-carriage in which he rejoiced, and in which he was
driven by Sir Wm. Dobbin's old coachman, he had round
his neck a fine gold chain and watch. He said an old lady,
not pretty, had given it him, who cried and kissed him a
great deal. But he didn't like her. He liked grapes very
much. And he only liked his mamma. Amelia shrank and
started; the timid soul felt a presentiment of terror when
she heard that the relations of the child's father had seen
him.
Miss Osborne came back to give her father his dinner. He
had made a good speculation in the City, and was rather in
a good humour that day, and chanced to remark the
agitation under which she laboured. "What's the matter,
Miss Osborne?" he deigned to say.
The woman burst into tears. "Oh, sir," she said, "I've seen
little George. He is as beautiful as an angel--and so like
him!" The old man opposite to her did not say a word, but
flushed up and began to tremble in every limb.
CHAPIER XLIII
In Which the Reader Has to Double the Cape
The astonished reader must be called upon to transport
himself ten thousand miles to the military station of
Bundlegunge, in the Madras division of our Indian empire,
where our gallant old friends of the --th regiment are
quartered under the command of the brave Colonel,
Sir Michael O'Dowd. Time has dealt kindly with that
stout officer, as it does ordinarily with men who have
good stomachs and good tempers and are not perplexed
over much by fatigue of the brain. The Colonel plays a
good knife and fork at tiffin and resumes those weapons
with great success at dinner. He smokes his hookah after
both meals and puffs as quietly while his wife scolds
him as he did under the fire of the French at Waterloo. Age
and heat have not diminished the activity or the eloquence
of the descendant of the Malonys and the Molloys. Her
Ladyship, our old acquaintance, is as much at home at
Madras as at Brussels in the cantonment as under the
tents. On the march you saw her at the head of the
regiment seated on a royal elephant, a noble sight.
Mounted on that beast, she has been into action with tigers
in the jungle, she has been received by native princes, who
have welcomed her and Glorvina into the recesses of their
zenanas and offered her shawls and jewels which it went
to her heart to refuse. The sentries of all arms salute her
wherever she makes her appearance, and she touches her
hat gravely to their salutation. Lady O'Dowd is one of the
greatest ladies in the Presidency of Madras--her quarrel
with Lady Smith, wife of Sir Minos Smith the puisne judge,
is still remembered by some at Madras, when the Colonel's
lady snapped her fingers in the Judge's lady's face and said
SHE'D never walk behind ever a beggarly civilian. Even
now, though it is five-and-twenty years ago, people
remember Lady O'Dowd performing a jig at Government
House, where she danced down two Aides-de-Camp, a
Major of Madras cavalry, and two gentlemen of the Civil
Service; and, persuaded by Major Dobbin, C.B., second in
command of the --th, to retire to the supper-room, lassata
nondum satiata recessit.
Peggy O'Dowd is indeed the same as ever, kind in act and
thought; impetuous in temper; eager to command; a tyrant
over her Michael; a dragon amongst all the ladies of the
regiment; a mother to all the young men, whom she tends
in their sickness, defends in all their scrapes, and with
whom Lady Peggy is immensely popular. But the
Subalterns' and Captains' ladies (the Major is unmarried)
cabal against her a good deal. They say that Glorvina gives
herself airs and that Peggy herself is ill tolerably
domineering. She interfered with a little congregation
which Mrs. Kirk had got up and laughed the young men
away from her sermons, stating that a soldier's wife had no
business to be a parson--that Mrs. Kirk would be much
better mending her husband's clothes; and, if the regiment
wanted sermons, that she had the finest in the world, those
of her uncle, the Dean. She abruptly put a termination to a
flirtation which Lieutenant Stubble of the regiment had
commenced with the Surgeon's wife, threatening to come
down upon Stubble for the money which he had borrowed
from her (for the young fellow was still of an extravagant
turn) unless he broke off at once and went to the Cape on
sick leave. On the other hand, she housed and sheltered
Mrs. Posky, who fled from her bungalow one night,
pursued by her infuriate husband, wielding his second
brandy bottle, and actually carried Posky through the
delirium tremens and broke him of the habit of drinking,
which had grown upon that officer, as all evil habits will
grow upon men. In a word, in adversity she was the best
of comforters, in good fortune the most troublesome of
friends, having a perfectly good opinion of herself always
and an indomitable resolution to have her own way.
Among other points, she had made up her mind that
Glorvina should marry our old friend Dobbin. Mrs. O'Dowd
knew the Major's expectations and appreciated his good
qualities and the high character which he enjoyed in his
profession. Glorvina, a very handsome, fresh-coloured,
black-haired, blue-eyed young lady, who could ride a
horse, or play a sonata with any girl out of the County
Cork, seemed to be the very person destined to insure
Dobbin's happiness--much more than that poor good little
weak-spur'ted Amelia, about whom he used to take on so.--
"Look at Glorvina enter a room," Mrs. O'Dowd would say,
"and compare her with that poor Mrs. Osborne, who
couldn't say boo to a goose. She'd be worthy of you, Major--
you're a quiet man yourself, and want some one to talk for
ye. And though she does not come of such good blood as
the Malonys or Molloys, let me tell ye, she's of an ancient
family that any nobleman might be proud to marry into."
But before she had come to such a resolution and determined to
subjugate Major Dobbin by her endearments, it must be owned
that Glorvina had practised them a good deal elsewhere. She had
had a season in Dublin, and who knows how many in Cork,
Killarney, and Mallow? She had flirted with all the marriageable
officers whom the depots of her country afforded, and all the
bachelor squires who seemed eligible. She had been
engaged to be married a half-score times in Ireland,
besides the clergyman at Bath who used her so ill. She had
flirted all the way to Madras with the Captain and chief
mate of the Ramchunder East Indiaman, and had a season
at the Presidency with her brother and Mrs. O'Dowd, who
was staying there, while the Major of the regiment was in
command at the station. Everybody admired her there;
everybody danced with her; but no one proposed who was
worth the marrying--one or two exceedingly young
subalterns sighed after her, and a beardless civilian or two,
but she rejected these as beneath her pretensions--and
other and younger virgins than Glorvina were married
before her. There are women, and handsome women too,
who have this fortune in life. They fall in love with the
utmost generosity; they ride and walk with half the
Army-list, though they draw near to forty, and yet the
Misses O'Grady are the Misses O'Grady still: Glorvina
persisted that but for Lady O'Dowd's unlucky quarrel with
the Judge's lady, she would have made a good match at
Madras, where old Mr. Chutney, who was at the head of
the civil service (and who afterwards married Miss Dolby,
a young lady only thirteen years of age who had just
arrived from school in Europe), was just at the point of
proposing to her.
Well, although Lady O'Dowd and Glorvina quarrelled a
great number of times every day, and upon almost every
conceivable subject--indeed, if Mick O'Dowd had not
possessed the temper of an angel two such women
constantly about his ears would have driven him out of his
senses--yet they agreed between themselves on this point,
that Glorvina should marry Major Dobbin, and were
determined that the Major should have no rest until the
arrangement was brought about. Undismayed by forty or
fifty previous defeats, Glorvina laid siege to him. She sang
Irish melodies at him unceasingly. She asked him so
frequently and pathetically, Will ye come to the bower?
that it is a wonder how any man of feeling could have
resisted the invitation. She was never tired of inquiring, if
Sorrow had his young days faded, and was ready to listen
and weep like Desdemona at the stories of his dangers and
his campaigns. It has been
said that our honest and dear old friend used to perform
on the flute in private; Glorvina insisted upon having duets
with him, and Lady O'Dowd would rise and artlessly quit
the room when the young couple were so engaged.
Glorvina forced the Major to ride with her of mornings. The
whole cantonment saw them set out and return. She was
constantly writing notes over to him at his house,
borrowing his books, and scoring with her great
pencil-marks such passages of sentiment or humour as
awakened her sympathy. She borrowed his horses, his
servants, his spoons, and palanquin--no wonder that public
rumour assigned her to him, and that the Major's sisters in
England should fancy they were about to have a sister-in-
law.
Dobbin, who was thus vigorously besieged, was in the
meanwhile in a state of the most odious tranquillity. He
used to laugh when the young fellows of the regiment
joked him about Glorvina's manifest attentions to him.
"Bah!" said he, "she is only keeping her hand in--she
practises upon me as she does upon Mrs. Tozer's piano,
because it's the most handy instrument in the station. I am
much too battered and old for such a fine young lady as
Glorvina." And so he went on riding with her, and copying
music and verses into her albums, and playing at chess
with her very submissively; for it is with these simple
amusements that some officers in India are accustomed to
while away their leisure moments, while others of a less
domestic turn hunt hogs, and shoot snipes, or gamble and
smoke cheroots, and betake themselves to brandy-and-
water. As for Sir Michael O'Dowd, though his lady and her
sister both urged him to call upon the Major to explain
himself and not keep on torturing a poor innocent girl in
that shameful way, the old soldier refused point-blank to
have anything to do with the conspiracy. "Faith, the Major's
big enough to choose for himself," Sir Michael said; "he'll
ask ye when he wants ye"; or else he would turn the
matter off jocularly, declaring that "Dobbin was too young
to keep house, and had written home to ask lave of his
mamma." Nay, he went farther, and in private
communications with his Major would caution and rally
him, crying, "Mind your oi, Dob, my boy, them girls is bent
on mischief--me Lady has just got a box of gowns from Europe, and there's a pink satin for Glorvina, which will finish ye, Dob, if it's in the power of woman or satin to move ye."
But the truth is, neither beauty nor fashion could conquer
him. Our honest friend had but one idea of a woman in his
head, and that one did not in the least resemble Miss
Glorvina O'Dowd in pink satin. A gentle little woman in black,
with large eyes and brown hair, seldom speaking, save when
spoken to, and then in a voice not the least resembling
Miss Glorvina's--a soft young mother tending an infant
and beckoning the Major up with a smile to look at him--a
rosy-cheeked lass coming singing into the room in Russell
Square or hanging on George Osborne's arm, happy and
loving--there was but this image that filled our honest
Major's mind, by day and by night, and reigned over it
always. Very likely Amelia was not like the portrait the
Major had formed of her: there was a figure in a book of
fashions which his sisters had in England, and with which
William had made away privately, pasting it into the lid
of his desk, and fancying he saw some resemblance to
Mrs. Osborne in the print, whereas I have seen it, and
can vouch that it is but the picture of a high-waisted
gown with an impossible doll's face simpering over it--
and, perhaps, Mr. Dobbin's sentimental Amelia was no
more like the real one than this absurd little print which
he cherished. But what man in love, of us, is better
informed?--or is he much happier when he sees and owns his
delusion? Dobbin was under this spell. He did not bother
his friends and the public much about his feelings, or
indeed lose his natural rest or appetite on account
of them. His head has grizzled since we saw him last, and
a line or two of silver may be seen in the soft brown hair
likewise. But his feelings are not in the least changed or
oldened, and his love remains as fresh as a man's
recollections of boyhood are.
We have said how the two Misses Dobbin and Amelia, the
Major's correspondents in Europe, wrote him letters from
England, Mrs. Osborne congratulating him with great candour
and cordiality upon his approaching nuptials with Miss O'Dowd.
"Your sister has just kindly visited me," Amelia wrote
in her letter, "and informed me of an INTERESTING EVENT,
upon which I beg to offer my MOST SINCERE CONGRATULATIONS.
I hope the young lady to whom I hear you are to
be UNITED will in every respect prove worthy of one who
is himself all kindness and goodness. The poor widow has
only her prayers to offer and her cordial cordial wishes
for YOUR PROSPERITY! Georgy sends his love to HIS DEAR GODPAPA
and hopes that you will not forget him. I tell
him that you are about to form OTHER TIES, with one who
I am sure merits ALL YOUR AFFECTION, but that, although
such ties must of course be the strongest and most
sacred, and supersede ALL OTHERS, yet that I am sure the
widow and the child whom you have ever protected and
loved will always HAVE A CORNER IN YOUR HEART" The letter,
which has been before alluded to, went on in this
strain, protesting throughout as to the extreme satisfaction
of the writer.
This letter, .which arrived by the very same ship which
brought out Lady O'Dowd's box of millinery from London
(and which you may be sure Dobbin opened before any
one of the other packets which the mail brought him),
put the receiver into such a state of mind that Glorvina,
and her pink satin, and everything belonging to her became
perfectly odious to him. The Major cursed the talk
of women, and the sex in general. Everything annoyed
him that day--the parade was insufferably hot and
wearisome. Good heavens! was a man of intellect to waste
his life, day after day, inspecting cross-belts and putting
fools through their manoeuvres? The senseless chatter
of the young men at mess was more than ever jarring.
What cared he, a man on the high road to forty, to
know how many snipes Lieutenant Smith had shot, or
what were the performances of Ensign Brown's mare? The
jokes about the table filled him with shame. He was too
old to listen to the banter of the assistant surgeon and
the slang of the youngsters, at which old O'Dowd, with
his bald head and red face, laughed quite easily. The
old man had listened to those jokes any time these
thirty years--Dobbin himself had been fifteen years hearing
them. And after the boisterous dulness of the mess-table,
the quarrels and scandal of the ladies of the regiment!
It was unbearable, shameful. "O Amelia, Amelia,"
he thought, "you to whom I have been so faithful--
you reproach me! It is because you cannot feel for me
that I drag on this wearisome life. And you reward me
after years of devotion by giving me your blessing upon
my marriage, forsooth, with this flaunting Irish girl!"
Sick and sorry felt poor William; more than ever
wretched and lonely. He would like to have done with
life and its vanity altogether--so bootless and unsatisfactory
the struggle, so cheerless and dreary the prospect
seemed to him. He lay all that night sleepless, and
yearning to go home. Amelia's letter had fallen as a
blank upon him. No fidelity, no constant truth and passion,
could move her into warmth. She would not see
that he loved her. Tossing in his bed, he spoke out to her.
"Good God, Amelia!" he said, "don't you know that I
only love you in the world--you, who are a stone to me
--you, whom I tended through months and months of
illness and grief, and who bade me farewell with a smile
on your face, and forgot me before the door shut between
us!" The native servants lying outside his verandas beheld
with wonder the Major, so cold and quiet ordinarily,
at present so passionately moved and cast down. Would
she have pitied him had she seen him? He read over and
over all the letters which he ever had from her--letters
of business relative to the little property which he had
made her believe her husband had left to her--brief notes
of invitation--every scrap of writing that she had ever
sent to him--how cold, how kind, how hopeless, how
selfish they were!
Had there been some kind gentle soul near at hand who
could read and appreciate this silent generous heart, who
knows but that the reign of Amelia might have been over,
and that friend William's love might have flowed into a
kinder channel? But there was only Glorvina of the jetty
ringlets with whom his intercourse was familiar, and this
dashing young woman was not bent upon loving the
Major, but rather on making the Major admire HER--a
most vain and hopeless task, too, at least considering
the means that the poor girl possessed to carry
it out. She curled her hair and showed her shoulders
at him, as much as to say, did ye ever see such jet
ringlets and such a complexion? She grinned at him so
that he might see that every tooth in her head was
sound--and he never heeded all these charms. Very soon
after the arrival of the box of millinery, and perhaps indeed
in honour of it, Lady O'Dowd and the ladies of
the King's Regiment gave a ball to the Company's
Regiments and the civilians at the station. Glorvina
sported the killing pink frock, and the Major, who attended
the party and walked very ruefully up and down
the rooms, never so much as perceived the pink garment.
Glorvina danced past him in a fury with all the young
subalterns of the station, and the Major was not in the
least jealous of her performance, or angry because Captain
Bangles of the Cavalry handed her to supper. It was
not jealousy, or frocks, or shoulders that could move him,
and Glorvina had nothing more.
So these two were each exemplifying the Vanity of this
life, and each longing for what he or she could not get.
Glorvina cried with rage at the failure. She had set her
mind on the Major "more than on any of the others,"
she owned, sobbing. "He'll break my heart, he will,
Peggy," she would whimper to her sister-in-law when
they were good friends; "sure every one of me frocks
must be taken in--it's such a skeleton I'm growing."
Fat or thin, laughing or melancholy, on horseback or the
music-stool, it was all the same to the Major. And the
Colonel, puffing his pipe and listening to these complaints,
would suggest that Glory should have some black frocks
out in the next box from London, and told a mysterious
story of a lady in Ireland who died of grief for the loss of
her husband before she got ere a one.
While the Major was going on in this tantalizing way,
not proposing, and declining to fall in love, there came
another ship from Europe bringing letters on board, and
amongst them some more for the heartless man. These
were home letters bearing an earlier postmark than that
of the former packets, and as Major Dobbin recognized
among his the handwriting of his sister, who always
crossed and recrossed her letters to her brother--gathered
together all the possible bad news which she could
collect, abused him and read him lectures with sisterly
frankness, and always left him miserable for the day after
"dearest William" had achieved the perusal of one of her
epistles--the truth must be told that dearest William did
not hurry himself to break the seal of Miss Dobbin's
letter, but waited for a particularly favourable day and
mood for doing so. A fortnight before, moreover, he
had written to scold her for telling those absurd stories
to Mrs. Osborne, and had despatched a letter in reply
to that lady, undeceiving her with respect to the reports
concerning him and assuring her that "he had no sort of
present intention of altering his condition."
Two or three nights after the arrival of the second
package of letters, the Major had passed the evening
pretty cheerfully at Lady O'Dowd's house, where Glorvina
thought that he listened with rather more attention
than usual to the Meeting of the Wathers, the Minsthrel
Boy, and one or two other specimens of song with which
she favoured him (the truth is, he was no more listening
to Glorvina than to the howling of the jackals in the
moonlight outside, and the delusion was hers as usual),
and having played his game at chess with her (cribbage
with the surgeon was Lady O'Dowd's favourite evening
pastime), Major Dobbin took leave of the Colonel's family
at his usual hour and retired to his own house.
There on his table, his sister's letter lay reproaching
him. He took it up, ashamed rather of his negligence
regarding it, and prepared himself for a disagreeable hour's
communing with that crabbed-handed absent relative.
. . . It may have been an hour after the Major's departure
from the Colonel's house--Sir Michael was sleeping
the sleep of the just; Glorvina had arranged her
black ringlets in the innumerable little bits of paper, in
which it was her habit to confine them; Lady O'Dowd,
too, had gone to her bed in the nuptial chamber, on the
ground-floor, and had tucked her musquito curtains
round her fair form, when the guard at the gates of the
Commanding-Officer's compound beheld Major Dobbin,
in the moonlight, rushing towards the house with a swift
step and a very agitated countenance, and he passed the
sentinel and went up to the windows of the Colonel's
bedchamber.
"O'Dowd--Colonel!" said Dobbin and kept up a great
shouting.
"Heavens, Meejor!" said Glorvina of the curl-papers,
putting out her head too, from her window.
"What is it, Dob, me boy?" said the Colonel, expecting
there was a fire in the station, or that the route had
come from headquarters.
"I--I must have leave of absence. I must go to England
--on the most urgent private affairs," Dobbin said.
"Good heavens, what has happened!" thought Glorvina,
trembling with all the papillotes.
"I want to be off--now--to-night," Dobbin continued;
and the Colonel getting up, came out to parley with him.
In the postscript of Miss Dobbin's cross-letter, the
Major had just come upon a paragraph, to the following
effect:--"I drove yesterday to see your old ACQUAINTANCE,
Mrs. Osborne. The wretched place they live at, since
they were bankrupts, you know--Mr. S., to judge from
a BRASS PLATE on the door of his hut (it is little better)
is a coal-merchant. The little boy, your godson, is
certainly a fine child, though forward, and inclined to be
saucy and self-willed. But we have taken notice of him
as you wish it, and have introduced him to his aunt,
Miss O., who was rather pleased with him. Perhaps his
grandpapa, not the bankrupt one, who is almost doting,
but Mr. Osborne, of Russell Square, may be induced to
relent towards the child of your friend, HIS ERRING AND
SELF-WILLED SON. And Amelia will not be ill-disposed to
give him up. The widow is CONSOLED, and is about to
marry a reverend gentleman, the Rev. Mr. Binny, one
of the curates of Brompton. A poor match. But Mrs. O.
is getting old, and I saw a great deal of grey in her hair--
she was in very good spirits: and your little godson overate
himself at our house. Mamma sends her love with
that of your affectionate, Ann Dobbin."
CHAPTER XLIV
A Round-about Chapter between London and
Hampshire
Our old friends the Crawleys' family house, in Great
Gaunt Street, still bore over its front the hatchment which
had been placed there as a token of mourning for Sir
Pitt Crawley's demise, yet this heraldic emblem was in
itself a very splendid and gaudy piece of furniture, and
all the rest of the mansion became more brilliant than it
had ever been during the late baronet's reign. The black
outer-coating of the bricks was removed, and they
appeared with a cheerful, blushing face streaked with white:
the old bronze lions of the knocker were gilt handsomely,
the railings painted, and the dismallest house in Great
Gaunt Street became the smartest in the whole quarter,
before the green leaves in Hampshire had replaced those
yellowing ones which were on the trees in Queen's Crawley
Avenue when old Sir Pitt Crawley passed under them
for the last time.
A little woman, with a carriage to correspond, was
perpetually seen about this mansion; an elderly spinster,
accompanied by a little boy, also might be remarked
coming thither daily. It was Miss Briggs and little Rawdon,
whose business it was to see to the inward renovation
of Sir Pitt's house, to superintend the female band
engaged in stitching the blinds and hangings, to poke
and rummage in the drawers and cupboards crammed
with the dirty relics and congregated trumperies of a
couple of generations of Lady Crawleys, and to take
inventories of the china, the glass, and other properties
in the closets and store-rooms.
Mrs. Rawdon Crawley was general-in-chief over these
arrangements, with full orders from Sir Pitt to sell, barter,
confiscate, or purchase furniture, and she enjoyed herself
not a little in an occupation which gave full scope to her
taste and ingenuity. The renovation of the house was
determined upon when Sir Pitt came to town in November
to see his lawyers, and when he passed nearly a week in
Curzon Street, under the roof of his affectionate brother
and sister.
He had put up at an hotel at first, but, Becky, as soon
as she heard of the Baronet's arrival, went off alone to
greet him, and returned in an hour to Curzon Street
with Sir Pitt in the carriage by her side. It was impossible
sometimes to resist this artless little creature's hospitalities,
so kindly were they pressed, so frankly and amiably
offered. Becky seized Pitt's hand in a transport of
gratitude when he agreed to come. "Thank you," she
said, squeezing it and looking into the Baronet's eyes,
who blushed a good deal; "how happy this will make
Rawdon!" She bustled up to Pitt's bedroom, leading
on the servants, who were carrying his trunks thither. She
came in herself laughing, with a coal-scuttle out of
her own room.
A fire was blazing already in Sir Pitt's apartment (it
was Miss Briggs's room, by the way, who was sent
upstairs to sleep with the maid). "I knew I should bring
you," she said with pleasure beaming in her glance. Indeed,
she was really sincerely happy at having him for a guest.