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boys and the conversation. He did not appear to think
that any especial reverence was due to their boyhood;
the old fellow cut in with stories, to the full as choice
as any the youngest rake present had to tell--nor did his
own grey hairs nor their smooth faces detain him. Old
Mac was famous for his good stories. He was not exactly
a lady's man; that is, men asked him to dine rather at
the houses of their mistresses than of their mothers.
There can scarcely be a life lower, perhaps, than his,
but he was quite contented with it, such as it was, and
led it in perfect good nature, simplicity, and modesty of
demeanour.
By the time Mac had finished a copious breakfast,
most of the others had concluded their meal. Young Lord
Varinas was smoking an immense Meerschaum pipe,
while Captain Hugues was employed with a cigar: that
violent little devil Tandyman, with his little bull-terrier
between his legs, was tossing for shillings with all his
might (that fellow was always at some game or other)
against Captain Deuceace; and Mac and Rawdon walked
off to the Club, neither, of course, having given any hint
of the business which was occupying their minds. Both,
on the other hand, had joined pretty gaily in the
conversation, for why should they interrupt it? Feasting,
drinking, ribaldry, laughter, go on alongside of all sorts
of other occupations in Vanity Fair--the crowds were
pouring out of church as Rawdon and his friend passed
down St. James's Street and entered into their Club.
The old bucks and habitues, who ordinarily stand
gaping and grinning out of the great front window of the
Club, had not arrived at their posts as yet--the
newspaper-room was almost empty. One man was present
whom Rawdon did not know; another to whom he owed
a little score for whist, and whom, in consequence, he
did not care to meet; a third was reading the Royalist
(a periodical famous for its scandal and its attachment
to Church and King) Sunday paper at the table, and
looking up at Crawley with some interest, said, "Crawley,
I congratulate you."
"What do you mean?" said the Colonel.
"It's in the Observer and the Royalist too," said Mr.
Smith.
"What?" Rawdon cried, turning very red. He thought
that the affair with Lord Steyne was already in the
public prints. Smith looked up wondering and smiling
at the agitation which the Colonel exhibited as he took
up the paper and, trembling, began to read.
Mr. Smith and Mr. Brown (the gentleman with .whom
Rawdon had the outstanding whist account) had been
talking about the Colonel just before he came in.
"It is come just in the nick of time," said Smith. "I
suppose Crawley had not a shilling in the world."
"It's a wind that blows everybody good," Mr. Brown
said. "He can't go away without paying me a pony he
owes me."
"What's the salary?" asked Smith.
"Two or three thousand," answered the other. "But
the climate's so infernal, they don't enjoy it long.
Liverseege died after eighteen months of it, and the
man before went off in six weeks, I hear."
"Some people say his brother is a very clever man. I
always found him a d-- bore," Smith ejaculated. "He
must have good interest, though. He must have got the
Colonel the place."
"He!" said Brown. with a sneer. "Pooh. It was Lord
Steyne got it.
"How do you mean?"
"A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband,"
answered the other enigmatically, and went to read his
papers.
Rawdon, for his part, read in the Royalist the following
astonishing paragraph:
GOVERNORSHIP OF COVENTRY ISLAND.--H.M.S.
Yellowjack, Commander Jaunders, has brought letters and
papers from Coventry Island. H. E. Sir Thomas
Liverseege had fallen a victim to the prevailing fever at
Swampton. His loss is deeply felt in the flourishing
colony. We hear that the Governorship has been offered to
Colonel Rawdon Crawley, C.B., a distinguished Waterloo
officer. We need not only men of acknowledged
bravery, but men of administrative talents to superintend
the affairs of our colonies, and we have no doubt
that the gentleman selected by the Colonial Office to
fill the lamented vacancy which has occurred at
Coventry Island is admirably calculated for the post which
he is about to occupy."
"Coventry Island! Where was it? Who had appointed
him to the government? You must take me out as your
secretary, old boy," Captain Macmurdo said laughing;
and as Crawley and his friend sat wondering and
perplexed over the announcement, the Club waiter brought
in to the Colonel a card on which the name of Mr.
Wenham was engraved, who begged to see Colonel
Crawley.
The Colonel and his aide-de-camp went out to meet
the gentleman, rightly conjecturing that he was an
emissary of Lord Steyne. "How d'ye do, Crawley? I am
glad to see you," said Mr. Wenham with a bland smile,
and grasping Crawley's hand with great cordiality.
"You come, I suppose, from-- "
"Exactly," said Mr. Wenham.
"Then this is my friend Captain Macmurdo, of the Life
Guards Green."
"Delighted to know Captain Macmurdo, I'm sure," Mr.
Wenham said and tendered another smile and shake of
the hand to the second, as he had done to the principal.
Mac put out one finger, armed with a buckskin glove,
and made a very frigid bow to Mr. Wenham over his
tight cravat. He was, perhaps, discontented at being put
in communication with a pekin, and thought that Lord
Steyne should have sent him a Colonel at the very least.
"As Macmurdo acts for me, and knows what I mean,"
Crawley said, "I had better retire and leave you together."
"Of course," said Macmurdo.
"By no means, my dear Colonel," Mr. Wenham said;
"the interview which I had the honour of requesting was
with you personally, though the company of Captain
Macmurdo cannot fail to be also most pleasing. In fact,
Captain, I hope that our conversation will lead to none
but the most agreeable results, very different from those
which my friend Colonel Crawley appears to anticipate."
"Humph!" said Captain Macmurdo. Be hanged to these
civilians, he thought to himself, they are always for
arranging and speechifying. Mr. Wenham took a chair
which was not offered to him--took a paper from his
pocket, and resumed--
"You have seen this gratifying announcement in the
papers this morning, Colonel? Government has secured
a most valuable servant, and you, if you accept office, as
I presume you will, an excellent appointment. Three
thousand a year, delightful climate, excellent government-
house, all your own way in the Colony, and a certain
promotion. I congratulate you with all my heart. I
presume you know, gentlemen, to whom my friend is
indebted for this piece of patronage?"
"Hanged if I know," the Captain said; his principal
turned very red.
"To one of the most generous and kindest men in the
world, as he is one of the greatest--to my excellent
friend, the Marquis of Steyne."
"I'll see him d-- before I take his place," growled
out Rawdon.
"You are irritated against my noble friend," Mr.
Wenham calmly resumed; "and now, in the name of
common sense and justice, tell me why?"
"WHY?" cried Rawdon in surprise.
"Why? Dammy!" said the Captain, ringing his stick
on the ground.
"Dammy, indeed," said Mr. Wenham with the most
agreeable smile; "still, look at the matter as a man of
the world--as an honest man--and see if you have not
been in the wrong. You come home from a journey, and
find--what?--my Lord Steyne supping at your house in
Curzon Street with Mrs. Crawley. Is the circumstance
strange or novel? Has he not been a hundred times
before in the same position? Upon my honour and word
as a gentleman"--Mr. Wenham here put his hand on
his waistcoat with a parliamentary air--"I declare I think
that your suspicions are monstrous and utterly
unfounded, and that they injure an honourable gentleman
who has proved his good-will towards you by a thousand
benefactions--and a most spotless and innocent lady."
"You don't mean to say that--that Crawley's
mistaken?" said Mr. Macmurdo.
"I believe that Mrs. Crawley is as innocent as my
wife, Mrs. Wenham," Mr. Wenham said with great
energy. "I believe that, misled by an infernal jealousy,
my friend here strikes a blow against not only an infirm
and old man of high station, his constant friend and
benefactor, but against his wife, his own dearest honour,
his son's future reputation, and his own prospects in
life."
"I will tell you what happened," Mr. Wenham
continued with great solemnity; "I was sent for this
morning by my Lord Steyne, and found him in a pitiable state,
as, I need hardly inform Colonel Crawley, any man of
age and infirmity would be after a personal conflict with
a man of your strength. I say to your face; it was a
cruel advantage you took of that strength, Colonel
Crawley. It was not only the body of my noble and
excellent friend which was wounded--his heart, sir, was
bleeding. A man whom he had loaded with benefits and
regarded with affection had subjected him to the foulest
indignity. What was this very appointment, which appears
in the journals of to-day, but a proof of his kindness to
you? When I saw his Lordship this morning I found him
in a state pitiable indeed to see, and as anxious as you
are to revenge the outrage committed upon him, by
blood. You know he has given his proofs, I presume,
Colonel Crawley?"
"He has plenty of pluck," said the Colonel. "Nobody
ever said he hadn't."
"His first order to me was to write a letter of
challenge, and to carry it to Colonel Crawley. One or
other of us," he said, "must not survive the outrage
of last night."
Crawley nodded. "You're coming to the point,
Wenham," he said.
"I tried my utmost to calm Lord Steyne. Good God!
sir," I said, "how I regret that Mrs. Wenham and myself
had not accepted Mrs. Crawley's invitation to sup with
her!"
"She asked you to sup with her?" Captain Macmurdo
said.
"After the opera. Here's the note of invitation--stop
--no, this is another paper--I thought I had h, but it's
of no consequence, and I pledge you my word to the
fact. If we had come--and it was only one of Mrs.
Wenham's headaches which prevented us--she suffers
under them a good deal, especially in the spring--if we
had come, and you had returned home, there would have
been no quarrel, no insult, no suspicion--and so it is
positively because my poor wife has a headache that you
are to bring death down upon two men of honour and
plunge two of the most excellent and ancient families
in the kingdom into disgrace and sorrow."
Mr. Macmurdo looked at his principal with the air
of a man profoundly puzzled, and Rawdon felt with a
kind of rage that his prey was escaping him. He did not
believe a word of the story, and yet, how discredit or
disprove it?
Mr. Wenham continued with the same fluent oratory,
which in his place in Parliament he had so often
practised--"I sat for an hour or more by Lord Steyne's
bedside, beseeching, imploring Lord Steyne to forego his
intention of demanding a meeting. I pointed out to him
that the circumstances were after all suspicious--they
were suspicious. I acknowledge it--any man in your
position might have been taken in--I said that a man
furious with jealousy is to all intents and purposes a
madman, and should be as such regarded--that a duel
between you must lead to the disgrace of all parties
concerned--that a man of his Lordship's exalted station had
no right in these days, when the most atrocious
revolutionary principles, and the most dangerous levelling
doctrines are preached among the vulgar, to create a
public scandal; and that, however innocent, the common
people would insist that he was guilty. In fine, I
implored him not to send the challenge."
"I don't believe one word of the whole story," said
Rawdon, grinding his teeth. "I believe it a d-- lie, and
that you're in it, Mr. Wenham. If the challenge don't
come from him, by Jove it shall come from me."
Mr. Wenham turned deadly pale at this savage
interruption of the Colonel and looked towards the door.
But he found a champion in Captain Macmurdo. That
gentleman rose up with an oath and rebuked Rawdon
for his language. "You put the affair into my hands, and
you shall act as I think fit, by Jove, and not as you do.
You have no right to insult Mr. Wenham with this sort
of language; and dammy, Mr. Wenham, you deserve an
apology. And as for a challenge to Lord Steyne, you
may get somebody else to carry it, I won't. If my lord,
after being thrashed, chooses to sit still, dammy let him.
And as for the affair with--with Mrs. Crawley, my
belief is, there's nothing proved at all: that your wife's
innocent, as innocent as Mr. Wenham says she is; and at
any rate that you would be a d--fool not to take the
place and hold your tongue."
"Captain Macmurdo, you speak like a man of sense,"
Mr. Wenham cried out, immensely relieved--"I forget
any words that Colonel Crawley has used in the
irritation of the moment."
"I thought you would," Rawdon said with a sneer.
"Shut your mouth, you old stoopid," the Captain said
good-naturedly. "Mr. Wenham ain't a fighting man; and
quite right, too."
"This matter, in my belief," the Steyne emissary cried,
"ought to be buried in the most profound oblivion. A
word concerning it should never pass these doors. I
speak in the interest of my friend, as well as of Colonel
Crawley, who persists in considering me his enemy."
"I suppose Lord Steyne won't talk about it very
much," said Captain Macmurdo; "and I don't see why
our side should. The affair ain't a very pretty one, any
way you take it, and the less said about it the better.
It's you are thrashed, and not us; and if you are satisfied,
why, I think, we should be."
Mr. Wenham took his hat, upon this, and Captain
Macmurdo following him to the door, shut it upon
himself and Lord Steyne's agent, leaving Rawdon chafing
within. When the two were on the other side, Macmurdo
looked hard at the other ambassador and with an
expression of anything but respect on his round jolly face.
"You don't stick at a trifle, Mr. Wenham," he said.
"You flatter me, Captain Macmurdo," answered the
other with a smile. "Upon my honour and conscience
now, Mrs. Crawley did ask us to sup after the opera."
"Of course; and Mrs. Wenham had one of her head-
aches. I say, I've got a thousand-pound note here, which
I will give you if you will give me a receipt, please; and
I will put the note up in an envelope for Lord Steyne.
My man shan't fight him. But we had rather not take
his money."
"It was all a mistake--all a mistake, my dear sir," the
other said with the utmost innocence of manner; and was
bowed down the Club steps by Captain Macmurdo, just
as Sir Pitt Crawley ascended them. There was a slight
acquaintance between these two gentlemen, and the
Captain, going back with the Baronet to the room where the
latter's brother was, told Sir Pitt, in confidence, that he
had made the affair all right between Lord Steyne and
the Colonel.
Sir Pitt was well pleased, of course, at this intelligence,
and congratulated his brother warmly upon the peaceful
issue of the affair, making appropriate moral remarks
upon the evils of duelling and the unsatisfactory nature
of that sort of settlement of disputes.
And after this preface, he tried with all his eloquence
to effect a reconciliation between Rawdon and his wife.
He recapitulated the statements which Becky had made,
pointed out the probabilities of their truth, and asserted
his own firm belief in her innocence.
But Rawdon would not hear of it. "She has kep money
concealed from me these ten years," he said "She swore,
last night only, she had none from Steyne. She knew it
was all up, directly I found it. If she's not guilty, Pitt,
she's as bad as guilty, and I'll never see her again--
never." His head sank down on his chest as he spoke
the words, and he looked quite broken and sad.
"Poor old boy," Macmurdo said, shaking his head.
Rawdon Crawley resisted for some time the idea of
taking the place which had been procured for him by so
odious a patron, and was also for removing the boy
from the school where Lord Steyne's interest had placed
him. He was induced, however, to acquiesce in these
benefits by the entreaties of his brother and Macmurdo,
but mainly by the latter, pointing out to him what a
fury Steyne would be in to think that his enemy's
fortune was made through his means.
When the Marquis of Steyne came abroad after his
accident, the Colonial Secretary bowed up to him and
congratulated himself and the Service upon having made
so excellent an appointment. These congratulations were
received with a degree of gratitude which may be
imagined on the part of Lord Steyne.
The secret of the rencontre between him and Colonel
Crawley was buried in the profoundest oblivion, as
Wenham said; that is, by the seconds and the principals.
But before that evening was over it was talked of at fifty
dinner-tables in Vanity Fair. Little Cackleby himself
went to seven evening parties and told the story with
comments and emendations at each place. How Mrs.
Washington White revelled in it! The Bishopess of Ealing
was shocked beyond expression; the Bishop went and
wrote his name down in the visiting-book at Gaunt House
that very day. Little Southdown was sorry; so you may
be sure was his sister Lady Jane, very sorry. Lady
Southdown wrote it off to her other daughter at the Cape of
Good Hope. It was town-talk for at least three days,
and was only kept out of the newspapers by the exertions
of Mr. Wagg, acting upon a hint from Mr. Wenham.
The bailiffs and brokers seized upon poor Raggles in
Curzon Street, and the late fair tenant of that poor little
mansion was in the meanwhile--where? Who cared! Who
asked after a day or two? Was she guilty or not? We all
know how charitable the world is, and how the verdict
of Vanity Fair goes when there is a doubt. Some people
said she had gone to Naples in pursuit of Lord Steyne,
whilst others averred that his Lordship quitted that city
and fled to Palermo on hearing of Becky's arrival; some
said she was living in Bierstadt, and had become a dame
d'honneur to the Queen of Bulgaria; some that she was
at Boulogne; and others, at a boarding-house at
Cheltenham.
Rawdon made her a tolerable annuity, and we may
be sure that she was a woman who could make a little
money go a great way, as the saying is. He would have
paid his debts on leaving England, could he have got any
Insurance Office to take his life, but the climate of
Coventry Island was so bad that he could borrow no
money on the strength of his salary. He remitted,
however, to his brother punctually, and wrote to his little
boy regularly every mail. He kept Macmurdo in cigars
and sent over quantities of shells, cayenne pepper, hot
pickles, guava jelly, and colonial produce to Lady Jane.
He sent his brother home the Swamp Town Gazette,
in which the new Governor was praised with immense
enthusiasm; whereas the Swamp Town Sentinel, whose
wife was not asked to Government House, declared that
his Excellency was a tyrant, compared to whom Nero
was an enlightened philanthropist. Little Rawdon used
to like to get the papers and read about his Excellency.
His mother never made any movement to see the child.
He went home to his aunt for Sundays and holidays; he
soon knew every bird's nest about Queen's Crawley, and
rode out with Sir Huddlestone's hounds, which he
admired so on his first well-remembered visit to
Hampshire.
CHAPTER LVI
Georgy is Made a Gentleman
Georgy Osborne was now fairly established in his
grandfather's mansion in Russell Square, occupant of his
father's room in the house and heir apparent of all the
splendours there. The good looks, gallant bearing, and
gentlemanlike appearance of the boy won the grandsire's
heart for him. Mr. Osborne was as proud of him as ever
he had been of the elder George.
The child had many more luxuries and indulgences than
had been awarded his father. Osborne's commerce had
prospered greatly of late years. His wealth and
importance in the City had very much increased. He had
been glad enough in former days to put the elder George
to a good private school; and a commission in the army
for his son had been a source of no small pride to
him; for little George and his future prospects the old
man looked much higher. He would make a gentleman
of the little chap, was Mr. Osborne's constant saying
regarding little Georgy. He saw him in his mind's eye, a
collegian, a Parliament man, a Baronet, perhaps. The
old man thought he would die contented if he could see
his grandson in a fair way to such honours. He would
have none but a tip-top college man to educate him--
none of your quacks and pretenders--no, no. A few years
before, he used to be savage, and inveigh against all
parsons, scholars, and the like declaring that they were
a pack of humbugs, and quacks that weren't fit to get
their living but by grinding Latin and Greek, and a set
of supercilious dogs that pretended to look down upon
British merchants and gentlemen, who could buy up half
a hundred of 'em. He would mourn now, in a very
solemn manner, that his own education had been neglected,
and repeatedly point out, in pompous orations to Georgy,
the necessity and excellence of classical acquirements.
When they met at dinner the grandsire used to ask
the lad what he had been reading during the day, and
was greatly interested at the report the boy gave of his
own studies, pretending to understand little George
when he spoke regarding them. He made a hundred
blunders and showed his ignorance many a time. It did not
increase the respect which the child had for his senior.
A quick brain and a better education elsewhere showed
the boy very soon that his grandsire was a dullard, and
he began accordingly to command him and to look down
upon him; for his previous education, humble and
contracted as it had been, had made a much better
gentleman of Georgy than any plans of his grandfather could
make him. He had been brought up by a kind, weak,
and tender woman, who had no pride about anything
but about him, and whose heart was so pure and whose
bearing was so meek and humble that she could not but
needs be a true lady. She busied herself in gentle offices
and quiet duties; if she never said brilliant things, she
never spoke or thought unkind ones; guileless and artless,
loving and pure, indeed how could our poor little Amelia
be other than a real gentlewoman!
Young Georgy lorded over this soft and yielding
nature; and the contrast of its simplicity and delicacy with
the coarse pomposity of the dull old man with whom
he next came in contact made him lord over the latter
too. If he had been a Prince Royal he could not have
been better brought up to think well of himself.
Whilst his mother was yearning after him at home, and
I do believe every hour of the day, and during most
hours of the sad lonely nights, thinking of him, this young
gentleman had a number of pleasures and consolations
administered to him, which made him for his part bear
the separation from Amelia very easily. Little boys who
cry when they are going to school cry because they
are going to a very uncomfortable place. It is only a
few who weep from sheer affection. When you think
that the eyes of your childhood dried at the sight of a
piece of gingerbread, and that a plum cake was a
compensation for the agony of parting with your mamma
and sisters, oh my friend and brother, you need not be
too confident of your own fine feelings.
Well, then, Master George Osborne had every comfort
and luxury that a wealthy and lavish old grandfather
thought fit to provide. The coachman was instructed to
purchase for him the handsomest pony which could be
bought for money, and on this George was taught to
ride, first at a riding-school, whence, after having
performed satisfactorily without stirrups, and over the
leaping-bar, he was conducted through the New Road to
Regent's Park, and then to Hyde Park, where he rode
in state with Martin the coachman behind him. Old
Osborne, who took matters more easily in the City now,
where he left his affairs to his junior partners, would
often ride out with Miss O. in the same fashionable direction.
As little Georgy came cantering up with his dandified
air and his heels down, his grandfather would nudge
the lad's aunt and say, "Look, Miss O." And he would
laugh, and his face would grow red with pleasure, as
he nodded out of the window to the boy, as the groom
saluted the carriage, and the footman saluted Master
George. Here too his aunt, Mrs. Frederick Bullock
(whose chariot might daily be seen in the Ring, with
bullocks or emblazoned on the panels and harness, and
three pasty-faced little Bullocks, covered with cockades
and feathers, staring from the windows) Mrs. Frederick
Bullock, I say, flung glances of the bitterest hatred at
the little upstart as he rode by with his hand on his side
and his hat on one ear, as proud as a lord.
Though he was scarcely eleven years of age, Master
George wore straps and the most beautiful little boots
like a man. He had gilt spurs, and a gold-headed whip,
and a fine pin in his handkerchief, and the neatest little
kid gloves which Lamb's Conduit Street could furnish.
His mother had given him a couple of neckcloths, and
carefully hemmed and made some little shirts for him;
but when her Eli came to see the widow, they were
replaced by much finer linen. He had little jewelled buttons
in the lawn shirt fronts. Her humble presents had been put
aside--I believe Miss Osborne had given them to the
coachman's boy. Amelia tried to think she was pleased
at the change. Indeed, she was happy and charmed to
see the boy looking so beautiful.
She had had a little black profile of him done for a
shilling, and this was hung up by the side of another
portrait over her bed. One day the boy came on his
accustomed visit, galloping down the little street at
Brompton, and bringing, as usual, all the inhabitants to the
windows to admire his splendour, and with great eagerness
and a look of triumph in his face, he pulled a case
out of his great-coat--it was a natty white great-coat,
with a cape and a velvet collar--pulled out a red
morocco case, which he gave her.
"I bought it with my own money, Mamma," he said.
"I thought you'd like it."
Amelia opened the case, and giving a little cry of
delighted affection, seized the boy and embraced him a
hundred times. It was a miniature-of himself, very prettily
done (though not half handsome enough, we may be
sure, the widow thought). His grandfather had wished
to have a picture of him by an artist whose works,
exhibited in a shop-window, in Southampton Row, had
caught the old gentleman's eye; and George, who had
plenty of money, bethought him of asking the painter
how much a copy of the little portrait would cost, saying
that he would pay for it out of his own money and
that he wanted to give it to his mother. The pleased
painter executed it for a small price, and old Osborne
himself, when he heard of the incident, growled out his
satisfaction and gave the boy twice as many sovereigns
as he paid for the miniature.
But what was the grandfather's pleasure compared to
Amelia's ecstacy? That proof of the boy's affection
charmed her so that she thought no child in the world
was like hers for goodness. For long weeks after, the
thought of his love made her happy. She slept better
with the picture under her pillow, and how many many
times did she kiss it and weep and pray over it! A
small kindness from those she loved made that timid
heart grateful. Since her parting with George she had had
no such joy and consolation.
At his new home Master George ruled like a lord;
at dinner he invited the ladies to drink wine with the
utmost coolness, and took off his champagne in a way
which charmed his old grandfather. "Look at him," the
old man would say, nudging his neighbour with a
delighted purple face, "did you ever see such a chap?
Lord, Lord! he'll be ordering a dressing-case next, and
razors to shave with; I'm blessed if he won't."
The antics of the lad did not, however, delight Mr.
Osborne's friends so much as they pleased the old
gentleman. It gave Mr. Justice Coffin no pleasure to hear
Georgy cut into the conversation and spoil his stories.
Colonel Fogey was not interested in seeing the little boy
half tipsy. Mr. Sergeant Toffy's lady felt no particular
gratitude, when, with a twist of his elbow, he tilted a
glass of port-wine over her yellow satin and laughed at
the disaster; nor was she better pleased, although old
Osborne was highly delighted, when Georgy "whopped"
her third boy (a young gentleman a year older than
Georgy, and by chance home for the holidays from Dr.
Tickleus's at Ealing School) in Russell Square. George's
grandfather gave the boy a couple of sovereigns for that
feat and promised to reward him further for every boy
above his own size and age whom he whopped in a
similar manner. It is difficult to say what good the old man
saw in these combats; he had a vague notion that
quarrelling made boys hardy, and that tyranny was a useful
accomplishment for them to learn. English youth have
been so educated time out of mind, and we have
hundreds of thousands of apologists and admirers of
injustice, misery, and brutality, as perpetrated among
children. Flushed with praise and victory over Master Toffy,
George wished naturally to pursue his conquests further,
and one day as he was strutting about in prodigiously
dandified new clothes, near St. Pancras, and a young
baker's boy made sarcastic comments upon his appearance,
the youthful patrician pulled off his dandy jacket
with great spirit, and giving it in charge to the friend
who accompanied him (Master Todd, of Great Coram
Street, Russell Square, son of the junior partner of the
house of Osborne and Co.), George tried to whop the
little baker. But the chances of war were unfavourable
this time, and the little baker whopped Georgy, who
came home with a rueful black eye and all his fine shirt
frill dabbled with the claret drawn from his own little
nose. He told his grandfather that he had been in
combat with a giant, and frightened his poor mother at
Brompton with long, and by no means authentic,
accounts of the battle.
This young Todd, of Coram Street, Russell Square,
was Master George's great friend and admirer. They both
had a taste for painting theatrical characters; for
hardbake and raspberry tarts; for sliding and skating in the
Regent's Park and the Serpentine, when the weather
permitted; for going to the play, whither they were often
conducted, by Mr. Osborne's orders, by Rowson, Master
George's appointed body-servant, with whom they sat in
great comfort in the pit.
In the company of this gentleman they visited all the
principal theatres of the metropolis; knew the names of
all the actors from Drury Lane to Sadler's Wells; and
performed, indeed, many of the plays to the Todd family
and their youthful friends, with West's famous characters,
on their pasteboard theatre. Rowson, the footman, who
was of a generous disposition, would not unfrequently,
when in cash, treat his young master to oysters after
the play, and to a glass of rum-shrub for a night-cap.
We may be pretty certain that Mr. Rowson profited in
his turn by his young master's liberality and gratitude
for the pleasures to which the footman inducted him.
A famous tailor from the West End of the town--
Mr. Osborne would have none of your City or Holborn
bunglers, he said, for the boy (though a City tailor was
good enough for HIM)--was summoned to ornament little
George's person, and was told to spare no expense in so
doing. So, Mr. Woolsey, of Conduit Street, gave a loose
to his imagination and sent the child home fancy trousers,
fancy waistcoats, and fancy jackets enough to furnish a
school of little dandies. Georgy had little white
waistcoats for evening parties, and little cut velvet waistcoats
for dinners, and a dear little darling shawl dressing-gown,
for all the world like a little man. He dressed for dinner
every day, "like a regular West End swell," as his
grandfather remarked; one of the domestics was affected to
his special service, attended him at his toilette,
answered his bell, and brought him his letters always on a
silver tray.
Georgy, after breakfast, would sit in the arm-chair in
the dining-room and read the Morning Post, just like a
grown-up man. "How he DU dam and swear," the
servants would cry, delighted at his precocity. Those who
remembered the Captain his father, declared Master
George was his Pa, every inch of him. He made the house
lively by his activity, his imperiousness, his scolding, and
his good-nature.
George's education was confided to a neighbouring
scholar and private pedagogue who "prepared young
noblemen and gentlemen for the Universities, the senate,
and the learned professions: whose system did not
embrace the degrading corporal severities still practised at
the ancient places of education, and in whose family the
pupils would find the elegances of refined society and
the confidence and affection of a home." It was in this
way that the Reverend Lawrence Veal of Hart Street,
Bloomsbury, and domestic Chaplain to the Earl of
Bareacres, strove with Mrs. Veal his wife to entice pupils.
By thus advertising and pushing sedulously, the
domestic Chaplain and his Lady generally succeeded in
having one or two scholars by them--who paid a high
figure and were thought to be in uncommonly comfortable
quarters. There was a large West Indian, whom
nobody came to see, with a mahogany complexion, a woolly
head, and an exceedingly dandyfied appearance; there
was another hulking boy of three-and-twenty whose
education had been neglected and whom Mr. and Mrs. Veal
were to introduce into the polite world; there were two
sons of Colonel Bangles of the East India Company's
Service: these four sat down to dinner at Mrs. Veal's
genteel board, when Georgy was introduced to her
establishment.
Georgy was, like some dozen other pupils, only a
day boy; he arrived in the morning under the
guardianship of his friend Mr. Rowson, and if it was fine,
would ride away in the afternoon on his pony, followed by
the groom. The wealth of his grandfather was reported
in the school to be prodigious. The Rev. Mr. Veal used
to compliment Georgy upon it personally, warning him
that he was destined for a high station; that it became
him to prepare, by sedulity and docility in youth, for the
lofty duties to which he would be called in mature age;
that obedience in the child was the best preparation for
command in the man; and that he therefore begged George
would not bring toffee into the school and ruin the health
of the Masters Bangles, who had everything they wanted
at the elegant and abundant table of Mrs. Veal.
With respect to learning, "the Curriculum," as Mr.
Veal loved to call it, was of prodigious extent, and the
young gentlemen in Hart Street might learn a
something of every known science. The Rev. Mr. Veal had
an orrery, an electrifying machine, a turning lathe, a
theatre (in the wash-house), a chemical apparatus, and
what he called a select library of all the works of the
best authors of ancient and modern times and languages.
He took the boys to the British Museum and descanted
upon the antiquities and the specimens of natural history
there, so that audiences would gather round him as he
spoke, and all Bloomsbury highly admired him as a
prodigiously well-informed man. And whenever he spoke
(which he did almost always), he took care to produce the
very finest and longest words of which the vocabulary
gave him the use, rightly judging that it was as cheap to
employ a handsome, large, and sonorous epithet, as to
use a little stingy one.
Thus he would say to George in school, "I observed
on my return home from taking the indulgence of an
evening's scientific conversation with my excellent friend
Doctor Bulders--a true archaeologian, gentlemen, a true
archaeologian--that the windows of your venerated
grandfather's almost princely mansion in Russell Square were
illuminated as if for the purposes of festivity. Am I right
in my conjecture that Mr. Osborne entertained a society
of chosen spirits round his sumptuous board last night?"
Little Georgy, who had considerable humour, and used
to mimic Mr. Veal to his face with great spirit and
dexterity, would reply that Mr. V. was quite correct
in his surmise.
"Then those friends who had the honour of partaking
of Mr. Osborne's hospitality, gentlemen, had no reason,
I will lay any wager, to complain of their repast. I
myself have been more than once so favoured. (By the way,
Master Osborne, you came a little late this morning, and
have been a defaulter in this respect more than once.)
I myself, I say, gentlemen, humble as I am, have been
found not unworthy to share Mr. Osborne's elegant
hospitality. And though I have feasted with the great and
noble of the world--for I presume that I may call my
excellent friend and patron, the Right Honourable George
Earl of Bareacres, one of the number--yet I assure you
that the board of the British merchant was to the full
as richly served, and his reception as gratifying and
noble. Mr. Bluck, sir, we will resume, if you please,
that passage of Eutropis, which was interrupted by the
late arrival of Master Osborne."
To this great man George's education was for some
time entrusted. Amelia was bewildered by his phrases,
but thought him a prodigy of learning. That poor widow
made friends of Mrs. Veal, for reasons of her own. She
liked to be in the house and see Georgy coming to school
there. She liked to be asked to Mrs. Veal's conversazioni,
which took place once a month (as you were informed on
pink cards, with AOHNH engraved on them), and where
the professor welcomed his pupils and their friends to weak
tea and scientific conversation. Poor little Amelia never
missed one of these entertainments and thought them
delicious so long as she might have Georgy sitting by her.
And she would walk from Brompton in any weather,
and embrace Mrs. Veal with tearful gratitude for the
delightful evening she had passed, when, the company
having retired and Georgy gone off with Mr. Rowson, his
attendant, poor Mrs. Osborne put on her cloaks and
her shawls preparatory to walking home.
As for the learning which Georgy imbibed under this
valuable master of a hundred sciences, to judge from
the weekly reports which the lad took home to his
grandfather, his progress was remarkable. The names of a
score or more of desirable branches of knowledge were
printed in a table, and the pupil's progress in each was
marked by the professor. In Greek Georgy was
pronounced aristos, in Latin optimus, in French tres bien,
and so forth; and everybody had prizes for everything
at the end of the year. Even Mr. Swartz, the wooly-
headed young gentleman, and half-brother to the
Honourable Mrs. Mac Mull, and Mr. Bluck, the neglected
young pupil of three-and-twenty from the agricultural
district, and that idle young scapegrace of a Master Todd
before mentioned, received little eighteen-penny books,
with "Athene" engraved on them, and a pompous Latin
inscription from the professor to his young friends.
The family of this Master Todd were hangers-on of
the house of Osborne. The old gentleman had advanced
Todd from being a clerk to be a junior partner in his
establishment.
Mr. Osborne was the godfather of young Master Todd
(who in subsequent life wrote Mr. Osborne Todd on his
cards and became a man of decided fashion), while Miss
Osborne had accompanied Miss Maria Todd to the font,
and gave her protegee a prayer-book, a collection of
tracts, a volume of very low church poetry, or some
such memento of her goodness every year. Miss O. drove
the Todds out in her carriage now and then; when they
were ill, her footman, in large plush smalls and
waistcoat, brought jellies and delicacies from Russell Square to
Coram Street. Coram Street trembled and looked up to
Russell Square indeed, and Mrs. Todd, who had a pretty
hand at cutting out paper trimmings for haunches of
mutton, and could make flowers, ducks, &c., out of turnips
and carrots in a very creditable manner, would go to "the
Square," as it was called, and assist in the preparations
incident to a great dinner, without even so much as
thinking of sitting down to the banquet. If any guest failed at
the eleventh hour, Todd was asked to dine. Mrs. Todd and
Maria came across in the evening, slipped in with a muffled
knock, and were in the drawing-room by the time Miss
Osborne and the ladies under her convoy reached that
apartment--and ready to fire off duets and sing until
the gentlemen came up. Poor Maria Todd; poor young
lady! How she had to work and thrum at these duets
and sonatas in the Street, before they appeared in public
in the Square!
Thus it seemed to be decreed by fate that Georgy
was to domineer over everybody with whom he came in
contact, and that friends, relatives, and domestics were
all to bow the knee before the little fellow. It must
be owned that he accommodated himself very willingly
to this arrangement. Most people do so. And Georgy
liked to play the part of master and perhaps had a
natural aptitude for it.
In Russell Square everybody was afraid of Mr. Osborne,
and Mr. Osborne was afraid of Georgy. The boy's
dashing manners, and offhand rattle about books and
learning, his likeness to his father (dead unreconciled in
Brussels yonder) awed the old gentleman and gave the
young boy the mastery. The old man would start at
some hereditary feature or tone unconsciously used by
the little lad, and fancy that George's father was again
before him. He tried by indulgence to the grandson to
make up for harshness to the elder George. People were
surprised at his gentleness to the boy. He growled and
swore at Miss Osborne as usual, and would smile when
George came down late for breakfast.
Miss Osborne, George's aunt, was a faded old spinster,
broken down by more than forty years of dulness and
coarse usage. It was easy for a lad of spirit to master her.
And whenever George wanted anything from her, from the
jam-pots in her cupboards to the cracked and dry old
colours in her paint-box (the old paint-box which she
had had when she was a pupil of Mr. Smee and was
still almost young and blooming), Georgy took possession
of the object of his desire, which obtained, he took no
further notice of his aunt.
For his friends and cronies, he had a pompous old
schoolmaster, who flattered him, and a toady, his senior,
whom he could thrash. It was dear Mrs. Todd's delight to
leave him with her youngest daughter, Rosa Jemima, a
darling child of eight years old. The little pair looked so
well together, she would say (but not to the folks in "the
Square," we may be sure) "who knows what might
happen? Don't they make a pretty little couple?" the
fond mother thought.
The broken-spirited, old, maternal grandfather was
likewise subject to the little tyrant. He could not help
respecting a lad who had such fine clothes and rode with
a groom behind him. Georgy, on his side, was in the
constant habit of hearing coarse abuse and vulgar satire
levelled at John Sedley by his pitiless old enemy, Mr.
Osborne. Osborne used to call the other the old pauper,
the old coal-man, the old bankrupt, and by many other
such names of brutal contumely. How was little George
to respect a man so prostrate? A few months after he
was with his paternal grandfather, Mrs. Sedley died.
There had been little love between her and the child.
He did not care to show much grief. He came down to
visit his mother in a fine new suit of mourning, and was
very angry that he could not go to a play upon which
he had set his heart.
The illness of that old lady had been the occupation
and perhaps the safeguard of Amelia. What do men know
about women's martyrdoms? We should go mad had
we to endure the hundredth part of those daily pains
which are meekly borne by many women. Ceaseless
slavery meeting with no reward; constant gentleness and
kindness met by cruelty as constant; love, labour, patience,
watchfulness, without even so much as the acknowledgement
of a good word; all this, how many of them have
to bear in quiet, and appear abroad with cheerful faces
as if they felt nothing. Tender slaves that they are, they
must needs be hypocrites and weak.
From her chair Amelia's mother had taken to her bed,
which she had never left, and from which Mrs. Osborne
herself was never absent except when she ran to see
George. The old lady grudged her even those rare visits;
she, who had been a kind, smiling, good-natured mother
once, in the days of her prosperity, but whom poverty
and infirmities had broken down. Her illness or estrangement
did not affect Amelia. They rather enabled her to
support the other calamity under which she was suffering,
and from the thoughts of which she was kept by the
ceaseless calls of the invalid. Amelia bore her harshness
quite gently; smoothed the uneasy pillow; was always
ready with a soft answer to the watchful, querulous
voice; soothed the sufferer with words of hope, such as
her pious simple heart could best feel and utter, and
closed the eyes that had once looked so tenderly upon
her.
Then all her time and tenderness were devoted to the
consolation and comfort of the bereaved old father, who
was stunned by the blow which had befallen him, and
stood utterly alone in the world. His wife, his honour,
his fortune, everything he loved best had fallen away
from him. There was only Amelia to stand by and support
with her gentle arms the tottering, heart-broken old man.
We are not going to write the history: it would be too
dreary and stupid. I can see Vanity Fair yawning over it
d'avance.
One day as the young gentlemen were assembled
in the study at the Rev. Mr. Veal's, and the domestic
chaplain to the Right Honourable the Earl of Bareacres
was spouting away as usual, a smart carriage drove up
to the door decorated with the statue of Athene, and two
gentlemen stepped out. The young Masters Bangles rushed
that any especial reverence was due to their boyhood;
the old fellow cut in with stories, to the full as choice
as any the youngest rake present had to tell--nor did his
own grey hairs nor their smooth faces detain him. Old
Mac was famous for his good stories. He was not exactly
a lady's man; that is, men asked him to dine rather at
the houses of their mistresses than of their mothers.
There can scarcely be a life lower, perhaps, than his,
but he was quite contented with it, such as it was, and
led it in perfect good nature, simplicity, and modesty of
demeanour.
By the time Mac had finished a copious breakfast,
most of the others had concluded their meal. Young Lord
Varinas was smoking an immense Meerschaum pipe,
while Captain Hugues was employed with a cigar: that
violent little devil Tandyman, with his little bull-terrier
between his legs, was tossing for shillings with all his
might (that fellow was always at some game or other)
against Captain Deuceace; and Mac and Rawdon walked
off to the Club, neither, of course, having given any hint
of the business which was occupying their minds. Both,
on the other hand, had joined pretty gaily in the
conversation, for why should they interrupt it? Feasting,
drinking, ribaldry, laughter, go on alongside of all sorts
of other occupations in Vanity Fair--the crowds were
pouring out of church as Rawdon and his friend passed
down St. James's Street and entered into their Club.
The old bucks and habitues, who ordinarily stand
gaping and grinning out of the great front window of the
Club, had not arrived at their posts as yet--the
newspaper-room was almost empty. One man was present
whom Rawdon did not know; another to whom he owed
a little score for whist, and whom, in consequence, he
did not care to meet; a third was reading the Royalist
(a periodical famous for its scandal and its attachment
to Church and King) Sunday paper at the table, and
looking up at Crawley with some interest, said, "Crawley,
I congratulate you."
"What do you mean?" said the Colonel.
"It's in the Observer and the Royalist too," said Mr.
Smith.
"What?" Rawdon cried, turning very red. He thought
that the affair with Lord Steyne was already in the
public prints. Smith looked up wondering and smiling
at the agitation which the Colonel exhibited as he took
up the paper and, trembling, began to read.
Mr. Smith and Mr. Brown (the gentleman with .whom
Rawdon had the outstanding whist account) had been
talking about the Colonel just before he came in.
"It is come just in the nick of time," said Smith. "I
suppose Crawley had not a shilling in the world."
"It's a wind that blows everybody good," Mr. Brown
said. "He can't go away without paying me a pony he
owes me."
"What's the salary?" asked Smith.
"Two or three thousand," answered the other. "But
the climate's so infernal, they don't enjoy it long.
Liverseege died after eighteen months of it, and the
man before went off in six weeks, I hear."
"Some people say his brother is a very clever man. I
always found him a d-- bore," Smith ejaculated. "He
must have good interest, though. He must have got the
Colonel the place."
"He!" said Brown. with a sneer. "Pooh. It was Lord
Steyne got it.
"How do you mean?"
"A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband,"
answered the other enigmatically, and went to read his
papers.
Rawdon, for his part, read in the Royalist the following
astonishing paragraph:
GOVERNORSHIP OF COVENTRY ISLAND.--H.M.S.
Yellowjack, Commander Jaunders, has brought letters and
papers from Coventry Island. H. E. Sir Thomas
Liverseege had fallen a victim to the prevailing fever at
Swampton. His loss is deeply felt in the flourishing
colony. We hear that the Governorship has been offered to
Colonel Rawdon Crawley, C.B., a distinguished Waterloo
officer. We need not only men of acknowledged
bravery, but men of administrative talents to superintend
the affairs of our colonies, and we have no doubt
that the gentleman selected by the Colonial Office to
fill the lamented vacancy which has occurred at
Coventry Island is admirably calculated for the post which
he is about to occupy."
"Coventry Island! Where was it? Who had appointed
him to the government? You must take me out as your
secretary, old boy," Captain Macmurdo said laughing;
and as Crawley and his friend sat wondering and
perplexed over the announcement, the Club waiter brought
in to the Colonel a card on which the name of Mr.
Wenham was engraved, who begged to see Colonel
Crawley.
The Colonel and his aide-de-camp went out to meet
the gentleman, rightly conjecturing that he was an
emissary of Lord Steyne. "How d'ye do, Crawley? I am
glad to see you," said Mr. Wenham with a bland smile,
and grasping Crawley's hand with great cordiality.
"You come, I suppose, from-- "
"Exactly," said Mr. Wenham.
"Then this is my friend Captain Macmurdo, of the Life
Guards Green."
"Delighted to know Captain Macmurdo, I'm sure," Mr.
Wenham said and tendered another smile and shake of
the hand to the second, as he had done to the principal.
Mac put out one finger, armed with a buckskin glove,
and made a very frigid bow to Mr. Wenham over his
tight cravat. He was, perhaps, discontented at being put
in communication with a pekin, and thought that Lord
Steyne should have sent him a Colonel at the very least.
"As Macmurdo acts for me, and knows what I mean,"
Crawley said, "I had better retire and leave you together."
"Of course," said Macmurdo.
"By no means, my dear Colonel," Mr. Wenham said;
"the interview which I had the honour of requesting was
with you personally, though the company of Captain
Macmurdo cannot fail to be also most pleasing. In fact,
Captain, I hope that our conversation will lead to none
but the most agreeable results, very different from those
which my friend Colonel Crawley appears to anticipate."
"Humph!" said Captain Macmurdo. Be hanged to these
civilians, he thought to himself, they are always for
arranging and speechifying. Mr. Wenham took a chair
which was not offered to him--took a paper from his
pocket, and resumed--
"You have seen this gratifying announcement in the
papers this morning, Colonel? Government has secured
a most valuable servant, and you, if you accept office, as
I presume you will, an excellent appointment. Three
thousand a year, delightful climate, excellent government-
house, all your own way in the Colony, and a certain
promotion. I congratulate you with all my heart. I
presume you know, gentlemen, to whom my friend is
indebted for this piece of patronage?"
"Hanged if I know," the Captain said; his principal
turned very red.
"To one of the most generous and kindest men in the
world, as he is one of the greatest--to my excellent
friend, the Marquis of Steyne."
"I'll see him d-- before I take his place," growled
out Rawdon.
"You are irritated against my noble friend," Mr.
Wenham calmly resumed; "and now, in the name of
common sense and justice, tell me why?"
"WHY?" cried Rawdon in surprise.
"Why? Dammy!" said the Captain, ringing his stick
on the ground.
"Dammy, indeed," said Mr. Wenham with the most
agreeable smile; "still, look at the matter as a man of
the world--as an honest man--and see if you have not
been in the wrong. You come home from a journey, and
find--what?--my Lord Steyne supping at your house in
Curzon Street with Mrs. Crawley. Is the circumstance
strange or novel? Has he not been a hundred times
before in the same position? Upon my honour and word
as a gentleman"--Mr. Wenham here put his hand on
his waistcoat with a parliamentary air--"I declare I think
that your suspicions are monstrous and utterly
unfounded, and that they injure an honourable gentleman
who has proved his good-will towards you by a thousand
benefactions--and a most spotless and innocent lady."
"You don't mean to say that--that Crawley's
mistaken?" said Mr. Macmurdo.
"I believe that Mrs. Crawley is as innocent as my
wife, Mrs. Wenham," Mr. Wenham said with great
energy. "I believe that, misled by an infernal jealousy,
my friend here strikes a blow against not only an infirm
and old man of high station, his constant friend and
benefactor, but against his wife, his own dearest honour,
his son's future reputation, and his own prospects in
life."
"I will tell you what happened," Mr. Wenham
continued with great solemnity; "I was sent for this
morning by my Lord Steyne, and found him in a pitiable state,
as, I need hardly inform Colonel Crawley, any man of
age and infirmity would be after a personal conflict with
a man of your strength. I say to your face; it was a
cruel advantage you took of that strength, Colonel
Crawley. It was not only the body of my noble and
excellent friend which was wounded--his heart, sir, was
bleeding. A man whom he had loaded with benefits and
regarded with affection had subjected him to the foulest
indignity. What was this very appointment, which appears
in the journals of to-day, but a proof of his kindness to
you? When I saw his Lordship this morning I found him
in a state pitiable indeed to see, and as anxious as you
are to revenge the outrage committed upon him, by
blood. You know he has given his proofs, I presume,
Colonel Crawley?"
"He has plenty of pluck," said the Colonel. "Nobody
ever said he hadn't."
"His first order to me was to write a letter of
challenge, and to carry it to Colonel Crawley. One or
other of us," he said, "must not survive the outrage
of last night."
Crawley nodded. "You're coming to the point,
Wenham," he said.
"I tried my utmost to calm Lord Steyne. Good God!
sir," I said, "how I regret that Mrs. Wenham and myself
had not accepted Mrs. Crawley's invitation to sup with
her!"
"She asked you to sup with her?" Captain Macmurdo
said.
"After the opera. Here's the note of invitation--stop
--no, this is another paper--I thought I had h, but it's
of no consequence, and I pledge you my word to the
fact. If we had come--and it was only one of Mrs.
Wenham's headaches which prevented us--she suffers
under them a good deal, especially in the spring--if we
had come, and you had returned home, there would have
been no quarrel, no insult, no suspicion--and so it is
positively because my poor wife has a headache that you
are to bring death down upon two men of honour and
plunge two of the most excellent and ancient families
in the kingdom into disgrace and sorrow."
Mr. Macmurdo looked at his principal with the air
of a man profoundly puzzled, and Rawdon felt with a
kind of rage that his prey was escaping him. He did not
believe a word of the story, and yet, how discredit or
disprove it?
Mr. Wenham continued with the same fluent oratory,
which in his place in Parliament he had so often
practised--"I sat for an hour or more by Lord Steyne's
bedside, beseeching, imploring Lord Steyne to forego his
intention of demanding a meeting. I pointed out to him
that the circumstances were after all suspicious--they
were suspicious. I acknowledge it--any man in your
position might have been taken in--I said that a man
furious with jealousy is to all intents and purposes a
madman, and should be as such regarded--that a duel
between you must lead to the disgrace of all parties
concerned--that a man of his Lordship's exalted station had
no right in these days, when the most atrocious
revolutionary principles, and the most dangerous levelling
doctrines are preached among the vulgar, to create a
public scandal; and that, however innocent, the common
people would insist that he was guilty. In fine, I
implored him not to send the challenge."
"I don't believe one word of the whole story," said
Rawdon, grinding his teeth. "I believe it a d-- lie, and
that you're in it, Mr. Wenham. If the challenge don't
come from him, by Jove it shall come from me."
Mr. Wenham turned deadly pale at this savage
interruption of the Colonel and looked towards the door.
But he found a champion in Captain Macmurdo. That
gentleman rose up with an oath and rebuked Rawdon
for his language. "You put the affair into my hands, and
you shall act as I think fit, by Jove, and not as you do.
You have no right to insult Mr. Wenham with this sort
of language; and dammy, Mr. Wenham, you deserve an
apology. And as for a challenge to Lord Steyne, you
may get somebody else to carry it, I won't. If my lord,
after being thrashed, chooses to sit still, dammy let him.
And as for the affair with--with Mrs. Crawley, my
belief is, there's nothing proved at all: that your wife's
innocent, as innocent as Mr. Wenham says she is; and at
any rate that you would be a d--fool not to take the
place and hold your tongue."
"Captain Macmurdo, you speak like a man of sense,"
Mr. Wenham cried out, immensely relieved--"I forget
any words that Colonel Crawley has used in the
irritation of the moment."
"I thought you would," Rawdon said with a sneer.
"Shut your mouth, you old stoopid," the Captain said
good-naturedly. "Mr. Wenham ain't a fighting man; and
quite right, too."
"This matter, in my belief," the Steyne emissary cried,
"ought to be buried in the most profound oblivion. A
word concerning it should never pass these doors. I
speak in the interest of my friend, as well as of Colonel
Crawley, who persists in considering me his enemy."
"I suppose Lord Steyne won't talk about it very
much," said Captain Macmurdo; "and I don't see why
our side should. The affair ain't a very pretty one, any
way you take it, and the less said about it the better.
It's you are thrashed, and not us; and if you are satisfied,
why, I think, we should be."
Mr. Wenham took his hat, upon this, and Captain
Macmurdo following him to the door, shut it upon
himself and Lord Steyne's agent, leaving Rawdon chafing
within. When the two were on the other side, Macmurdo
looked hard at the other ambassador and with an
expression of anything but respect on his round jolly face.
"You don't stick at a trifle, Mr. Wenham," he said.
"You flatter me, Captain Macmurdo," answered the
other with a smile. "Upon my honour and conscience
now, Mrs. Crawley did ask us to sup after the opera."
"Of course; and Mrs. Wenham had one of her head-
aches. I say, I've got a thousand-pound note here, which
I will give you if you will give me a receipt, please; and
I will put the note up in an envelope for Lord Steyne.
My man shan't fight him. But we had rather not take
his money."
"It was all a mistake--all a mistake, my dear sir," the
other said with the utmost innocence of manner; and was
bowed down the Club steps by Captain Macmurdo, just
as Sir Pitt Crawley ascended them. There was a slight
acquaintance between these two gentlemen, and the
Captain, going back with the Baronet to the room where the
latter's brother was, told Sir Pitt, in confidence, that he
had made the affair all right between Lord Steyne and
the Colonel.
Sir Pitt was well pleased, of course, at this intelligence,
and congratulated his brother warmly upon the peaceful
issue of the affair, making appropriate moral remarks
upon the evils of duelling and the unsatisfactory nature
of that sort of settlement of disputes.
And after this preface, he tried with all his eloquence
to effect a reconciliation between Rawdon and his wife.
He recapitulated the statements which Becky had made,
pointed out the probabilities of their truth, and asserted
his own firm belief in her innocence.
But Rawdon would not hear of it. "She has kep money
concealed from me these ten years," he said "She swore,
last night only, she had none from Steyne. She knew it
was all up, directly I found it. If she's not guilty, Pitt,
she's as bad as guilty, and I'll never see her again--
never." His head sank down on his chest as he spoke
the words, and he looked quite broken and sad.
"Poor old boy," Macmurdo said, shaking his head.
Rawdon Crawley resisted for some time the idea of
taking the place which had been procured for him by so
odious a patron, and was also for removing the boy
from the school where Lord Steyne's interest had placed
him. He was induced, however, to acquiesce in these
benefits by the entreaties of his brother and Macmurdo,
but mainly by the latter, pointing out to him what a
fury Steyne would be in to think that his enemy's
fortune was made through his means.
When the Marquis of Steyne came abroad after his
accident, the Colonial Secretary bowed up to him and
congratulated himself and the Service upon having made
so excellent an appointment. These congratulations were
received with a degree of gratitude which may be
imagined on the part of Lord Steyne.
The secret of the rencontre between him and Colonel
Crawley was buried in the profoundest oblivion, as
Wenham said; that is, by the seconds and the principals.
But before that evening was over it was talked of at fifty
dinner-tables in Vanity Fair. Little Cackleby himself
went to seven evening parties and told the story with
comments and emendations at each place. How Mrs.
Washington White revelled in it! The Bishopess of Ealing
was shocked beyond expression; the Bishop went and
wrote his name down in the visiting-book at Gaunt House
that very day. Little Southdown was sorry; so you may
be sure was his sister Lady Jane, very sorry. Lady
Southdown wrote it off to her other daughter at the Cape of
Good Hope. It was town-talk for at least three days,
and was only kept out of the newspapers by the exertions
of Mr. Wagg, acting upon a hint from Mr. Wenham.
The bailiffs and brokers seized upon poor Raggles in
Curzon Street, and the late fair tenant of that poor little
mansion was in the meanwhile--where? Who cared! Who
asked after a day or two? Was she guilty or not? We all
know how charitable the world is, and how the verdict
of Vanity Fair goes when there is a doubt. Some people
said she had gone to Naples in pursuit of Lord Steyne,
whilst others averred that his Lordship quitted that city
and fled to Palermo on hearing of Becky's arrival; some
said she was living in Bierstadt, and had become a dame
d'honneur to the Queen of Bulgaria; some that she was
at Boulogne; and others, at a boarding-house at
Cheltenham.
Rawdon made her a tolerable annuity, and we may
be sure that she was a woman who could make a little
money go a great way, as the saying is. He would have
paid his debts on leaving England, could he have got any
Insurance Office to take his life, but the climate of
Coventry Island was so bad that he could borrow no
money on the strength of his salary. He remitted,
however, to his brother punctually, and wrote to his little
boy regularly every mail. He kept Macmurdo in cigars
and sent over quantities of shells, cayenne pepper, hot
pickles, guava jelly, and colonial produce to Lady Jane.
He sent his brother home the Swamp Town Gazette,
in which the new Governor was praised with immense
enthusiasm; whereas the Swamp Town Sentinel, whose
wife was not asked to Government House, declared that
his Excellency was a tyrant, compared to whom Nero
was an enlightened philanthropist. Little Rawdon used
to like to get the papers and read about his Excellency.
His mother never made any movement to see the child.
He went home to his aunt for Sundays and holidays; he
soon knew every bird's nest about Queen's Crawley, and
rode out with Sir Huddlestone's hounds, which he
admired so on his first well-remembered visit to
Hampshire.
CHAPTER LVI
Georgy is Made a Gentleman
Georgy Osborne was now fairly established in his
grandfather's mansion in Russell Square, occupant of his
father's room in the house and heir apparent of all the
splendours there. The good looks, gallant bearing, and
gentlemanlike appearance of the boy won the grandsire's
heart for him. Mr. Osborne was as proud of him as ever
he had been of the elder George.
The child had many more luxuries and indulgences than
had been awarded his father. Osborne's commerce had
prospered greatly of late years. His wealth and
importance in the City had very much increased. He had
been glad enough in former days to put the elder George
to a good private school; and a commission in the army
for his son had been a source of no small pride to
him; for little George and his future prospects the old
man looked much higher. He would make a gentleman
of the little chap, was Mr. Osborne's constant saying
regarding little Georgy. He saw him in his mind's eye, a
collegian, a Parliament man, a Baronet, perhaps. The
old man thought he would die contented if he could see
his grandson in a fair way to such honours. He would
have none but a tip-top college man to educate him--
none of your quacks and pretenders--no, no. A few years
before, he used to be savage, and inveigh against all
parsons, scholars, and the like declaring that they were
a pack of humbugs, and quacks that weren't fit to get
their living but by grinding Latin and Greek, and a set
of supercilious dogs that pretended to look down upon
British merchants and gentlemen, who could buy up half
a hundred of 'em. He would mourn now, in a very
solemn manner, that his own education had been neglected,
and repeatedly point out, in pompous orations to Georgy,
the necessity and excellence of classical acquirements.
When they met at dinner the grandsire used to ask
the lad what he had been reading during the day, and
was greatly interested at the report the boy gave of his
own studies, pretending to understand little George
when he spoke regarding them. He made a hundred
blunders and showed his ignorance many a time. It did not
increase the respect which the child had for his senior.
A quick brain and a better education elsewhere showed
the boy very soon that his grandsire was a dullard, and
he began accordingly to command him and to look down
upon him; for his previous education, humble and
contracted as it had been, had made a much better
gentleman of Georgy than any plans of his grandfather could
make him. He had been brought up by a kind, weak,
and tender woman, who had no pride about anything
but about him, and whose heart was so pure and whose
bearing was so meek and humble that she could not but
needs be a true lady. She busied herself in gentle offices
and quiet duties; if she never said brilliant things, she
never spoke or thought unkind ones; guileless and artless,
loving and pure, indeed how could our poor little Amelia
be other than a real gentlewoman!
Young Georgy lorded over this soft and yielding
nature; and the contrast of its simplicity and delicacy with
the coarse pomposity of the dull old man with whom
he next came in contact made him lord over the latter
too. If he had been a Prince Royal he could not have
been better brought up to think well of himself.
Whilst his mother was yearning after him at home, and
I do believe every hour of the day, and during most
hours of the sad lonely nights, thinking of him, this young
gentleman had a number of pleasures and consolations
administered to him, which made him for his part bear
the separation from Amelia very easily. Little boys who
cry when they are going to school cry because they
are going to a very uncomfortable place. It is only a
few who weep from sheer affection. When you think
that the eyes of your childhood dried at the sight of a
piece of gingerbread, and that a plum cake was a
compensation for the agony of parting with your mamma
and sisters, oh my friend and brother, you need not be
too confident of your own fine feelings.
Well, then, Master George Osborne had every comfort
and luxury that a wealthy and lavish old grandfather
thought fit to provide. The coachman was instructed to
purchase for him the handsomest pony which could be
bought for money, and on this George was taught to
ride, first at a riding-school, whence, after having
performed satisfactorily without stirrups, and over the
leaping-bar, he was conducted through the New Road to
Regent's Park, and then to Hyde Park, where he rode
in state with Martin the coachman behind him. Old
Osborne, who took matters more easily in the City now,
where he left his affairs to his junior partners, would
often ride out with Miss O. in the same fashionable direction.
As little Georgy came cantering up with his dandified
air and his heels down, his grandfather would nudge
the lad's aunt and say, "Look, Miss O." And he would
laugh, and his face would grow red with pleasure, as
he nodded out of the window to the boy, as the groom
saluted the carriage, and the footman saluted Master
George. Here too his aunt, Mrs. Frederick Bullock
(whose chariot might daily be seen in the Ring, with
bullocks or emblazoned on the panels and harness, and
three pasty-faced little Bullocks, covered with cockades
and feathers, staring from the windows) Mrs. Frederick
Bullock, I say, flung glances of the bitterest hatred at
the little upstart as he rode by with his hand on his side
and his hat on one ear, as proud as a lord.
Though he was scarcely eleven years of age, Master
George wore straps and the most beautiful little boots
like a man. He had gilt spurs, and a gold-headed whip,
and a fine pin in his handkerchief, and the neatest little
kid gloves which Lamb's Conduit Street could furnish.
His mother had given him a couple of neckcloths, and
carefully hemmed and made some little shirts for him;
but when her Eli came to see the widow, they were
replaced by much finer linen. He had little jewelled buttons
in the lawn shirt fronts. Her humble presents had been put
aside--I believe Miss Osborne had given them to the
coachman's boy. Amelia tried to think she was pleased
at the change. Indeed, she was happy and charmed to
see the boy looking so beautiful.
She had had a little black profile of him done for a
shilling, and this was hung up by the side of another
portrait over her bed. One day the boy came on his
accustomed visit, galloping down the little street at
Brompton, and bringing, as usual, all the inhabitants to the
windows to admire his splendour, and with great eagerness
and a look of triumph in his face, he pulled a case
out of his great-coat--it was a natty white great-coat,
with a cape and a velvet collar--pulled out a red
morocco case, which he gave her.
"I bought it with my own money, Mamma," he said.
"I thought you'd like it."
Amelia opened the case, and giving a little cry of
delighted affection, seized the boy and embraced him a
hundred times. It was a miniature-of himself, very prettily
done (though not half handsome enough, we may be
sure, the widow thought). His grandfather had wished
to have a picture of him by an artist whose works,
exhibited in a shop-window, in Southampton Row, had
caught the old gentleman's eye; and George, who had
plenty of money, bethought him of asking the painter
how much a copy of the little portrait would cost, saying
that he would pay for it out of his own money and
that he wanted to give it to his mother. The pleased
painter executed it for a small price, and old Osborne
himself, when he heard of the incident, growled out his
satisfaction and gave the boy twice as many sovereigns
as he paid for the miniature.
But what was the grandfather's pleasure compared to
Amelia's ecstacy? That proof of the boy's affection
charmed her so that she thought no child in the world
was like hers for goodness. For long weeks after, the
thought of his love made her happy. She slept better
with the picture under her pillow, and how many many
times did she kiss it and weep and pray over it! A
small kindness from those she loved made that timid
heart grateful. Since her parting with George she had had
no such joy and consolation.
At his new home Master George ruled like a lord;
at dinner he invited the ladies to drink wine with the
utmost coolness, and took off his champagne in a way
which charmed his old grandfather. "Look at him," the
old man would say, nudging his neighbour with a
delighted purple face, "did you ever see such a chap?
Lord, Lord! he'll be ordering a dressing-case next, and
razors to shave with; I'm blessed if he won't."
The antics of the lad did not, however, delight Mr.
Osborne's friends so much as they pleased the old
gentleman. It gave Mr. Justice Coffin no pleasure to hear
Georgy cut into the conversation and spoil his stories.
Colonel Fogey was not interested in seeing the little boy
half tipsy. Mr. Sergeant Toffy's lady felt no particular
gratitude, when, with a twist of his elbow, he tilted a
glass of port-wine over her yellow satin and laughed at
the disaster; nor was she better pleased, although old
Osborne was highly delighted, when Georgy "whopped"
her third boy (a young gentleman a year older than
Georgy, and by chance home for the holidays from Dr.
Tickleus's at Ealing School) in Russell Square. George's
grandfather gave the boy a couple of sovereigns for that
feat and promised to reward him further for every boy
above his own size and age whom he whopped in a
similar manner. It is difficult to say what good the old man
saw in these combats; he had a vague notion that
quarrelling made boys hardy, and that tyranny was a useful
accomplishment for them to learn. English youth have
been so educated time out of mind, and we have
hundreds of thousands of apologists and admirers of
injustice, misery, and brutality, as perpetrated among
children. Flushed with praise and victory over Master Toffy,
George wished naturally to pursue his conquests further,
and one day as he was strutting about in prodigiously
dandified new clothes, near St. Pancras, and a young
baker's boy made sarcastic comments upon his appearance,
the youthful patrician pulled off his dandy jacket
with great spirit, and giving it in charge to the friend
who accompanied him (Master Todd, of Great Coram
Street, Russell Square, son of the junior partner of the
house of Osborne and Co.), George tried to whop the
little baker. But the chances of war were unfavourable
this time, and the little baker whopped Georgy, who
came home with a rueful black eye and all his fine shirt
frill dabbled with the claret drawn from his own little
nose. He told his grandfather that he had been in
combat with a giant, and frightened his poor mother at
Brompton with long, and by no means authentic,
accounts of the battle.
This young Todd, of Coram Street, Russell Square,
was Master George's great friend and admirer. They both
had a taste for painting theatrical characters; for
hardbake and raspberry tarts; for sliding and skating in the
Regent's Park and the Serpentine, when the weather
permitted; for going to the play, whither they were often
conducted, by Mr. Osborne's orders, by Rowson, Master
George's appointed body-servant, with whom they sat in
great comfort in the pit.
In the company of this gentleman they visited all the
principal theatres of the metropolis; knew the names of
all the actors from Drury Lane to Sadler's Wells; and
performed, indeed, many of the plays to the Todd family
and their youthful friends, with West's famous characters,
on their pasteboard theatre. Rowson, the footman, who
was of a generous disposition, would not unfrequently,
when in cash, treat his young master to oysters after
the play, and to a glass of rum-shrub for a night-cap.
We may be pretty certain that Mr. Rowson profited in
his turn by his young master's liberality and gratitude
for the pleasures to which the footman inducted him.
A famous tailor from the West End of the town--
Mr. Osborne would have none of your City or Holborn
bunglers, he said, for the boy (though a City tailor was
good enough for HIM)--was summoned to ornament little
George's person, and was told to spare no expense in so
doing. So, Mr. Woolsey, of Conduit Street, gave a loose
to his imagination and sent the child home fancy trousers,
fancy waistcoats, and fancy jackets enough to furnish a
school of little dandies. Georgy had little white
waistcoats for evening parties, and little cut velvet waistcoats
for dinners, and a dear little darling shawl dressing-gown,
for all the world like a little man. He dressed for dinner
every day, "like a regular West End swell," as his
grandfather remarked; one of the domestics was affected to
his special service, attended him at his toilette,
answered his bell, and brought him his letters always on a
silver tray.
Georgy, after breakfast, would sit in the arm-chair in
the dining-room and read the Morning Post, just like a
grown-up man. "How he DU dam and swear," the
servants would cry, delighted at his precocity. Those who
remembered the Captain his father, declared Master
George was his Pa, every inch of him. He made the house
lively by his activity, his imperiousness, his scolding, and
his good-nature.
George's education was confided to a neighbouring
scholar and private pedagogue who "prepared young
noblemen and gentlemen for the Universities, the senate,
and the learned professions: whose system did not
embrace the degrading corporal severities still practised at
the ancient places of education, and in whose family the
pupils would find the elegances of refined society and
the confidence and affection of a home." It was in this
way that the Reverend Lawrence Veal of Hart Street,
Bloomsbury, and domestic Chaplain to the Earl of
Bareacres, strove with Mrs. Veal his wife to entice pupils.
By thus advertising and pushing sedulously, the
domestic Chaplain and his Lady generally succeeded in
having one or two scholars by them--who paid a high
figure and were thought to be in uncommonly comfortable
quarters. There was a large West Indian, whom
nobody came to see, with a mahogany complexion, a woolly
head, and an exceedingly dandyfied appearance; there
was another hulking boy of three-and-twenty whose
education had been neglected and whom Mr. and Mrs. Veal
were to introduce into the polite world; there were two
sons of Colonel Bangles of the East India Company's
Service: these four sat down to dinner at Mrs. Veal's
genteel board, when Georgy was introduced to her
establishment.
Georgy was, like some dozen other pupils, only a
day boy; he arrived in the morning under the
guardianship of his friend Mr. Rowson, and if it was fine,
would ride away in the afternoon on his pony, followed by
the groom. The wealth of his grandfather was reported
in the school to be prodigious. The Rev. Mr. Veal used
to compliment Georgy upon it personally, warning him
that he was destined for a high station; that it became
him to prepare, by sedulity and docility in youth, for the
lofty duties to which he would be called in mature age;
that obedience in the child was the best preparation for
command in the man; and that he therefore begged George
would not bring toffee into the school and ruin the health
of the Masters Bangles, who had everything they wanted
at the elegant and abundant table of Mrs. Veal.
With respect to learning, "the Curriculum," as Mr.
Veal loved to call it, was of prodigious extent, and the
young gentlemen in Hart Street might learn a
something of every known science. The Rev. Mr. Veal had
an orrery, an electrifying machine, a turning lathe, a
theatre (in the wash-house), a chemical apparatus, and
what he called a select library of all the works of the
best authors of ancient and modern times and languages.
He took the boys to the British Museum and descanted
upon the antiquities and the specimens of natural history
there, so that audiences would gather round him as he
spoke, and all Bloomsbury highly admired him as a
prodigiously well-informed man. And whenever he spoke
(which he did almost always), he took care to produce the
very finest and longest words of which the vocabulary
gave him the use, rightly judging that it was as cheap to
employ a handsome, large, and sonorous epithet, as to
use a little stingy one.
Thus he would say to George in school, "I observed
on my return home from taking the indulgence of an
evening's scientific conversation with my excellent friend
Doctor Bulders--a true archaeologian, gentlemen, a true
archaeologian--that the windows of your venerated
grandfather's almost princely mansion in Russell Square were
illuminated as if for the purposes of festivity. Am I right
in my conjecture that Mr. Osborne entertained a society
of chosen spirits round his sumptuous board last night?"
Little Georgy, who had considerable humour, and used
to mimic Mr. Veal to his face with great spirit and
dexterity, would reply that Mr. V. was quite correct
in his surmise.
"Then those friends who had the honour of partaking
of Mr. Osborne's hospitality, gentlemen, had no reason,
I will lay any wager, to complain of their repast. I
myself have been more than once so favoured. (By the way,
Master Osborne, you came a little late this morning, and
have been a defaulter in this respect more than once.)
I myself, I say, gentlemen, humble as I am, have been
found not unworthy to share Mr. Osborne's elegant
hospitality. And though I have feasted with the great and
noble of the world--for I presume that I may call my
excellent friend and patron, the Right Honourable George
Earl of Bareacres, one of the number--yet I assure you
that the board of the British merchant was to the full
as richly served, and his reception as gratifying and
noble. Mr. Bluck, sir, we will resume, if you please,
that passage of Eutropis, which was interrupted by the
late arrival of Master Osborne."
To this great man George's education was for some
time entrusted. Amelia was bewildered by his phrases,
but thought him a prodigy of learning. That poor widow
made friends of Mrs. Veal, for reasons of her own. She
liked to be in the house and see Georgy coming to school
there. She liked to be asked to Mrs. Veal's conversazioni,
which took place once a month (as you were informed on
pink cards, with AOHNH engraved on them), and where
the professor welcomed his pupils and their friends to weak
tea and scientific conversation. Poor little Amelia never
missed one of these entertainments and thought them
delicious so long as she might have Georgy sitting by her.
And she would walk from Brompton in any weather,
and embrace Mrs. Veal with tearful gratitude for the
delightful evening she had passed, when, the company
having retired and Georgy gone off with Mr. Rowson, his
attendant, poor Mrs. Osborne put on her cloaks and
her shawls preparatory to walking home.
As for the learning which Georgy imbibed under this
valuable master of a hundred sciences, to judge from
the weekly reports which the lad took home to his
grandfather, his progress was remarkable. The names of a
score or more of desirable branches of knowledge were
printed in a table, and the pupil's progress in each was
marked by the professor. In Greek Georgy was
pronounced aristos, in Latin optimus, in French tres bien,
and so forth; and everybody had prizes for everything
at the end of the year. Even Mr. Swartz, the wooly-
headed young gentleman, and half-brother to the
Honourable Mrs. Mac Mull, and Mr. Bluck, the neglected
young pupil of three-and-twenty from the agricultural
district, and that idle young scapegrace of a Master Todd
before mentioned, received little eighteen-penny books,
with "Athene" engraved on them, and a pompous Latin
inscription from the professor to his young friends.
The family of this Master Todd were hangers-on of
the house of Osborne. The old gentleman had advanced
Todd from being a clerk to be a junior partner in his
establishment.
Mr. Osborne was the godfather of young Master Todd
(who in subsequent life wrote Mr. Osborne Todd on his
cards and became a man of decided fashion), while Miss
Osborne had accompanied Miss Maria Todd to the font,
and gave her protegee a prayer-book, a collection of
tracts, a volume of very low church poetry, or some
such memento of her goodness every year. Miss O. drove
the Todds out in her carriage now and then; when they
were ill, her footman, in large plush smalls and
waistcoat, brought jellies and delicacies from Russell Square to
Coram Street. Coram Street trembled and looked up to
Russell Square indeed, and Mrs. Todd, who had a pretty
hand at cutting out paper trimmings for haunches of
mutton, and could make flowers, ducks, &c., out of turnips
and carrots in a very creditable manner, would go to "the
Square," as it was called, and assist in the preparations
incident to a great dinner, without even so much as
thinking of sitting down to the banquet. If any guest failed at
the eleventh hour, Todd was asked to dine. Mrs. Todd and
Maria came across in the evening, slipped in with a muffled
knock, and were in the drawing-room by the time Miss
Osborne and the ladies under her convoy reached that
apartment--and ready to fire off duets and sing until
the gentlemen came up. Poor Maria Todd; poor young
lady! How she had to work and thrum at these duets
and sonatas in the Street, before they appeared in public
in the Square!
Thus it seemed to be decreed by fate that Georgy
was to domineer over everybody with whom he came in
contact, and that friends, relatives, and domestics were
all to bow the knee before the little fellow. It must
be owned that he accommodated himself very willingly
to this arrangement. Most people do so. And Georgy
liked to play the part of master and perhaps had a
natural aptitude for it.
In Russell Square everybody was afraid of Mr. Osborne,
and Mr. Osborne was afraid of Georgy. The boy's
dashing manners, and offhand rattle about books and
learning, his likeness to his father (dead unreconciled in
Brussels yonder) awed the old gentleman and gave the
young boy the mastery. The old man would start at
some hereditary feature or tone unconsciously used by
the little lad, and fancy that George's father was again
before him. He tried by indulgence to the grandson to
make up for harshness to the elder George. People were
surprised at his gentleness to the boy. He growled and
swore at Miss Osborne as usual, and would smile when
George came down late for breakfast.
Miss Osborne, George's aunt, was a faded old spinster,
broken down by more than forty years of dulness and
coarse usage. It was easy for a lad of spirit to master her.
And whenever George wanted anything from her, from the
jam-pots in her cupboards to the cracked and dry old
colours in her paint-box (the old paint-box which she
had had when she was a pupil of Mr. Smee and was
still almost young and blooming), Georgy took possession
of the object of his desire, which obtained, he took no
further notice of his aunt.
For his friends and cronies, he had a pompous old
schoolmaster, who flattered him, and a toady, his senior,
whom he could thrash. It was dear Mrs. Todd's delight to
leave him with her youngest daughter, Rosa Jemima, a
darling child of eight years old. The little pair looked so
well together, she would say (but not to the folks in "the
Square," we may be sure) "who knows what might
happen? Don't they make a pretty little couple?" the
fond mother thought.
The broken-spirited, old, maternal grandfather was
likewise subject to the little tyrant. He could not help
respecting a lad who had such fine clothes and rode with
a groom behind him. Georgy, on his side, was in the
constant habit of hearing coarse abuse and vulgar satire
levelled at John Sedley by his pitiless old enemy, Mr.
Osborne. Osborne used to call the other the old pauper,
the old coal-man, the old bankrupt, and by many other
such names of brutal contumely. How was little George
to respect a man so prostrate? A few months after he
was with his paternal grandfather, Mrs. Sedley died.
There had been little love between her and the child.
He did not care to show much grief. He came down to
visit his mother in a fine new suit of mourning, and was
very angry that he could not go to a play upon which
he had set his heart.
The illness of that old lady had been the occupation
and perhaps the safeguard of Amelia. What do men know
about women's martyrdoms? We should go mad had
we to endure the hundredth part of those daily pains
which are meekly borne by many women. Ceaseless
slavery meeting with no reward; constant gentleness and
kindness met by cruelty as constant; love, labour, patience,
watchfulness, without even so much as the acknowledgement
of a good word; all this, how many of them have
to bear in quiet, and appear abroad with cheerful faces
as if they felt nothing. Tender slaves that they are, they
must needs be hypocrites and weak.
From her chair Amelia's mother had taken to her bed,
which she had never left, and from which Mrs. Osborne
herself was never absent except when she ran to see
George. The old lady grudged her even those rare visits;
she, who had been a kind, smiling, good-natured mother
once, in the days of her prosperity, but whom poverty
and infirmities had broken down. Her illness or estrangement
did not affect Amelia. They rather enabled her to
support the other calamity under which she was suffering,
and from the thoughts of which she was kept by the
ceaseless calls of the invalid. Amelia bore her harshness
quite gently; smoothed the uneasy pillow; was always
ready with a soft answer to the watchful, querulous
voice; soothed the sufferer with words of hope, such as
her pious simple heart could best feel and utter, and
closed the eyes that had once looked so tenderly upon
her.
Then all her time and tenderness were devoted to the
consolation and comfort of the bereaved old father, who
was stunned by the blow which had befallen him, and
stood utterly alone in the world. His wife, his honour,
his fortune, everything he loved best had fallen away
from him. There was only Amelia to stand by and support
with her gentle arms the tottering, heart-broken old man.
We are not going to write the history: it would be too
dreary and stupid. I can see Vanity Fair yawning over it
d'avance.
One day as the young gentlemen were assembled
in the study at the Rev. Mr. Veal's, and the domestic
chaplain to the Right Honourable the Earl of Bareacres
was spouting away as usual, a smart carriage drove up
to the door decorated with the statue of Athene, and two
gentlemen stepped out. The young Masters Bangles rushed