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"By Jove, she's a neat little filly!" meaning your humble
servant; and he did me the honour to dance two country-
dances with me. He gets on pretty gaily with the young
Squires, with whom he drinks, bets, rides, and talks
about hunting and shooting; but he says the country
girls are BORES; indeed, I don't think he is far wrong.
You should see the contempt with which they look down
on poor me! When they dance I sit and play the piano
very demurely; but the other night, coming in rather
flushed from the dining-room, and seeing me employed
in this way, he swore out loud that I was the best dancer
in the room, and took a great oath that he would have
the fiddlers from Mudbury.
"I'll go and play a country-dance," said Mrs. Bute
Crawley, very readily (she is a little, black-faced old
woman in a turban, rather crooked, and with very
twinkling eyes); and after the Captain and your poor little
Rebecca had performed a dance together, do you know
she actually did me the honour to compliment me upon
my steps! Such a thing was never heard of before; the
proud Mrs. Bute Crawley, first cousin to the Earl of
Tiptoff, who won't condescend to visit Lady Crawley,
except when her sister is in the country. Poor Lady
Crawley! during most part of these gaieties, she is
upstairs taking pills.
Mrs. Bute has all of a sudden taken a great fancy to
me. "My dear Miss Sharp," she says, "why not bring
over your girls to the Rectory?--their cousins will be so
happy to see them." I know what she means. Signor
Clementi did not teach us the piano for nothing; at
which price Mrs. Bute hopes to get a professor for her
children. I can see through her schemes, as though she
told them to me; but I shall go, as I am determined to
make myself agreeable--is it not a poor governess's
duty, who has not a friend or protector in the world?
The Rector's wife paid me a score of compliments about
the progress my pupils made, and thought, no doubt, to
touch my heart--poor, simple, country soul!--as if I
cared a fig about my pupils!
Your India muslin and your pink silk, dearest Amelia,
are said to become me very well. They are a good deal
worn now; but, you know, we poor girls can't afford des
fraiches toilettes. Happy, happy you! who have but to
drive to St. James's Street, and a dear mother who will
give you any thing you ask. Farewell, dearest girl,
Your affectionate
Rebecca.
P.S.--I wish you could have seen the faces of the
Miss Blackbrooks (Admiral Blackbrook's daughters, my
dear), fine young ladies, with dresses from London,
when Captain Rawdon selected poor me for a partner!
When Mrs. Bute Crawley (whose artifices our ingenious
Rebecca had so soon discovered) had procured from
Miss Sharp the promise of a visit, she induced the all-
powerful Miss Crawley to make the necessary application
to Sir Pitt, and the good-natured old lady, who loved to
be gay herself, and to see every one gay and happy round
about her, was quite charmed, and ready to establish a
reconciliation and intimacy between her two brothers.
It was therefore agreed that the young people of both
families should visit each other frequently for the future,
and the friendship of course lasted as long as the jovial
old mediatrix was there to keep the peace.
"Why did you ask that scoundrel, Rawdon Crawley, to
dine?" said the Rector to his lady, as they were walking
home through the park. "I don't want the fellow. He looks
down upon us country people as so many blackamoors.
He's never content unless he gets my yellow-sealed wine,
which costs me ten shillings a bottle, hang him! Besides,
he's such an infernal character--he's a gambler--he's a
drunkard--he's a profligate in every way. He shot a man
in a duel--he's over head and ears in debt, and he's
robbed me and mine of the best part of Miss Crawley's
fortune. Waxy says she has him"--here the Rector shook
his fist at the moon, with something very like an oath,
and added, in a melancholious tone, "--, down in her will
for fifty thousand; and there won't be above thirty to
divide."
"I think she's going," said the Rector's wife. "She was
very red in the face when we left dinner. I was obliged
to unlace her."
"She drank seven glasses of champagne," said the
reverend gentleman, in a low voice; "and filthy champagne
it is, too, that my brother poisons us with--but you
women never know what's what."
"We know nothing," said Mrs. Bute Crawley.
"She drank cherry-brandy after dinner," continued his
Reverence, "and took curacao with her coffee. I
wouldn't take a glass for a five-pound note: it kills me
with heartburn. She can't stand it, Mrs. Crawley--she
must go--flesh and blood won't bear it! and I lay five to
two, Matilda drops in a year."
Indulging in these solemn speculations, and thinking
about his debts, and his son Jim at College, and Frank at
Woolwich, and the four girls, who were no beauties, poor
things, and would not have a penny but what they got from
the aunt's expected legacy, the Rector and his lady walked
on for a while.
"Pitt can't be such an infernal villain as to sell the
reversion of the living. And that Methodist milksop of an
eldest son looks to Parliament," continued Mr. Crawley,
after a pause.
"Sir Pitt Crawley will do anything," said the Rector's
wife. "We must get Miss Crawley to make him promise it
to James."
"Pitt will promise anything," replied the brother. "He
promised he'd pay my college bills, when my father died;
he promised he'd build the new wing to the Rectory;
he promised he'd let me have Jibb's field and the Six-
acre Meadow--and much he executed his promises! And
it's to this man's son--this scoundrel, gambler, swindler,
murderer of a Rawdon Crawley, that Matilda leaves the
bulk of her money. I say it's un-Christian. By Jove, it is.
The infamous dog has got every vice except hypocrisy,
and that belongs to his brother."
"Hush, my dearest love! we're in Sir Pitt's grounds,"
interposed his wife.
"I say he has got every vice, Mrs. Crawley. Don't
Ma'am, bully me. Didn't he shoot Captain Marker? Didn't
he rob young Lord Dovedale at the Cocoa-Tree? Didn't
he cross the fight between Bill Soames and the Cheshire
Trump, by which I lost forty pound? You know he did;
and as for the women, why, you heard that before me, in
my own magistrate's room "
"For heaven's sake, Mr. Crawley," said the lady, "spare
me the details."
"And you ask this villain into your house!" continued
the exasperated Rector. "You, the mother of a young
family--the wife of a clergyman of the Church of
England. By Jove!"
"Bute Crawley, you are a fool," said the Rector's wife
scornfully.
"Well, Ma'am, fool or not--and I don't say, Martha,
I'm so clever as you are, I never did. But I won't meet
Rawdon Crawley, that's flat. I'll go over to Huddleston,
that I will, and see his black greyhound, Mrs. Crawley;
and I'll run Lancelot against him for fifty. By Jove, I will;
or against any dog in England. But I won't meet that
beast Rawdon Crawley."
"Mr. Crawley, you are intoxicated, as usual," replied
his wife. And the next morning, when the Rector woke,
and called for small beer, she put him in mind of his
promise to visit Sir Huddleston Fuddleston on Saturday,
and as he knew he should have a wet night, it was agreed
that he might gallop back again in time for church on
Sunday morning. Thus it will be seen that the parishioners
of Crawley were equally happy in their Squire and in their
Rector.
Miss Crawley had not long been established at the Hall
before Rebecca's fascinations had won the heart of that
good-natured London rake, as they had of the country
innocents whom we have been describing. Taking her
accustomed drive, one day, she thought fit to order that
"that little governess" should accompany her to Mudbury.
Before they had returned Rebecca had made a conquest
of her; having made her laugh four times, and amused her
during the whole of the little journey.
"Not let Miss Sharp dine at table!" said she to Sir Pitt,
who had arranged a dinner of ceremony, and asked all the
neighbouring baronets. "My dear creature, do you
suppose I can talk about the nursery with Lady Fuddleston, or
discuss justices' business with that goose, old Sir Giles
Wapshot? I insist upon Miss Sharp appearing. Let Lady
Crawley remain upstairs, if there is no room. But little
Miss Sharp! Why, she's the only person fit to talk to in
the county!"
Of course, after such a peremptory order as this, Miss
Sharp, the governess, received commands to dine with the
illustrious company below stairs. And when Sir Huddleston
had, with great pomp and ceremony, handed Miss
Crawley in to dinner, and was preparing to take his
place by her side, the old lady cried out, in a shrill
voice, "Becky Sharp! Miss Sharp! Come you and sit by
me and amuse me; and let Sir Huddleston sit by Lady
Wapshot."
When the parties were over, and the carriages had
rolled away, the insatiable Miss Crawley would say,
"Come to my dressing room, Becky, and let us abuse the
company"--which, between them, this pair of friends did
perfectly. Old Sir Huddleston wheezed a great deal at
dinner; Sir Giles Wapshot had a particularly noisy manner
of imbibing his soup, and her ladyship a wink of the left
eye; all of which Becky caricatured to admiration; as well
as the particulars of the night's conversation; the politics;
the war; the quarter-sessions; the famous run with the
H.H., and those heavy and dreary themes, about which
country gentlemen converse. As for the Misses Wapshot's
toilettes and Lady Fuddleston's famous yellow hat, Miss
Sharp tore them to tatters, to the infinite amusement
of her audience.
"My dear, you are a perfect trouvaille," Miss Crawley
would say. "I wish you could come to me in London,
but I couldn't make a butt of you as I do of poor Briggs
no, no, you little sly creature; you are too clever--Isn't
she, Firkin?"
Mrs. Firkin (who was dressing the very small
remnant of hair which remained on Miss Crawley's pate),
flung up her head and said, "I think Miss is very clever,"
with the most killing sarcastic air. In fact, Mrs. Firkin
had that natural jealousy which is one of the main
principles of every honest woman.
After rebuffing Sir Huddleston Fuddleston, Miss
Crawley ordered that Rawdon Crawley should lead her in
to dinner every day, and that Becky should follow with her
cushion--or else she would have Becky's arm and
Rawdon with the pillow. "We must sit together," she said.
"We're the only three Christians in the county, my love"
--in which case, it must be confessed, that religion was
at a very low ebb in the county of Hants.
Besides being such a fine religionist, Miss Crawley
was, as we have said, an Ultra-liberal in opinions, and
always took occasion to express these in the most candid
manner.
"What is birth, my dear!" she would say to Rebecca--
"Look at my brother Pitt; look at the Huddlestons, who
have been here since Henry II; look at poor Bute at the
parsonage--is any one of them equal to you in intelligence
or breeding? Equal to you--they are not even equal to
poor dear Briggs, my companion, or Bowls, my butler.
You, my love, are a little paragon--positively a little
jewel--You have more brains than half the shire--if
merit had its reward you ought to be a Duchess--no,
there ought to be no duchesses at all--but you ought to
have no superior, and I consider you, my love, as my
equal in every respect; and--will you put some coals on
the fire, my dear; and will you pick this dress of mine, and
alter it, you who can do it so well?" So this old philanthropist
used to make her equal run of her errands, execute her
millinery, and read her to sleep with French novels,
every night.
At this time, as some old readers may recollect, the
genteel world had been thrown into a considerable state
of excitement by two events, which, as the papers say,
might give employment to the gentlemen of the long robe.
Ensign Shafton had run away with Lady Barbara Fitzurse,
the Earl of Bruin's daughter and heiress; and poor Vere
Vane, a gentleman who, up to forty, had maintained a
most respectable character and reared a numerous family,
suddenly and outrageously left his home, for the sake of
Mrs. Rougemont, the actress, who was sixty-five years
of age.
"That was the most beautiful part of dear Lord
Nelson's character," Miss Crawley said. "He went to the
deuce for a woman. There must be good in a man who will
do that. I adore all impudent matches.--What I like
best, is for a nobleman to marry a miller's daughter, as
Lord Flowerdale did--it makes all the women so angry
--I wish some great man would run away with you, my
dear; I'm sure you're pretty enough."
"Two post-boys!--Oh, it would be delightful!" Rebecca
owned.
"And what I like next best, is for a poor fellow to run
away with a rich girl. I have set my heart on Rawdon
running away with some one."
"A rich some one, or a poor some one?"
"Why, you goose! Rawdon has not a shilling but what I
give him. He is crible de dettes--he must repair his
fortunes, and succeed in the world."
"Is he very clever?" Rebecca asked.
"Clever, my love?--not an idea in the world beyond his
horses, and his regiment, and his hunting, and his play;
but he must succeed--he's so delightfully wicked. Don't
you know he has hit a man, and shot an injured father
through the hat only? He's adored in his regiment; and all
the young men at Wattier's and the Cocoa-Tree swear by
him."
When Miss Rebecca Sharp wrote to her beloved friend
the account of the little ball at Queen's Crawley, and the
manner in which, for the first time, Captain Crawley had
distinguished her, she did not, strange to relate, give an
altogether accurate account of the transaction. The Captain
had distinguished her a great number of times before. The
Captain had met her in a half-score of walks. The Captain
had lighted upon her in a half-hundred of corridors and
passages. The Captain had hung over her piano twenty
times of an evening (my Lady was now upstairs, being ill,
and nobody heeded her) as Miss Sharp sang. The Captain had
written her notes (the best that the great blundering
dragoon could devise and spell; but dulness gets on
as well as any other quality with women). But when he
put the first of the notes into the leaves of the song she
was singing, the little governess, rising and looking him
steadily in the face, took up the triangular missive daintily,
and waved it about as if it were a cocked hat, and she,
advancing to the enemy, popped the note into the fire, and
made him a very low curtsey, and went back to her
place, and began to sing away again more merrily than
ever.
"What's that?" said Miss Crawley, interrupted in her
after-dinner doze by the stoppage of the music.
"It's a false note," Miss Sharp said with a laugh; and
Rawdon Crawley fumed with rage and mortification.
Seeing the evident partiality of Miss Crawley for the
new governess, how good it was of Mrs. Bute Crawley not
to be jealous, and to welcome the young lady to the
Rectory, and not only her, but Rawdon Crawley, her
husband's rival in the Old Maid's five per cents! They
became very fond of each other's society, Mrs. Crawley
and her nephew. He gave up hunting; he declined
entertainments at Fuddleston: he would not dine with the
mess of the depot at Mudbury: his great pleasure was to stroll
over to Crawley parsonage--whither Miss Crawley came
too; and as their mamma was ill, why not the children
with Miss Sharp? So the children (little dears!) came with
Miss Sharp; and of an evening some of the party would
walk back together. Not Miss Crawley--she preferred her
carriage--but the walk over the Rectory fields, and in at
the little park wicket, and through the dark plantation,
and up the checkered avenue to Queen's Crawley, was
charming in the moonlight to two such lovers of the
picturesque as the Captain and Miss Rebecca.
"O those stars, those stars!" Miss Rebecca would say,
turning her twinkling green eyes up towards them. "I
feel myself almost a spirit when I gaze upon them."
"O--ah--Gad--yes, so do I exactly, Miss Sharp," the
other enthusiast replied. "You don't mind my cigar, do
you, Miss Sharp?" Miss Sharp loved the smell of a cigar
out of doors beyond everything in the world--and she just
tasted one too, in the prettiest way possible, and gave a
little puff, and a little scream, and a little giggle, and
restored the delicacy to the Captain, who twirled his
moustache, and straightway puffed it into a blaze that
glowed quite red in the dark plantation, and swore--"Jove
--aw--Gad--aw--it's the finest segaw I ever smoked in
the world aw," for his intellect and conversation were
alike brilliant and becoming to a heavy young dragoon.
Old Sir Pitt, who was taking his pipe and beer, and
talking to John Horrocks about a "ship" that was to be killed,
espied the pair so occupied from his study-window, and
with dreadful oaths swore that if it wasn't for Miss
Crawley, he'd take Rawdon and bundle un out of doors, like a
rogue as he was.
"He be a bad'n, sure enough," Mr. Horrocks remarked;
"and his man Flethers is wuss, and have made such a row
in the housekeeper's room about the dinners and hale, as
no lord would make--but I think Miss Sharp's a match
for'n, Sir Pitt," he added, after a pause.
And so, in truth, she was--for father and son too.
CHAPTER XII
Quite a Sentimental Chapter
We must now take leave of Arcadia, and those amiable
people practising the rural virtues there, and travel back
to London, to inquire what has become of Miss Amelia
"We don't care a fig for her," writes some unknown
correspondent with a pretty little handwriting and a pink seal
to her note. "She is fade and insipid," and adds some more
kind remarks in this strain, which I should never have
repeated at all, but that they are in truth prodigiously
complimentary to the young lady whom they concern.
Has the beloved reader, in his experience of society,
never heard similar remarks by good-natured female
friends; who always wonder what you CAN see in Miss
Smith that is so fascinating; or what COULD induce Major
Jones to propose for that silly insignificant simpering Miss
Thompson, who has nothing but her wax-doll face to
recommend her? What is there in a pair of pink cheeks
and blue eyes forsooth? these dear Moralists ask, and hint
wisely that the gifts of genius, the accomplishments of the
mind, the mastery of Mangnall's Questions, and a ladylike
knowledge of botany and geology, the knack of making
poetry, the power of rattling sonatas in the Herz-manner,
and so forth, are far more valuable endowments for a
female, than those fugitive charms which a few years will
inevitably tarnish. It is quite edifying to hear women
speculate upon the worthlessness and the duration of
beauty.
But though virtue is a much finer thing, and those
hapless creatures who suffer under the misfortune of good
looks ought to be continually put in mind of the fate
which awaits them; and though, very likely, the heroic
female character which ladies admire is a more glorious
and beautiful object than the kind, fresh, smiling, artless,
tender little domestic goddess, whom men are inclined
to worship--yet the latter and inferior sort of women
must have this consolation--that the men do admire them
after all; and that, in spite of all our kind friends' warnings
and protests, we go on in our desperate error and
folly, and shall to the end of the chapter. Indeed, for my
own part, though I have been repeatedly told by persons
for whom I have the greatest respect, that Miss Brown is
an insignificant chit, and Mrs. White has nothing but her
petit minois chiffonne, and Mrs. Black has not a word to
say for herself; yet I know that I have had the most
delightful conversations with Mrs. Black (of course, my
dear Madam, they are inviolable): I see all the men in a
cluster round Mrs. White's chair: all the young fellows
battling to dance with Miss Brown; and so I am tempted
to think that to be despised by her sex is a very great
compliment to a woman.
The young ladies in Amelia's society did this for her
very satisfactorily. For instance, there was scarcely any
point upon which the Misses Osborne, George's sisters,
and the Mesdemoiselles Dobbin agreed so well as in their
estimate of her very trifling merits: and their wonder that
their brothers could find any charms in her. "We are kind
to her," the Misses Osborne said, a pair of fine black-
browed young ladies who had had the best of governesses,
masters, and milliners; and they treated her with
such extreme kindness and condescension, and patronised
her so insufferably, that the poor little thing was in fact
perfectly dumb in their presence, and to all outward
appearance as stupid as they thought her. She made efforts
to like them, as in duty bound, and as sisters of her
future husband. She passed "long mornings" with them
--the most dreary and serious of forenoons. She drove
out solemnly in their great family coach with them, and
Miss Wirt their governess, that raw-boned Vestal. They
took her to the ancient concerts by way of a treat, and
to the oratorio, and to St. Paul's to see the charity
children, where in such terror was she of her friends, she
almost did not dare be affected by the hymn the children
sang. Their house was comfortable; their papa's table
rich and handsome; their society solemn and genteel;
their self-respect prodigious; they had the best pew at
the Foundling: all their habits were pompous and orderly,
and all their amusements intolerably dull and decorous.
After every one of her visits (and oh how glad she was
when they were over!) Miss Osborne and Miss Maria
Osborne, and Miss Wirt, the vestal governess, asked each
other with increased wonder, "What could George find in
that creature?"
How is this? some carping reader exclaims. How is it
that Amelia, who had such a number of friends at
school, and was so beloved there, comes out into the
world and is spurned by her discriminating sex? My dear
sir, there were no men at Miss Pinkerton's establishment
except the old dancing-master; and you would not have
had the girls fall out about HIM? When George, their
handsome brother, ran off directly after breakfast, and
dined from home half-a-dozen times a week, no wonder
the neglected sisters felt a little vexation. When young
Bullock (of the firm of Hulker, Bullock & Co., Bankers,
Lombard Street), who had been making up to Miss Maria
the last two seasons, actually asked Amelia to dance the
cotillon, could you expect that the former young lady
should be pleased? And yet she said she was, like an
artless forgiving creature. "I'm so delighted you like dear
Amelia," she said quite eagerly to Mr. Bullock after the
dance. "She's engaged to my brother George; there's not
much in her, but she's the best-natured and most
unaffected young creature: at home we're all so fond of her."
Dear girl! who can calculate the depth of affection
expressed in that enthusiastic SO?
Miss Wirt and these two affectionate young women so
earnestly and frequently impressed upon George
Osborne's mind the enormity of the sacrifice he was making,
and his romantic generosity in throwing himself away
upon Amelia, that I'm not sure but that he really thought
he was one of the most deserving characters in the British
army, and gave himself up to be loved with a good deal
of easy resignation.
Somehow, although he left home every morning, as was
stated, and dined abroad six days in the week, when his
sisters believed the infatuated youth to be at Miss Sedley's
apron-strings: he was NOT always with Amelia, whilst the
world supposed him at her feet. Certain it is that on more
occasions than one, when Captain Dobbin called to look
for his friend, Miss Osborne (who was very attentive to
the Captain, and anxious to hear his military stories, and
to know about the health of his dear Mamma), would
laughingly point to the opposite side of the square, and
say, "Oh, you must go to the Sedleys' to ask for George;
WE never see him from morning till night." At which kind
of speech the Captain would laugh in rather an absurd
constrained manner, and turn off the conversation, like
a consummate man of the world, to some topic of general
interest, such as the Opera, the Prince's last ball at
Carlton House, or the weather--that blessing to society.
"What an innocent it is, that pet of yours," Miss Maria
would then say to Miss Jane, upon the Captain's
departure. "Did you see how he blushed at the mention of
poor George on duty?"
"It's a pity Frederick Bullock hadn't some of his
modesty, Maria," replies the elder sister, with a toss of he
head.
"Modesty! Awkwardness you mean, Jane. I don't want
Frederick to trample a hole in my muslin frock, as
Captain Dobbin did in yours at Mrs. Perkins'."
"In YOUR frock, he, he! How could he? Wasn't he
dancing with Amelia?"
The fact is, when Captain Dobbin blushed so, and
looked so awkward, he remembered a circumstance of
which he did not think it was necessary to inform the
young ladies, viz., that he had been calling at Mr. Sedley's
house already, on the pretence of seeing George, of
course, and George wasn't there, only poor little Amelia,
with rather a sad wistful face, seated near the drawing-
room window, who, after some very trifling stupid talk,
ventured to ask, was there any truth in the report that
the regiment was soon to be ordered abroad; and had
Captain Dobbin seen Mr. Osborne that day?
The regiment was not ordered abroad as yet; and
Captain Dobbin had not seen George. "He was with his
sister, most likely," the Captain said. "Should he go and
fetch the truant?" So she gave him her hand kindly and
gratefully: and he crossed the square; and she waited
and waited, but George never came.
Poor little tender heart! and so it goes on hoping and
beating, and longing and trusting. You see it is not much
of a life to describe. There is not much of what you call
incident in it. Only one feeling all day--when will he
come? only one thought to sleep and wake upon. I
believe George was playing billiards with Captain Cannon
in Swallow Street at the time when Amelia was asking
Captain Dobbin about him; for George was a jolly
sociable fellow, and excellent in all games of skill.
Once, after three days of absence, Miss Amelia put on
her bonnet, and actually invaded the Osborne house.
"What! leave our brother to come to us?" said the young
ladies. "Have you had a quarrel, Amelia? Do tell us!"
No, indeed, there had been no quarrel. "Who could
quarrel with him?" says she, with her eyes filled with tears.
She only came over to--to see her dear friends; they had
not met for so long. And this day she was so perfectly
stupid and awkward, that the Misses Osborne and their
governess, who stared after her as she went sadly away,
wondered more than ever what George could see in poor
little Amelia.
Of course they did. How was she to bare that timid
little heart for the inspection of those young ladies with
their bold black eyes? It was best that it should shrink
and hide itself. I know the Misses Osborne were excellent
critics of a Cashmere shawl, or a pink satin slip; and
when Miss Turner had hers dyed purple, and made into
a spencer; and when Miss Pickford had her ermine
tippet twisted into a muff and trimmings, I warrant you the
changes did not escape the two intelligent young women
before mentioned. But there are things, look you, of a
finer texture than fur or satin, and all Solomon's glories,
and all the wardrobe of the Queen of Sheba--things
whereof the beauty escapes the eyes of many
connoisseurs. And there are sweet modest little souls on
which you light, fragrant and blooming tenderly in quiet shady
places; and there are garden-ornaments, as big as brass
warming-pans, that are fit to stare the sun itself out of
countenance. Miss Sedley was not of the sunflower sort;
and I say it is out of the rules of all proportion to draw
a violet of the size of a double dahlia.
No, indeed; the life of a good young girl who is in the
paternal nest as yet, can't have many of those thrilling
incidents to which the heroine of romance commonly lays
claim. Snares or shot may take off the old birds foraging
without--hawks may be abroad, from which they escape
or by whom they suffer; but the young ones in the nest
have a pretty comfortable unromantic sort of existence
in the down and the straw, till it comes to their turn,
too, to get on the wing. While Becky Sharp was on her
own wing in the country, hopping on all sorts of twigs,
and amid a multiplicity of traps, and pecking up her food
quite harmless and successful, Amelia lay snug in her
home of Russell Square; if she went into the world, it
was under the guidance of the elders; nor did it seem
that any evil could befall her or that opulent cheery
comfortable home in which she was affectionately sheltered.
Mamma had her morning duties, and her daily drive,
and the delightful round of visits and shopping which
forms the amusement, or the profession as you may call
it, of the rich London lady. Papa conducted his
mysterious operations in the City--a stirring place in those
days, when war was raging all over Europe, and empires
were being staked; when the "Courier" newspaper had
tens of thousands of subscribers; when one day brought
you a battle of Vittoria, another a burning of Moscow, or
a newsman's horn blowing down Russell Square about
dinner-time, announced such a fact as--"Battle of
Leipsic--six hundred thousand men engaged--total
defeat of the French--two hundred thousand killed." Old
Sedley once or twice came home with a very grave face;
and no wonder, when such news as this was agitating all
the hearts and all the Stocks of Europe.
Meanwhile matters went on in Russell Square, Bloomsbury,
just as if matters in Europe were not in the least
disorganised. The retreat from Leipsic made no
difference in the number of meals Mr. Sambo took in the
servants' hall; the allies poured into France, and the
dinner-belI rang at five o'clock just as usual. I don't think
poor Amelia cared anything about Brienne and Montmirail,
or was fairly interested in the war until the abdication
of the Emperor; when she clapped her hands and said
prayers--oh, how grateful! and flung herself into George
Osborne's arms with all her soul, to the astonishment of
everybody who witnessed that ebullition of sentiment.
The fact is, peace was declared, Europe was going to be
at rest; the Corsican was overthrown, and Lieutenant
Osborne's regiment would not be ordered on service. That
was the way in which Miss Amelia reasoned. The fate of
Europe was Lieutenant George Osborne to her. His
dangers being over, she sang Te Deum. He was her Europe:
her emperor: her allied monarchs and august prince
regent. He was her sun and moon; and I believe she
thought the grand illumination and ball at the Mansion
House, given to the sovereigns, were especially in honour
of George Osborne.
We have talked of shift, self, and poverty, as those
dismal instructors under whom poor Miss Becky Sharp
got her education. Now, love was Miss Amelia Sedley's
last tutoress, and it was amazing what progress our young
lady made under that popular teacher. In the course of
fifteen or eighteen months' daily and constant attention to
this eminent finishing governess, what a deal of secrets
Amelia learned, which Miss Wirt and the black-eyed
young ladies over the way, which old Miss Pinkerton of
Chiswick herself, had no cognizance of! As, indeed, how
should any of those prim and reputable virgins? With
Misses P. and W. the tender passion is out of the
question: I would not dare to breathe such an idea regarding
them. Miss Maria Osborne, it is true, was "attached" to
Mr. Frederick Augustus Bullock, of the firm of Hulker,
Bullock & Bullock; but hers was a most respectable
attachment, and she would have taken Bullock Senior just
the same, her mind being fixed--as that of a well-bred
young woman should be--upon a house in Park Lane,
a country house at Wimbledon, a handsome chariot, and
two prodigious tall horses and footmen, and a fourth of
the annual profits of the eminent firm of Hulker &
Bullock, all of which advantages were represented in the
person of Frederick Augustus. Had orange blossoms been
invented then (those touching emblems of female purity
imported by us from France, where people's daughters
are universally sold in marriage), Miss Maria, I say,
would have assumed the spotless wreath, and stepped into
the travelling carriage by the side of gouty, old, bald-
headed, bottle-nosed Bullock Senior; and devoted her
beautiful existence to his happiness with perfect modesty
--only the old gentleman was married already; so she
bestowed her young affections on the junior partner.
Sweet, blooming, orange flowers! The other day I saw
Miss Trotter (that was), arrayed in them, trip into the
travelling carriage at St. George's, Hanover Square, and
Lord Methuselah hobbled in after. With what an engaging
modesty she pulled down the blinds of the chariot--the
dear innocent! There were half the carriages of Vanity
Fair at the wedding.
This was not the sort of love that finished Amelia's
education; and in the course of a year turned a good young
girl into a good young woman--to be a good wife
presently, when the happy time should come. This young
person (perhaps it was very imprudent in her parents to
encourage her, and abet her in such idolatry and silly
romantic ideas) loved, with all her heart, the young
officer in His Majesty's service with whom we have made a
brief acquaintance. She thought about him the very first
moment on waking; and his was the very last name
mentioned m her prayers. She never had seen a man so
beautiful or so clever: such a figure on horseback: such
a dancer: such a hero in general. Talk of the Prince's
bow! what was it to George's? She had seen Mr.
Brummell, whom everybody praised so. Compare such a person
as that to her George! Not amongst all the beaux at the
Opera (and there were beaux in those days with actual
opera hats) was there any one to equal him. He was only
good enough to be a fairy prince; and oh, what
magnanimity to stoop to such a humble Cinderella! Miss
Pinkerton would have tried to check this blind devotion
very likely, had she been Amelia's confidante; but not
with much success, depend upon it. It is in the nature and
instinct of some women. Some are made to scheme, and
some to love; and I wish any respected bachelor that
reads this may take the sort that best likes him.
While under this overpowering impression, Miss Amelia
neglected her twelve dear friends at Chiswick most
cruelly, as such selfish people commonly will do. She had
but this subject, of course, to think about; and Miss
Saltire was too cold for a confidante, and she couldn't
bring her mind to tell Miss Swartz, the woolly-haired
young heiress from St. Kitt's. She had little Laura Martin
home for the holidays; and my belief is, she made a
confidante of her, and promised that Laura should come
and live with her when she was married, and gave Laura
a great deal of information regarding the passion of
love, which must have been singularly useful and novel
to that little person. Alas, alas! I fear poor Emmy had
not a well-regulated mind.
What were her parents doing, not to keep this little
heart from beating so fast? Old Sedley did not seem much
to notice matters. He was graver of late, and his City
affairs absorbed him. Mrs. Sedley was of so easy and
uninquisitive a nature that she wasn't even jealous. Mr.
Jos was away, being besieged by an Irish widow at
Cheltenham. Amelia had the house to herself--ah! too
much to herself sometimes--not that she ever doubted;
for, to be sure, George must be at the Horse Guards;
and he can't always get leave from Chatham; and he must
see his friends and sisters, and mingle in society when
in town (he, such an ornament to every society!); and
when he is with the regiment, he is too tired to write long
letters. I know where she kept that packet she had--and
can steal in and out of her chamber like Iachimo--like
Iachimo? No--that is a bad part. I will only act
Moonshine, and peep harmless into the bed where faith and
beauty and innocence lie dreaming.
But if Osborne's were short and soldierlike letters, it
must be confessed, that were Miss Sedley's letters to Mr.
Osborne to be published, we should have to extend this
novel to such a multiplicity of volumes as not the most
sentimental reader could support; that she not only filled
sheets of large paper, but crossed them with the most
astonishing perverseness; that she wrote whole pages out
of poetry-books without the least pity; that she
underlined words and passages with quite a frantic emphasis;
and, in fine, gave the usual tokens of her condition. She
wasn't a heroine. Her letters were full of repetition. She
wrote rather doubtful grammar sometimes, and in her
verses took all sorts of liberties with the metre. But oh,
mesdames, if you are not allowed to touch the heart
sometimes in spite of syntax, and are not to be loved
until you all know the difference between trimeter and
tetrameter, may all Poetry go to the deuce, and every
schoolmaster perish miserably!
CHAPTER XIII
Sentimental and Otherwise
I fear the gentleman to whom Miss Amelia's letters were
addressed was rather an obdurate critic. Such a number
of notes followed Lieutenant Osborne about the country,
that he became almost ashamed of the jokes of his
mess-room companions regarding them, and ordered his
servant never to deliver them except at his private apartment.
He was seen lighting his cigar with one, to the horror of
Captain Dobbin, who, it is my belief, would have given
a bank-note for the document.
For some time George strove to keep the liaison a
secret. There was a woman in the case, that he admitted.
"And not the first either," said Ensign Spooney to Ensign
Stubble. "That Osborne's a devil of a fellow. There was a
judge's daughter at Demerara went almost mad about
him; then there was that beautiful quadroon girl, Miss
Pye, at St. Vincent's, you know; and since he's been
home, they say he's a regular Don Giovanni, by Jove."
Stubble and Spooney thought that to be a "regular
Don Giovanni, by Jove" was one of the finest qualities a
man could possess, and Osborne's reputation was
prodigious amongst the young men of the regiment. He
was famous in field-sports, famous at a song, famous on
parade; free with his money, which was bountifully
supplied by his father. His coats were better made than
any man's in the regiment, and he had more of them. He
was adored by the men. He could drink more than any
officer of the whole mess, including old Heavytop, the
colonel. He could spar better than Knuckles, the private
(who would have been a corporal but for his drunkenness,
and who had been in the prize-ring); and was the best
batter and bowler, out and out, of the regimental club.
He rode his own horse, Greased Lightning, and won the
Garrison cup at Quebec races. There were other people
besides Amelia who worshipped him. Stubble and
Spooney thought him a sort of Apollo; Dobbin took him
to be an Admirable Crichton; and Mrs. Major O'Dowd
acknowledged he was an elegant young fellow, and put
her in mind of Fitzjurld Fogarty, Lord Castlefogarty's
second son.
Well, Stubble and Spooney and the rest indulged in
most romantic conjectures regarding this female
correspondent of Osborne's--opining that it was a Duchess in
London who was in love with him--or that it was a
General's daughter, who was engaged to somebody else,
and madly attached to him--or that it was a Member of
Parliament's lady, who proposed four horses and an
elopement--or that it was some other victim of a passion
delightfully exciting, romantic, and disgraceful to all
parties, on none of which conjectures would Osborne throw
the least light, leaving his young admirers and friends to
invent and arrange their whole history.
And the real state of the case would never have been
known at all in the regiment but for Captain Dobbin's
indiscretion. The Captain was eating his breakfast one
day in the mess-room, while Cackle, the assistant-surgeon,
and the two above-named worthies were speculating upon
Osborne's intrigue--Stubble holding out that the lady
was a Duchess about Queen Charlotte's court, and Cackle
vowing she was an opera-singer of the worst reputation.
At this idea Dobbin became so moved, that though his
mouth was full of eggs and bread-and-butter at the time,
and though he ought not to have spoken at all, yet he
couldn't help blurting out, "Cackle, you're a stupid fool.
You're always talking nonsense and scandal. Osborne is
not going to run off with a Duchess or ruin a milliner.
Miss Sedley is one of the most charming young women
that ever lived. He's been engaged to her ever so long;
and the man who calls her names had better not do so
in my hearing." With which, turning exceedingly red,
Dobbin ceased speaking, and almost choked himself with
a cup of tea. The story was over the regiment in half-an-
hour; and that very evening Mrs. Major O'Dowd wrote
off to her sister Glorvina at O'Dowdstown not to hurry
from Dublin--young Osborne being prematurely engaged
already.
She complimented the Lieutenant in an appropriate
speech over a glass of whisky-toddy that evening, and he
went home perfectly furious to quarrel with Dobbin (who
had declined Mrs. Major O'Dowd's party, and sat in his
own room playing the flute, and, I believe, writing poetry
in a very melancholy manner)--to quarrel with Dobbin
for betraying his secret.
"Who the deuce asked you to talk about my affairs?"
Osborne shouted indignantly. "Why the devil is all the
regiment to know that I am going to be married? Why is
that tattling old harridan, Peggy O'Dowd, to make free
with my name at her d--d supper-table, and advertise
my engagement over the three kingdoms? After all, what
right have you to say I am engaged, or to meddle in my
business at all, Dobbin?"
"It seems to me," Captain Dobbin began.
"Seems be hanged, Dobbin," his junior interrupted
him. "I am under obligations to you, I know it, a d--d
deal too well too; but I won't be always sermonised by
you because you're five years my senior. I'm hanged if
I'll stand your airs of superiority and infernal pity and
patronage. Pity and patronage! I should like to know in
what I'm your inferior?"
"Are you engaged?" Captain Dobbin interposed.
"What the devil's that to you or any one here if I am?"
"Are you ashamed of it?" Dobbin resumed.
"What right have you to ask me that question, sir? I
should like to know," George said.
"Good God, you don't mean to say you want to break
off?" asked Dobbin, starting up.
"In other words, you ask me if I'm a man of honour,"
said Osborne, fiercely; "is that what you mean? You've
adopted such a tone regarding me lately that I'm --
if I'll bear it any more."
"What have I done? I've told you you were neglecting
a sweet girl, George. I've told you that when you go to
town you ought to go to her, and not to the gambling-
houses about St. James's."
"You want your money back, I suppose," said George,
with a sneer.
"Of course I do--I always did, didn't I?" says Dobbin.
"You speak like a generous fellow."
"No, hang it, William, I beg your pardon"--here
George interposed in a fit of remorse; "you have been my
friend in a hundred ways, Heaven knows. You've got me
out of a score of scrapes. When Crawley of the Guards
won that sum of money of me I should have been done
but for you: I know I should. But you shouldn't deal so
hardly with me; you shouldn't be always catechising me.
I am very fond of Amelia; I adore her, and that sort of
thing. Don't look angry. She's faultless; I know she is.
But you see there's no fun in winning a thing unless you
play for it. Hang it: the regiment's just back from the
West Indies, I must have a little fling, and then when I'm
married I'll reform; I will upon my honour, now. And--I
say--Dob--don't be angry with me, and I'll give you a
hundred next month, when I know my father will stand
something handsome; and I'll ask Heavytop for leave,
and I'll go to town, and see Amelia to-morrow--there
now, will that satisfy you?"
"It is impossible to be long angry with you, George,"
said the good-natured Captain; "and as for the money,
old boy, you know if I wanted it you'd share your last
shilling with me."
"That I would, by Jove, Dobbin," George said, with
the greatest generosity, though by the way he never had
any money to spare.
"Only I wish you had sown those wild oats of yours,
George. If you could have seen poor little Miss Emmy's
face when she asked me about you the other day, you
would have pitched those billiard-balls to the deuce. Go
and comfort her, you rascal. Go and write her a long
letter. Do something to make her happy; a very little will."
"I believe she's d--d fond of me," the Lieutenant said,
with a self-satisfied air; and went off to finish the evening
with some jolly fellows in the mess-room.
Amelia meanwhile, in Russell Square, was looking at
the moon, which was shining upon that peaceful spot, as
well as upon the square of the Chatham barracks, where
Lieutenant Osborne was quartered, and thinking to
herself how her hero was employed. Perhaps he is visiting
the sentries, thought she; perhaps he is bivouacking;
perhaps he is attending the couch of a wounded comrade, or
studying the art of war up in his own desolate chamber.
And her kind thoughts sped away as if they were angels
and had wings, and flying down the river to Chatham
and Rochester, strove to peep into the barracks where
George was. . . . All things considered, I think it was
as well the gates were shut, and the sentry allowed no
one to pass; so that the poor little white-robed angel
could not hear the songs those young fellows were
roaring over the whisky-punch.
The day after the little conversation at Chatham
barracks, young Osborne, to show that he would be as good
as his word, prepared to go to town, thereby incurring
Captain Dobbin's applause. "I should have liked to make her
servant; and he did me the honour to dance two country-
dances with me. He gets on pretty gaily with the young
Squires, with whom he drinks, bets, rides, and talks
about hunting and shooting; but he says the country
girls are BORES; indeed, I don't think he is far wrong.
You should see the contempt with which they look down
on poor me! When they dance I sit and play the piano
very demurely; but the other night, coming in rather
flushed from the dining-room, and seeing me employed
in this way, he swore out loud that I was the best dancer
in the room, and took a great oath that he would have
the fiddlers from Mudbury.
"I'll go and play a country-dance," said Mrs. Bute
Crawley, very readily (she is a little, black-faced old
woman in a turban, rather crooked, and with very
twinkling eyes); and after the Captain and your poor little
Rebecca had performed a dance together, do you know
she actually did me the honour to compliment me upon
my steps! Such a thing was never heard of before; the
proud Mrs. Bute Crawley, first cousin to the Earl of
Tiptoff, who won't condescend to visit Lady Crawley,
except when her sister is in the country. Poor Lady
Crawley! during most part of these gaieties, she is
upstairs taking pills.
Mrs. Bute has all of a sudden taken a great fancy to
me. "My dear Miss Sharp," she says, "why not bring
over your girls to the Rectory?--their cousins will be so
happy to see them." I know what she means. Signor
Clementi did not teach us the piano for nothing; at
which price Mrs. Bute hopes to get a professor for her
children. I can see through her schemes, as though she
told them to me; but I shall go, as I am determined to
make myself agreeable--is it not a poor governess's
duty, who has not a friend or protector in the world?
The Rector's wife paid me a score of compliments about
the progress my pupils made, and thought, no doubt, to
touch my heart--poor, simple, country soul!--as if I
cared a fig about my pupils!
Your India muslin and your pink silk, dearest Amelia,
are said to become me very well. They are a good deal
worn now; but, you know, we poor girls can't afford des
fraiches toilettes. Happy, happy you! who have but to
drive to St. James's Street, and a dear mother who will
give you any thing you ask. Farewell, dearest girl,
Your affectionate
Rebecca.
P.S.--I wish you could have seen the faces of the
Miss Blackbrooks (Admiral Blackbrook's daughters, my
dear), fine young ladies, with dresses from London,
when Captain Rawdon selected poor me for a partner!
When Mrs. Bute Crawley (whose artifices our ingenious
Rebecca had so soon discovered) had procured from
Miss Sharp the promise of a visit, she induced the all-
powerful Miss Crawley to make the necessary application
to Sir Pitt, and the good-natured old lady, who loved to
be gay herself, and to see every one gay and happy round
about her, was quite charmed, and ready to establish a
reconciliation and intimacy between her two brothers.
It was therefore agreed that the young people of both
families should visit each other frequently for the future,
and the friendship of course lasted as long as the jovial
old mediatrix was there to keep the peace.
"Why did you ask that scoundrel, Rawdon Crawley, to
dine?" said the Rector to his lady, as they were walking
home through the park. "I don't want the fellow. He looks
down upon us country people as so many blackamoors.
He's never content unless he gets my yellow-sealed wine,
which costs me ten shillings a bottle, hang him! Besides,
he's such an infernal character--he's a gambler--he's a
drunkard--he's a profligate in every way. He shot a man
in a duel--he's over head and ears in debt, and he's
robbed me and mine of the best part of Miss Crawley's
fortune. Waxy says she has him"--here the Rector shook
his fist at the moon, with something very like an oath,
and added, in a melancholious tone, "--, down in her will
for fifty thousand; and there won't be above thirty to
divide."
"I think she's going," said the Rector's wife. "She was
very red in the face when we left dinner. I was obliged
to unlace her."
"She drank seven glasses of champagne," said the
reverend gentleman, in a low voice; "and filthy champagne
it is, too, that my brother poisons us with--but you
women never know what's what."
"We know nothing," said Mrs. Bute Crawley.
"She drank cherry-brandy after dinner," continued his
Reverence, "and took curacao with her coffee. I
wouldn't take a glass for a five-pound note: it kills me
with heartburn. She can't stand it, Mrs. Crawley--she
must go--flesh and blood won't bear it! and I lay five to
two, Matilda drops in a year."
Indulging in these solemn speculations, and thinking
about his debts, and his son Jim at College, and Frank at
Woolwich, and the four girls, who were no beauties, poor
things, and would not have a penny but what they got from
the aunt's expected legacy, the Rector and his lady walked
on for a while.
"Pitt can't be such an infernal villain as to sell the
reversion of the living. And that Methodist milksop of an
eldest son looks to Parliament," continued Mr. Crawley,
after a pause.
"Sir Pitt Crawley will do anything," said the Rector's
wife. "We must get Miss Crawley to make him promise it
to James."
"Pitt will promise anything," replied the brother. "He
promised he'd pay my college bills, when my father died;
he promised he'd build the new wing to the Rectory;
he promised he'd let me have Jibb's field and the Six-
acre Meadow--and much he executed his promises! And
it's to this man's son--this scoundrel, gambler, swindler,
murderer of a Rawdon Crawley, that Matilda leaves the
bulk of her money. I say it's un-Christian. By Jove, it is.
The infamous dog has got every vice except hypocrisy,
and that belongs to his brother."
"Hush, my dearest love! we're in Sir Pitt's grounds,"
interposed his wife.
"I say he has got every vice, Mrs. Crawley. Don't
Ma'am, bully me. Didn't he shoot Captain Marker? Didn't
he rob young Lord Dovedale at the Cocoa-Tree? Didn't
he cross the fight between Bill Soames and the Cheshire
Trump, by which I lost forty pound? You know he did;
and as for the women, why, you heard that before me, in
my own magistrate's room "
"For heaven's sake, Mr. Crawley," said the lady, "spare
me the details."
"And you ask this villain into your house!" continued
the exasperated Rector. "You, the mother of a young
family--the wife of a clergyman of the Church of
England. By Jove!"
"Bute Crawley, you are a fool," said the Rector's wife
scornfully.
"Well, Ma'am, fool or not--and I don't say, Martha,
I'm so clever as you are, I never did. But I won't meet
Rawdon Crawley, that's flat. I'll go over to Huddleston,
that I will, and see his black greyhound, Mrs. Crawley;
and I'll run Lancelot against him for fifty. By Jove, I will;
or against any dog in England. But I won't meet that
beast Rawdon Crawley."
"Mr. Crawley, you are intoxicated, as usual," replied
his wife. And the next morning, when the Rector woke,
and called for small beer, she put him in mind of his
promise to visit Sir Huddleston Fuddleston on Saturday,
and as he knew he should have a wet night, it was agreed
that he might gallop back again in time for church on
Sunday morning. Thus it will be seen that the parishioners
of Crawley were equally happy in their Squire and in their
Rector.
Miss Crawley had not long been established at the Hall
before Rebecca's fascinations had won the heart of that
good-natured London rake, as they had of the country
innocents whom we have been describing. Taking her
accustomed drive, one day, she thought fit to order that
"that little governess" should accompany her to Mudbury.
Before they had returned Rebecca had made a conquest
of her; having made her laugh four times, and amused her
during the whole of the little journey.
"Not let Miss Sharp dine at table!" said she to Sir Pitt,
who had arranged a dinner of ceremony, and asked all the
neighbouring baronets. "My dear creature, do you
suppose I can talk about the nursery with Lady Fuddleston, or
discuss justices' business with that goose, old Sir Giles
Wapshot? I insist upon Miss Sharp appearing. Let Lady
Crawley remain upstairs, if there is no room. But little
Miss Sharp! Why, she's the only person fit to talk to in
the county!"
Of course, after such a peremptory order as this, Miss
Sharp, the governess, received commands to dine with the
illustrious company below stairs. And when Sir Huddleston
had, with great pomp and ceremony, handed Miss
Crawley in to dinner, and was preparing to take his
place by her side, the old lady cried out, in a shrill
voice, "Becky Sharp! Miss Sharp! Come you and sit by
me and amuse me; and let Sir Huddleston sit by Lady
Wapshot."
When the parties were over, and the carriages had
rolled away, the insatiable Miss Crawley would say,
"Come to my dressing room, Becky, and let us abuse the
company"--which, between them, this pair of friends did
perfectly. Old Sir Huddleston wheezed a great deal at
dinner; Sir Giles Wapshot had a particularly noisy manner
of imbibing his soup, and her ladyship a wink of the left
eye; all of which Becky caricatured to admiration; as well
as the particulars of the night's conversation; the politics;
the war; the quarter-sessions; the famous run with the
H.H., and those heavy and dreary themes, about which
country gentlemen converse. As for the Misses Wapshot's
toilettes and Lady Fuddleston's famous yellow hat, Miss
Sharp tore them to tatters, to the infinite amusement
of her audience.
"My dear, you are a perfect trouvaille," Miss Crawley
would say. "I wish you could come to me in London,
but I couldn't make a butt of you as I do of poor Briggs
no, no, you little sly creature; you are too clever--Isn't
she, Firkin?"
Mrs. Firkin (who was dressing the very small
remnant of hair which remained on Miss Crawley's pate),
flung up her head and said, "I think Miss is very clever,"
with the most killing sarcastic air. In fact, Mrs. Firkin
had that natural jealousy which is one of the main
principles of every honest woman.
After rebuffing Sir Huddleston Fuddleston, Miss
Crawley ordered that Rawdon Crawley should lead her in
to dinner every day, and that Becky should follow with her
cushion--or else she would have Becky's arm and
Rawdon with the pillow. "We must sit together," she said.
"We're the only three Christians in the county, my love"
--in which case, it must be confessed, that religion was
at a very low ebb in the county of Hants.
Besides being such a fine religionist, Miss Crawley
was, as we have said, an Ultra-liberal in opinions, and
always took occasion to express these in the most candid
manner.
"What is birth, my dear!" she would say to Rebecca--
"Look at my brother Pitt; look at the Huddlestons, who
have been here since Henry II; look at poor Bute at the
parsonage--is any one of them equal to you in intelligence
or breeding? Equal to you--they are not even equal to
poor dear Briggs, my companion, or Bowls, my butler.
You, my love, are a little paragon--positively a little
jewel--You have more brains than half the shire--if
merit had its reward you ought to be a Duchess--no,
there ought to be no duchesses at all--but you ought to
have no superior, and I consider you, my love, as my
equal in every respect; and--will you put some coals on
the fire, my dear; and will you pick this dress of mine, and
alter it, you who can do it so well?" So this old philanthropist
used to make her equal run of her errands, execute her
millinery, and read her to sleep with French novels,
every night.
At this time, as some old readers may recollect, the
genteel world had been thrown into a considerable state
of excitement by two events, which, as the papers say,
might give employment to the gentlemen of the long robe.
Ensign Shafton had run away with Lady Barbara Fitzurse,
the Earl of Bruin's daughter and heiress; and poor Vere
Vane, a gentleman who, up to forty, had maintained a
most respectable character and reared a numerous family,
suddenly and outrageously left his home, for the sake of
Mrs. Rougemont, the actress, who was sixty-five years
of age.
"That was the most beautiful part of dear Lord
Nelson's character," Miss Crawley said. "He went to the
deuce for a woman. There must be good in a man who will
do that. I adore all impudent matches.--What I like
best, is for a nobleman to marry a miller's daughter, as
Lord Flowerdale did--it makes all the women so angry
--I wish some great man would run away with you, my
dear; I'm sure you're pretty enough."
"Two post-boys!--Oh, it would be delightful!" Rebecca
owned.
"And what I like next best, is for a poor fellow to run
away with a rich girl. I have set my heart on Rawdon
running away with some one."
"A rich some one, or a poor some one?"
"Why, you goose! Rawdon has not a shilling but what I
give him. He is crible de dettes--he must repair his
fortunes, and succeed in the world."
"Is he very clever?" Rebecca asked.
"Clever, my love?--not an idea in the world beyond his
horses, and his regiment, and his hunting, and his play;
but he must succeed--he's so delightfully wicked. Don't
you know he has hit a man, and shot an injured father
through the hat only? He's adored in his regiment; and all
the young men at Wattier's and the Cocoa-Tree swear by
him."
When Miss Rebecca Sharp wrote to her beloved friend
the account of the little ball at Queen's Crawley, and the
manner in which, for the first time, Captain Crawley had
distinguished her, she did not, strange to relate, give an
altogether accurate account of the transaction. The Captain
had distinguished her a great number of times before. The
Captain had met her in a half-score of walks. The Captain
had lighted upon her in a half-hundred of corridors and
passages. The Captain had hung over her piano twenty
times of an evening (my Lady was now upstairs, being ill,
and nobody heeded her) as Miss Sharp sang. The Captain had
written her notes (the best that the great blundering
dragoon could devise and spell; but dulness gets on
as well as any other quality with women). But when he
put the first of the notes into the leaves of the song she
was singing, the little governess, rising and looking him
steadily in the face, took up the triangular missive daintily,
and waved it about as if it were a cocked hat, and she,
advancing to the enemy, popped the note into the fire, and
made him a very low curtsey, and went back to her
place, and began to sing away again more merrily than
ever.
"What's that?" said Miss Crawley, interrupted in her
after-dinner doze by the stoppage of the music.
"It's a false note," Miss Sharp said with a laugh; and
Rawdon Crawley fumed with rage and mortification.
Seeing the evident partiality of Miss Crawley for the
new governess, how good it was of Mrs. Bute Crawley not
to be jealous, and to welcome the young lady to the
Rectory, and not only her, but Rawdon Crawley, her
husband's rival in the Old Maid's five per cents! They
became very fond of each other's society, Mrs. Crawley
and her nephew. He gave up hunting; he declined
entertainments at Fuddleston: he would not dine with the
mess of the depot at Mudbury: his great pleasure was to stroll
over to Crawley parsonage--whither Miss Crawley came
too; and as their mamma was ill, why not the children
with Miss Sharp? So the children (little dears!) came with
Miss Sharp; and of an evening some of the party would
walk back together. Not Miss Crawley--she preferred her
carriage--but the walk over the Rectory fields, and in at
the little park wicket, and through the dark plantation,
and up the checkered avenue to Queen's Crawley, was
charming in the moonlight to two such lovers of the
picturesque as the Captain and Miss Rebecca.
"O those stars, those stars!" Miss Rebecca would say,
turning her twinkling green eyes up towards them. "I
feel myself almost a spirit when I gaze upon them."
"O--ah--Gad--yes, so do I exactly, Miss Sharp," the
other enthusiast replied. "You don't mind my cigar, do
you, Miss Sharp?" Miss Sharp loved the smell of a cigar
out of doors beyond everything in the world--and she just
tasted one too, in the prettiest way possible, and gave a
little puff, and a little scream, and a little giggle, and
restored the delicacy to the Captain, who twirled his
moustache, and straightway puffed it into a blaze that
glowed quite red in the dark plantation, and swore--"Jove
--aw--Gad--aw--it's the finest segaw I ever smoked in
the world aw," for his intellect and conversation were
alike brilliant and becoming to a heavy young dragoon.
Old Sir Pitt, who was taking his pipe and beer, and
talking to John Horrocks about a "ship" that was to be killed,
espied the pair so occupied from his study-window, and
with dreadful oaths swore that if it wasn't for Miss
Crawley, he'd take Rawdon and bundle un out of doors, like a
rogue as he was.
"He be a bad'n, sure enough," Mr. Horrocks remarked;
"and his man Flethers is wuss, and have made such a row
in the housekeeper's room about the dinners and hale, as
no lord would make--but I think Miss Sharp's a match
for'n, Sir Pitt," he added, after a pause.
And so, in truth, she was--for father and son too.
CHAPTER XII
Quite a Sentimental Chapter
We must now take leave of Arcadia, and those amiable
people practising the rural virtues there, and travel back
to London, to inquire what has become of Miss Amelia
"We don't care a fig for her," writes some unknown
correspondent with a pretty little handwriting and a pink seal
to her note. "She is fade and insipid," and adds some more
kind remarks in this strain, which I should never have
repeated at all, but that they are in truth prodigiously
complimentary to the young lady whom they concern.
Has the beloved reader, in his experience of society,
never heard similar remarks by good-natured female
friends; who always wonder what you CAN see in Miss
Smith that is so fascinating; or what COULD induce Major
Jones to propose for that silly insignificant simpering Miss
Thompson, who has nothing but her wax-doll face to
recommend her? What is there in a pair of pink cheeks
and blue eyes forsooth? these dear Moralists ask, and hint
wisely that the gifts of genius, the accomplishments of the
mind, the mastery of Mangnall's Questions, and a ladylike
knowledge of botany and geology, the knack of making
poetry, the power of rattling sonatas in the Herz-manner,
and so forth, are far more valuable endowments for a
female, than those fugitive charms which a few years will
inevitably tarnish. It is quite edifying to hear women
speculate upon the worthlessness and the duration of
beauty.
But though virtue is a much finer thing, and those
hapless creatures who suffer under the misfortune of good
looks ought to be continually put in mind of the fate
which awaits them; and though, very likely, the heroic
female character which ladies admire is a more glorious
and beautiful object than the kind, fresh, smiling, artless,
tender little domestic goddess, whom men are inclined
to worship--yet the latter and inferior sort of women
must have this consolation--that the men do admire them
after all; and that, in spite of all our kind friends' warnings
and protests, we go on in our desperate error and
folly, and shall to the end of the chapter. Indeed, for my
own part, though I have been repeatedly told by persons
for whom I have the greatest respect, that Miss Brown is
an insignificant chit, and Mrs. White has nothing but her
petit minois chiffonne, and Mrs. Black has not a word to
say for herself; yet I know that I have had the most
delightful conversations with Mrs. Black (of course, my
dear Madam, they are inviolable): I see all the men in a
cluster round Mrs. White's chair: all the young fellows
battling to dance with Miss Brown; and so I am tempted
to think that to be despised by her sex is a very great
compliment to a woman.
The young ladies in Amelia's society did this for her
very satisfactorily. For instance, there was scarcely any
point upon which the Misses Osborne, George's sisters,
and the Mesdemoiselles Dobbin agreed so well as in their
estimate of her very trifling merits: and their wonder that
their brothers could find any charms in her. "We are kind
to her," the Misses Osborne said, a pair of fine black-
browed young ladies who had had the best of governesses,
masters, and milliners; and they treated her with
such extreme kindness and condescension, and patronised
her so insufferably, that the poor little thing was in fact
perfectly dumb in their presence, and to all outward
appearance as stupid as they thought her. She made efforts
to like them, as in duty bound, and as sisters of her
future husband. She passed "long mornings" with them
--the most dreary and serious of forenoons. She drove
out solemnly in their great family coach with them, and
Miss Wirt their governess, that raw-boned Vestal. They
took her to the ancient concerts by way of a treat, and
to the oratorio, and to St. Paul's to see the charity
children, where in such terror was she of her friends, she
almost did not dare be affected by the hymn the children
sang. Their house was comfortable; their papa's table
rich and handsome; their society solemn and genteel;
their self-respect prodigious; they had the best pew at
the Foundling: all their habits were pompous and orderly,
and all their amusements intolerably dull and decorous.
After every one of her visits (and oh how glad she was
when they were over!) Miss Osborne and Miss Maria
Osborne, and Miss Wirt, the vestal governess, asked each
other with increased wonder, "What could George find in
that creature?"
How is this? some carping reader exclaims. How is it
that Amelia, who had such a number of friends at
school, and was so beloved there, comes out into the
world and is spurned by her discriminating sex? My dear
sir, there were no men at Miss Pinkerton's establishment
except the old dancing-master; and you would not have
had the girls fall out about HIM? When George, their
handsome brother, ran off directly after breakfast, and
dined from home half-a-dozen times a week, no wonder
the neglected sisters felt a little vexation. When young
Bullock (of the firm of Hulker, Bullock & Co., Bankers,
Lombard Street), who had been making up to Miss Maria
the last two seasons, actually asked Amelia to dance the
cotillon, could you expect that the former young lady
should be pleased? And yet she said she was, like an
artless forgiving creature. "I'm so delighted you like dear
Amelia," she said quite eagerly to Mr. Bullock after the
dance. "She's engaged to my brother George; there's not
much in her, but she's the best-natured and most
unaffected young creature: at home we're all so fond of her."
Dear girl! who can calculate the depth of affection
expressed in that enthusiastic SO?
Miss Wirt and these two affectionate young women so
earnestly and frequently impressed upon George
Osborne's mind the enormity of the sacrifice he was making,
and his romantic generosity in throwing himself away
upon Amelia, that I'm not sure but that he really thought
he was one of the most deserving characters in the British
army, and gave himself up to be loved with a good deal
of easy resignation.
Somehow, although he left home every morning, as was
stated, and dined abroad six days in the week, when his
sisters believed the infatuated youth to be at Miss Sedley's
apron-strings: he was NOT always with Amelia, whilst the
world supposed him at her feet. Certain it is that on more
occasions than one, when Captain Dobbin called to look
for his friend, Miss Osborne (who was very attentive to
the Captain, and anxious to hear his military stories, and
to know about the health of his dear Mamma), would
laughingly point to the opposite side of the square, and
say, "Oh, you must go to the Sedleys' to ask for George;
WE never see him from morning till night." At which kind
of speech the Captain would laugh in rather an absurd
constrained manner, and turn off the conversation, like
a consummate man of the world, to some topic of general
interest, such as the Opera, the Prince's last ball at
Carlton House, or the weather--that blessing to society.
"What an innocent it is, that pet of yours," Miss Maria
would then say to Miss Jane, upon the Captain's
departure. "Did you see how he blushed at the mention of
poor George on duty?"
"It's a pity Frederick Bullock hadn't some of his
modesty, Maria," replies the elder sister, with a toss of he
head.
"Modesty! Awkwardness you mean, Jane. I don't want
Frederick to trample a hole in my muslin frock, as
Captain Dobbin did in yours at Mrs. Perkins'."
"In YOUR frock, he, he! How could he? Wasn't he
dancing with Amelia?"
The fact is, when Captain Dobbin blushed so, and
looked so awkward, he remembered a circumstance of
which he did not think it was necessary to inform the
young ladies, viz., that he had been calling at Mr. Sedley's
house already, on the pretence of seeing George, of
course, and George wasn't there, only poor little Amelia,
with rather a sad wistful face, seated near the drawing-
room window, who, after some very trifling stupid talk,
ventured to ask, was there any truth in the report that
the regiment was soon to be ordered abroad; and had
Captain Dobbin seen Mr. Osborne that day?
The regiment was not ordered abroad as yet; and
Captain Dobbin had not seen George. "He was with his
sister, most likely," the Captain said. "Should he go and
fetch the truant?" So she gave him her hand kindly and
gratefully: and he crossed the square; and she waited
and waited, but George never came.
Poor little tender heart! and so it goes on hoping and
beating, and longing and trusting. You see it is not much
of a life to describe. There is not much of what you call
incident in it. Only one feeling all day--when will he
come? only one thought to sleep and wake upon. I
believe George was playing billiards with Captain Cannon
in Swallow Street at the time when Amelia was asking
Captain Dobbin about him; for George was a jolly
sociable fellow, and excellent in all games of skill.
Once, after three days of absence, Miss Amelia put on
her bonnet, and actually invaded the Osborne house.
"What! leave our brother to come to us?" said the young
ladies. "Have you had a quarrel, Amelia? Do tell us!"
No, indeed, there had been no quarrel. "Who could
quarrel with him?" says she, with her eyes filled with tears.
She only came over to--to see her dear friends; they had
not met for so long. And this day she was so perfectly
stupid and awkward, that the Misses Osborne and their
governess, who stared after her as she went sadly away,
wondered more than ever what George could see in poor
little Amelia.
Of course they did. How was she to bare that timid
little heart for the inspection of those young ladies with
their bold black eyes? It was best that it should shrink
and hide itself. I know the Misses Osborne were excellent
critics of a Cashmere shawl, or a pink satin slip; and
when Miss Turner had hers dyed purple, and made into
a spencer; and when Miss Pickford had her ermine
tippet twisted into a muff and trimmings, I warrant you the
changes did not escape the two intelligent young women
before mentioned. But there are things, look you, of a
finer texture than fur or satin, and all Solomon's glories,
and all the wardrobe of the Queen of Sheba--things
whereof the beauty escapes the eyes of many
connoisseurs. And there are sweet modest little souls on
which you light, fragrant and blooming tenderly in quiet shady
places; and there are garden-ornaments, as big as brass
warming-pans, that are fit to stare the sun itself out of
countenance. Miss Sedley was not of the sunflower sort;
and I say it is out of the rules of all proportion to draw
a violet of the size of a double dahlia.
No, indeed; the life of a good young girl who is in the
paternal nest as yet, can't have many of those thrilling
incidents to which the heroine of romance commonly lays
claim. Snares or shot may take off the old birds foraging
without--hawks may be abroad, from which they escape
or by whom they suffer; but the young ones in the nest
have a pretty comfortable unromantic sort of existence
in the down and the straw, till it comes to their turn,
too, to get on the wing. While Becky Sharp was on her
own wing in the country, hopping on all sorts of twigs,
and amid a multiplicity of traps, and pecking up her food
quite harmless and successful, Amelia lay snug in her
home of Russell Square; if she went into the world, it
was under the guidance of the elders; nor did it seem
that any evil could befall her or that opulent cheery
comfortable home in which she was affectionately sheltered.
Mamma had her morning duties, and her daily drive,
and the delightful round of visits and shopping which
forms the amusement, or the profession as you may call
it, of the rich London lady. Papa conducted his
mysterious operations in the City--a stirring place in those
days, when war was raging all over Europe, and empires
were being staked; when the "Courier" newspaper had
tens of thousands of subscribers; when one day brought
you a battle of Vittoria, another a burning of Moscow, or
a newsman's horn blowing down Russell Square about
dinner-time, announced such a fact as--"Battle of
Leipsic--six hundred thousand men engaged--total
defeat of the French--two hundred thousand killed." Old
Sedley once or twice came home with a very grave face;
and no wonder, when such news as this was agitating all
the hearts and all the Stocks of Europe.
Meanwhile matters went on in Russell Square, Bloomsbury,
just as if matters in Europe were not in the least
disorganised. The retreat from Leipsic made no
difference in the number of meals Mr. Sambo took in the
servants' hall; the allies poured into France, and the
dinner-belI rang at five o'clock just as usual. I don't think
poor Amelia cared anything about Brienne and Montmirail,
or was fairly interested in the war until the abdication
of the Emperor; when she clapped her hands and said
prayers--oh, how grateful! and flung herself into George
Osborne's arms with all her soul, to the astonishment of
everybody who witnessed that ebullition of sentiment.
The fact is, peace was declared, Europe was going to be
at rest; the Corsican was overthrown, and Lieutenant
Osborne's regiment would not be ordered on service. That
was the way in which Miss Amelia reasoned. The fate of
Europe was Lieutenant George Osborne to her. His
dangers being over, she sang Te Deum. He was her Europe:
her emperor: her allied monarchs and august prince
regent. He was her sun and moon; and I believe she
thought the grand illumination and ball at the Mansion
House, given to the sovereigns, were especially in honour
of George Osborne.
We have talked of shift, self, and poverty, as those
dismal instructors under whom poor Miss Becky Sharp
got her education. Now, love was Miss Amelia Sedley's
last tutoress, and it was amazing what progress our young
lady made under that popular teacher. In the course of
fifteen or eighteen months' daily and constant attention to
this eminent finishing governess, what a deal of secrets
Amelia learned, which Miss Wirt and the black-eyed
young ladies over the way, which old Miss Pinkerton of
Chiswick herself, had no cognizance of! As, indeed, how
should any of those prim and reputable virgins? With
Misses P. and W. the tender passion is out of the
question: I would not dare to breathe such an idea regarding
them. Miss Maria Osborne, it is true, was "attached" to
Mr. Frederick Augustus Bullock, of the firm of Hulker,
Bullock & Bullock; but hers was a most respectable
attachment, and she would have taken Bullock Senior just
the same, her mind being fixed--as that of a well-bred
young woman should be--upon a house in Park Lane,
a country house at Wimbledon, a handsome chariot, and
two prodigious tall horses and footmen, and a fourth of
the annual profits of the eminent firm of Hulker &
Bullock, all of which advantages were represented in the
person of Frederick Augustus. Had orange blossoms been
invented then (those touching emblems of female purity
imported by us from France, where people's daughters
are universally sold in marriage), Miss Maria, I say,
would have assumed the spotless wreath, and stepped into
the travelling carriage by the side of gouty, old, bald-
headed, bottle-nosed Bullock Senior; and devoted her
beautiful existence to his happiness with perfect modesty
--only the old gentleman was married already; so she
bestowed her young affections on the junior partner.
Sweet, blooming, orange flowers! The other day I saw
Miss Trotter (that was), arrayed in them, trip into the
travelling carriage at St. George's, Hanover Square, and
Lord Methuselah hobbled in after. With what an engaging
modesty she pulled down the blinds of the chariot--the
dear innocent! There were half the carriages of Vanity
Fair at the wedding.
This was not the sort of love that finished Amelia's
education; and in the course of a year turned a good young
girl into a good young woman--to be a good wife
presently, when the happy time should come. This young
person (perhaps it was very imprudent in her parents to
encourage her, and abet her in such idolatry and silly
romantic ideas) loved, with all her heart, the young
officer in His Majesty's service with whom we have made a
brief acquaintance. She thought about him the very first
moment on waking; and his was the very last name
mentioned m her prayers. She never had seen a man so
beautiful or so clever: such a figure on horseback: such
a dancer: such a hero in general. Talk of the Prince's
bow! what was it to George's? She had seen Mr.
Brummell, whom everybody praised so. Compare such a person
as that to her George! Not amongst all the beaux at the
Opera (and there were beaux in those days with actual
opera hats) was there any one to equal him. He was only
good enough to be a fairy prince; and oh, what
magnanimity to stoop to such a humble Cinderella! Miss
Pinkerton would have tried to check this blind devotion
very likely, had she been Amelia's confidante; but not
with much success, depend upon it. It is in the nature and
instinct of some women. Some are made to scheme, and
some to love; and I wish any respected bachelor that
reads this may take the sort that best likes him.
While under this overpowering impression, Miss Amelia
neglected her twelve dear friends at Chiswick most
cruelly, as such selfish people commonly will do. She had
but this subject, of course, to think about; and Miss
Saltire was too cold for a confidante, and she couldn't
bring her mind to tell Miss Swartz, the woolly-haired
young heiress from St. Kitt's. She had little Laura Martin
home for the holidays; and my belief is, she made a
confidante of her, and promised that Laura should come
and live with her when she was married, and gave Laura
a great deal of information regarding the passion of
love, which must have been singularly useful and novel
to that little person. Alas, alas! I fear poor Emmy had
not a well-regulated mind.
What were her parents doing, not to keep this little
heart from beating so fast? Old Sedley did not seem much
to notice matters. He was graver of late, and his City
affairs absorbed him. Mrs. Sedley was of so easy and
uninquisitive a nature that she wasn't even jealous. Mr.
Jos was away, being besieged by an Irish widow at
Cheltenham. Amelia had the house to herself--ah! too
much to herself sometimes--not that she ever doubted;
for, to be sure, George must be at the Horse Guards;
and he can't always get leave from Chatham; and he must
see his friends and sisters, and mingle in society when
in town (he, such an ornament to every society!); and
when he is with the regiment, he is too tired to write long
letters. I know where she kept that packet she had--and
can steal in and out of her chamber like Iachimo--like
Iachimo? No--that is a bad part. I will only act
Moonshine, and peep harmless into the bed where faith and
beauty and innocence lie dreaming.
But if Osborne's were short and soldierlike letters, it
must be confessed, that were Miss Sedley's letters to Mr.
Osborne to be published, we should have to extend this
novel to such a multiplicity of volumes as not the most
sentimental reader could support; that she not only filled
sheets of large paper, but crossed them with the most
astonishing perverseness; that she wrote whole pages out
of poetry-books without the least pity; that she
underlined words and passages with quite a frantic emphasis;
and, in fine, gave the usual tokens of her condition. She
wasn't a heroine. Her letters were full of repetition. She
wrote rather doubtful grammar sometimes, and in her
verses took all sorts of liberties with the metre. But oh,
mesdames, if you are not allowed to touch the heart
sometimes in spite of syntax, and are not to be loved
until you all know the difference between trimeter and
tetrameter, may all Poetry go to the deuce, and every
schoolmaster perish miserably!
CHAPTER XIII
Sentimental and Otherwise
I fear the gentleman to whom Miss Amelia's letters were
addressed was rather an obdurate critic. Such a number
of notes followed Lieutenant Osborne about the country,
that he became almost ashamed of the jokes of his
mess-room companions regarding them, and ordered his
servant never to deliver them except at his private apartment.
He was seen lighting his cigar with one, to the horror of
Captain Dobbin, who, it is my belief, would have given
a bank-note for the document.
For some time George strove to keep the liaison a
secret. There was a woman in the case, that he admitted.
"And not the first either," said Ensign Spooney to Ensign
Stubble. "That Osborne's a devil of a fellow. There was a
judge's daughter at Demerara went almost mad about
him; then there was that beautiful quadroon girl, Miss
Pye, at St. Vincent's, you know; and since he's been
home, they say he's a regular Don Giovanni, by Jove."
Stubble and Spooney thought that to be a "regular
Don Giovanni, by Jove" was one of the finest qualities a
man could possess, and Osborne's reputation was
prodigious amongst the young men of the regiment. He
was famous in field-sports, famous at a song, famous on
parade; free with his money, which was bountifully
supplied by his father. His coats were better made than
any man's in the regiment, and he had more of them. He
was adored by the men. He could drink more than any
officer of the whole mess, including old Heavytop, the
colonel. He could spar better than Knuckles, the private
(who would have been a corporal but for his drunkenness,
and who had been in the prize-ring); and was the best
batter and bowler, out and out, of the regimental club.
He rode his own horse, Greased Lightning, and won the
Garrison cup at Quebec races. There were other people
besides Amelia who worshipped him. Stubble and
Spooney thought him a sort of Apollo; Dobbin took him
to be an Admirable Crichton; and Mrs. Major O'Dowd
acknowledged he was an elegant young fellow, and put
her in mind of Fitzjurld Fogarty, Lord Castlefogarty's
second son.
Well, Stubble and Spooney and the rest indulged in
most romantic conjectures regarding this female
correspondent of Osborne's--opining that it was a Duchess in
London who was in love with him--or that it was a
General's daughter, who was engaged to somebody else,
and madly attached to him--or that it was a Member of
Parliament's lady, who proposed four horses and an
elopement--or that it was some other victim of a passion
delightfully exciting, romantic, and disgraceful to all
parties, on none of which conjectures would Osborne throw
the least light, leaving his young admirers and friends to
invent and arrange their whole history.
And the real state of the case would never have been
known at all in the regiment but for Captain Dobbin's
indiscretion. The Captain was eating his breakfast one
day in the mess-room, while Cackle, the assistant-surgeon,
and the two above-named worthies were speculating upon
Osborne's intrigue--Stubble holding out that the lady
was a Duchess about Queen Charlotte's court, and Cackle
vowing she was an opera-singer of the worst reputation.
At this idea Dobbin became so moved, that though his
mouth was full of eggs and bread-and-butter at the time,
and though he ought not to have spoken at all, yet he
couldn't help blurting out, "Cackle, you're a stupid fool.
You're always talking nonsense and scandal. Osborne is
not going to run off with a Duchess or ruin a milliner.
Miss Sedley is one of the most charming young women
that ever lived. He's been engaged to her ever so long;
and the man who calls her names had better not do so
in my hearing." With which, turning exceedingly red,
Dobbin ceased speaking, and almost choked himself with
a cup of tea. The story was over the regiment in half-an-
hour; and that very evening Mrs. Major O'Dowd wrote
off to her sister Glorvina at O'Dowdstown not to hurry
from Dublin--young Osborne being prematurely engaged
already.
She complimented the Lieutenant in an appropriate
speech over a glass of whisky-toddy that evening, and he
went home perfectly furious to quarrel with Dobbin (who
had declined Mrs. Major O'Dowd's party, and sat in his
own room playing the flute, and, I believe, writing poetry
in a very melancholy manner)--to quarrel with Dobbin
for betraying his secret.
"Who the deuce asked you to talk about my affairs?"
Osborne shouted indignantly. "Why the devil is all the
regiment to know that I am going to be married? Why is
that tattling old harridan, Peggy O'Dowd, to make free
with my name at her d--d supper-table, and advertise
my engagement over the three kingdoms? After all, what
right have you to say I am engaged, or to meddle in my
business at all, Dobbin?"
"It seems to me," Captain Dobbin began.
"Seems be hanged, Dobbin," his junior interrupted
him. "I am under obligations to you, I know it, a d--d
deal too well too; but I won't be always sermonised by
you because you're five years my senior. I'm hanged if
I'll stand your airs of superiority and infernal pity and
patronage. Pity and patronage! I should like to know in
what I'm your inferior?"
"Are you engaged?" Captain Dobbin interposed.
"What the devil's that to you or any one here if I am?"
"Are you ashamed of it?" Dobbin resumed.
"What right have you to ask me that question, sir? I
should like to know," George said.
"Good God, you don't mean to say you want to break
off?" asked Dobbin, starting up.
"In other words, you ask me if I'm a man of honour,"
said Osborne, fiercely; "is that what you mean? You've
adopted such a tone regarding me lately that I'm --
if I'll bear it any more."
"What have I done? I've told you you were neglecting
a sweet girl, George. I've told you that when you go to
town you ought to go to her, and not to the gambling-
houses about St. James's."
"You want your money back, I suppose," said George,
with a sneer.
"Of course I do--I always did, didn't I?" says Dobbin.
"You speak like a generous fellow."
"No, hang it, William, I beg your pardon"--here
George interposed in a fit of remorse; "you have been my
friend in a hundred ways, Heaven knows. You've got me
out of a score of scrapes. When Crawley of the Guards
won that sum of money of me I should have been done
but for you: I know I should. But you shouldn't deal so
hardly with me; you shouldn't be always catechising me.
I am very fond of Amelia; I adore her, and that sort of
thing. Don't look angry. She's faultless; I know she is.
But you see there's no fun in winning a thing unless you
play for it. Hang it: the regiment's just back from the
West Indies, I must have a little fling, and then when I'm
married I'll reform; I will upon my honour, now. And--I
say--Dob--don't be angry with me, and I'll give you a
hundred next month, when I know my father will stand
something handsome; and I'll ask Heavytop for leave,
and I'll go to town, and see Amelia to-morrow--there
now, will that satisfy you?"
"It is impossible to be long angry with you, George,"
said the good-natured Captain; "and as for the money,
old boy, you know if I wanted it you'd share your last
shilling with me."
"That I would, by Jove, Dobbin," George said, with
the greatest generosity, though by the way he never had
any money to spare.
"Only I wish you had sown those wild oats of yours,
George. If you could have seen poor little Miss Emmy's
face when she asked me about you the other day, you
would have pitched those billiard-balls to the deuce. Go
and comfort her, you rascal. Go and write her a long
letter. Do something to make her happy; a very little will."
"I believe she's d--d fond of me," the Lieutenant said,
with a self-satisfied air; and went off to finish the evening
with some jolly fellows in the mess-room.
Amelia meanwhile, in Russell Square, was looking at
the moon, which was shining upon that peaceful spot, as
well as upon the square of the Chatham barracks, where
Lieutenant Osborne was quartered, and thinking to
herself how her hero was employed. Perhaps he is visiting
the sentries, thought she; perhaps he is bivouacking;
perhaps he is attending the couch of a wounded comrade, or
studying the art of war up in his own desolate chamber.
And her kind thoughts sped away as if they were angels
and had wings, and flying down the river to Chatham
and Rochester, strove to peep into the barracks where
George was. . . . All things considered, I think it was
as well the gates were shut, and the sentry allowed no
one to pass; so that the poor little white-robed angel
could not hear the songs those young fellows were
roaring over the whisky-punch.
The day after the little conversation at Chatham
barracks, young Osborne, to show that he would be as good
as his word, prepared to go to town, thereby incurring
Captain Dobbin's applause. "I should have liked to make her