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"Is he a presentable sort of a person?" the aunt
inquired.
"Presentable?--oh, very well. You wouldn't see any
difference," Captain Crawley answered. "Do let's have
him, when you begin to see a few people; and his
whatdyecallem--his inamorato--eh, Miss Sharp; that's what
you call it--comes. Gad, I'll write him a note, and have
him; and I'll try if he can play piquet as well as billiards.
Where does he live, Miss Sharp?"
Miss Sharp told Crawley the Lieutenant's town address;
and a few days after this conversation, Lieutenant
Osborne received a letter, in Captain Rawdon's
schoolboy hand, and enclosing a note of invitation from
Miss Crawley.
Rebecca despatched also an invitation to her darling
Amelia, who, you may be sure, was ready enough to
accept it when she heard that George was to be of the
party. It was arranged that Amelia was to spend the
morning with the ladies of Park Lane, where all were
very kind to her. Rebecca patronised her with calm
superiority: she was so much the cleverer of the two, and
her friend so gentle and unassuming, that she always
yielded when anybody chose to command, and so took
Rebecca's orders with perfect meekness and good humour.
Miss Crawley's graciousness was also remarkable. She
continued her raptures about little Amelia, talked about
her before her face as if she were a doll, or a servant,
or a picture, and admired her with the most benevolent
wonder possible. I admire that admiration which the
genteel world sometimes extends to the commonalty.
There is no more agreeable object in life than to see
Mayfair folks condescending. Miss Crawley's prodigious
benevolence rather fatigued poor little Amelia, and I am
not sure that of the three ladies in Park Lane she did
not find honest Miss Briggs the most agreeable. She
sympathised with Briggs as with all neglected or gentle
people: she wasn't what you call a woman of spirit.
George came to dinner--a repast en garcon with
Captain Crawley.
The great family coach of the Osbornes transported
him to Park Lane from Russell Square; where the young
ladies, who were not themselves invited, and professed
the greatest indifference at that slight, nevertheless looked
at Sir Pitt Crawley's name in the baronetage; and learned
everything which that work had to teach about the
Crawley family and their pedigree, and the Binkies, their
relatives, &c., &c. Rawdon Crawley received George Osborne
with great frankness and graciousness: praised his play at
billiards: asked him when he would have his revenge:
was interested about Osborne's regiment: and would have
proposed piquet to him that very evening, but Miss
Crawley absolutely forbade any gambling in her house;
so that the young Lieutenant's purse was not lightened
by his gallant patron, for that day at least. However, they
made an engagement for the next, somewhere: to look
at a horse that Crawley had to sell, and to try him in the
Park; and to dine together, and to pass the evening with
some jolly fellows. "That is, if you're not on duty to that
pretty Miss Sedley," Crawley said, with a knowing wink.
"Monstrous nice girl, 'pon my honour, though, Osborne,"
he was good enough to add. "Lots of tin, I suppose, eh?"
Osborne wasn't on duty; he would join Crawley with
pleasure: and the latter, when they met the next day,
praised his new friend's horsemanship--as he might with
perfect honesty--and introduced him to three or four
young men of the first fashion, whose acquaintance
immensely elated the simple young officer.
"How's little Miss Sharp, by-the-bye?" Osborne inquired
of his friend over their wine, with a dandified air.
"Good-natured little girl that. Does she suit you well at
Queen's Crawley? Miss Sedley liked her a good deal last
year."
Captain Crawley looked savagely at the Lieutenant out
of his little blue eyes, and watched him when he went up
to resume his acquaintance with the fair governess. Her
conduct must have relieved Crawley if there was any
jealousy in the bosom of that life-guardsman.
When the young men went upstairs, and after
Osborne's introduction to Miss Crawley, he walked up to
Rebecca with a patronising, easy swagger. He was going
to be kind to her and protect her. He would even shake
hands with her, as a friend of Amelia's; and saying, "Ah,
Miss Sharp! how-dy-doo?" held out his left hand towards
her, expecting that she would be quite confounded at
the honour.
Miss Sharp put out her right forefinger, and gave him
a little nod, so cool and killing, that Rawdon Crawley,
watching the operations from the other room, could
hardly restrain his laughter as he saw the Lieutenant's
entire discomfiture; the start he gave, the pause, and the
perfect clumsiness with which he at length condescended
to take the finger which was offered for his embrace.
"She'd beat the devil, by Jove!" the Captain said, in a
rapture; and the Lieutenant, by way of beginning the
conversation, agreeably asked Rebecca how she liked her
new place.
"My place?" said Miss Sharp, coolly, "how kind of you
to remind me of it! It's a tolerably good place: the wages
are pretty good--not so good as Miss Wirt's, I believe,
with your sisters in Russell Square. How are those young
ladies?--not that I ought to ask."
"Why not?" Mr. Osborne said, amazed.
"Why, they never condescended to speak to me, or to
ask me into their house, whilst I was staying with Amelia;
but we poor governesses, you know, are used to slights of
this sort."
"My dear Miss Sharp!" Osborne ejaculated.
"At least in some families," Rebecca continued. "You
can't think what a difference there is though. We are not
so wealthy in Hampshire as you lucky folks of the City.
But then I am in a gentleman's family--good old
English stock. I suppose you know Sir Pitt's father refused a
peerage. And you see how I am treated. I am pretty
comfortable. Indeed it is rather a good place. But how
very good of you to inquire!"
Osborne was quite savage. The little governess
patronised him and persiffled him until this young
British Lion felt quite uneasy; nor could he muster sufficient
presence of mind to find a pretext for backing out
of this most delectable conversation.
"I thought you liked the City families pretty well," he
said, haughtily.
"Last year you mean, when I was fresh from that
horrid vulgar school? Of course I did. Doesn't every girl like
to come home for the holidays? And how was I to know
any better? But oh, Mr. Osborne, what a difference
eighteen months' experience makes! eighteen months spent,
pardon me for saying so, with gentlemen. As for dear
Amelia, she, I grant you, is a pearl, and would be charming anywhere. There now, I see you are beginning to be
in a good humour; but oh these queer odd City people!
And Mr. Jos--how is that wonderful Mr. Joseph?"
"It seems to me you didn't dislike that wonderful Mr.
Joseph last year," Osborne said kindly.
"How severe of you! Well, entre nous, I didn't break
my heart about him; yet if he had asked me to do what
you mean by your looks (and very expressive and kind
they are, too), I wouldn't have said no."
Mr. Osborne gave a look as much as to say, "Indeed,
how very obliging!"
"What an honour to have had you for a brother-in-law,
you are thinking? To be sister-in-law to George
Osborne, Esquire, son of John Osborne, Esquire, son of--
what was your grandpapa, Mr. Osborne? Well, don't be
angry. You can't help your pedigree, and I quite agree
with you that I would have married Mr. Joe Sedley; for
could a poor penniless girl do better? Now you know
the whole secret. I'm frank and open; considering all
things, it was very kind of you to allude to the
circumstance--very kind and polite. Amelia dear, Mr.
Osborne and I were talking about your poor brother Joseph.
How is he?"
Thus was George utterly routed. Not that Rebecca was
in the right; but she had managed most successfully to
put him in the wrong. And he now shamefully fled,
feeling, if he stayed another minute, that he would have
been made to look foolish in the presence of Amelia.
Though Rebecca had had the better of him, George was
above the meanness of talebearing or revenge upon a
lady--only he could not help cleverly confiding to
Captain Crawley, next day, some notions of his regarding
Miss Rebecca--that she was a sharp one, a dangerous
one, a desperate flirt, &c.; in all of which opinions
Crawley agreed laughingly, and with every one of which Miss
Rebecca was made acquainted before twenty-four hours
were over. They added to her original regard for Mr.
Osborne. Her woman's instinct had told her that it was
George who had interrupted the success of her first
love-passage, and she esteemed him accordingly.
"I only just warn you," he said to Rawdon Crawley,
with a knowing look--he had bought the horse, and lost
some score of guineas after dinner, "I just warn you--I
know women, and counsel you to be on the look-out."
"Thank you, my boy," said Crawley, with a look of
peculiar gratitude. "You're wide awake, I see." And
George went off, thinking Crawley was quite right.
He told Amelia of what he had done, and how he had
counselled Rawdon Crawley--a devilish good,
straightforward fellow--to be on his guard against that
little sly, scheming Rebecca.
"Against whom?" Amelia cried.
"Your friend the governess.--Don't look so astonished."
"O George, what have you done?" Amelia said. For her
woman's eyes, which Love had made sharp-sighted, had
in one instant discovered a secret which was invisible to
Miss Crawley, to poor virgin Briggs, and above all,
to the stupid peepers of that young whiskered prig,
Lieutenant Osborne.
For as Rebecca was shawling her in an upper apartment,
where these two friends had an opportunity for a
little of that secret talking and conspiring which form
the delight of female life, Amelia, coming up to Rebecca,
and taking her two little hands in hers, said, "Rebecca,
I see it all."
Rebecca kissed her.
And regarding this delightful secret, not one syllable
more was said by either of the young women. But it was
destined to come out before long.
Some short period after the above events, and Miss
Rebecca Sharp still remaining at her patroness's house
in Park Lane, one more hatchment might have been seen
in Great Gaunt Street, figuring amongst the many which
usually ornament that dismal quarter. It was over Sir
Pitt Crawley's house; but it did not indicate the worthy
baronet's demise. It was a feminine hatchment, and
indeed a few years back had served as a funeral compliment
to Sir Pitt's old mother, the late dowager Lady Crawley.
Its period of service over, the hatchment had come
down from the front of the house, and lived in retirement somewhere in the back premises of Sir Pitt's mansion.
It reappeared now for poor Rose Dawson. Sir Pitt
was a widower again. The arms quartered on the shield
along with his own were not, to be sure, poor Rose's.
She had no arms. But the cherubs painted on the
scutcheon answered as well for her as for Sir Pitt's
mother, and Resurgam was written under the coat,
flanked by the Crawley Dove and Serpent. Arms and
Hatchments, Resurgam.--Here is an opportunity for
moralising!
Mr. Crawley had tended that otherwise friendless
bedside. She went out of the world strengthened by such
words and comfort as he could give her. For many years
his was the only kindness she ever knew; the only
friendship that solaced in any way that feeble, lonely soul.
Her heart was dead long before her body. She had sold
it to become Sir Pitt Crawley's wife. Mothers and
daughters are making the same bargain every day in
Vanity Fair.
When the demise took place, her husband was in
London attending to some of his innumerable schemes,
and busy with his endless lawyers. He had found time,
nevertheless, to call often in Park Lane, and to despatch
many notes to Rebecca, entreating her, enjoining her,
commanding her to return to her young pupils in the
country, who were now utterly without companionship
during their mother's illness. But Miss Crawley would
not hear of her departure; for though there was no lady
of fashion in London who would desert her friends more
complacently as soon as she was tired of their society,
and though few tired of them sooner, yet as long as her
engoument lasted her attachment was prodigious, and
she clung still with the greatest energy to Rebecca.
The news of Lady Crawley's death provoked no more
grief or comment than might have been expected in Miss
Crawley's family circle. "I suppose I must put off my
party for the 3rd," Miss Crawley said; and added, after a
pause, "I hope my brother will have the decency not to
marry again." "What a confounded rage Pitt will be in if
he does," Rawdon remarked, with his usual regard for his
elder brother. Rebecca said nothing. She seemed by far the
gravest and most impressed of the family. She left the
room before Rawdon went away that day; but they met
by chance below, as he was going away after taking leave,
and had a parley together.
On the morrow, as Rebecca was gazing from the window,
she startled Miss Crawley, who was placidly occupied
with a French novel, by crying out in an alarmed
tone, "Here's Sir Pitt, Ma'am!" and the Baronet's knock
followed this announcement.
"My dear, I can't see him. I won't see him. Tell Bowls
not at home, or go downstairs and say I'm too ill to
receive any one. My nerves really won't bear my brother
at this moment," cried out Miss Crawley, and resumed
the novel.
"She's too ill to see you, sir," Rebecca said, tripping
down to Sir Pitt, who was preparing to ascend.
"So much the better," Sir Pitt answered. "I want to
see YOU, Miss Becky. Come along a me into the parlour,"
and they entered that apartment together.
"I wawnt you back at Queen's Crawley, Miss," the
baronet said, fixing his eyes upon her, and taking off his
black gloves and his hat with its great crape hat-band.
His eyes had such a strange look, and fixed upon her so
steadfastly, that Rebecca Sharp began almost to tremble.
"I hope to come soon," she said in a low voice, "as
soon as Miss Crawley is better--and return to--to the
dear children."
"You've said so these three months, Becky," replied
Sir Pitt, "and still you go hanging on to my sister, who'll
fling you off like an old shoe, when she's wore you out.
I tell you I want you. I'm going back to the Vuneral.
Will you come back? Yes or no?"
"I daren't--I don't think--it would be right--to be
alone--with you, sir," Becky said, seemingly in great
agitation.
"I say agin, I want you," Sir Pitt said, thumping the
table. "I can't git on without you. I didn't see what it was
till you went away. The house all goes wrong. It's not
the same place. All my accounts has got muddled agin.
You MUST come back. Do come back. Dear Becky, do
come."
"Come--as what, sir?" Rebecca gasped out.
"Come as Lady Crawley, if you like," the Baronet
said, grasping his crape hat. "There! will that zatusfy you?
Come back and be my wife. Your vit vor't. Birth be
hanged. You're as good a lady as ever I see. You've got
more brains in your little vinger than any baronet's wife
in the county. Will you come? Yes or no?"
"Oh, Sir Pitt!" Rebecca said, very much moved.
"Say yes, Becky," Sir Pitt continued. "I'm an old man,
but a good'n. I'm good for twenty years. I'll make you
happy, zee if I don't. You shall do what you like; spend
what you like; and 'ave it all your own way. I'll make
you a zettlement. I'll do everything reglar. Look year!"
and the old man fell down on his knees and leered at
her like a satyr.
Rebecca started back a picture of consternation. In
the course of this history we have never seen her lose her
presence of mind; but she did now, and wept some of the
most genuine tears that ever fell from her eyes.
"Oh, Sir Pitt!" she said. "Oh, sir--I--I'm married
ALREADY."
CHAPTER XV
In Which Rebecca's Husband Appears
for a Short Time
Every reader of a sentimental turn (and we desire
no other) must have been pleased with the
tableau with which the last act of our little
drama concluded; for what can be prettier than
an image of Love on his knees before Beauty?
But when Love heard that awful confession from
Beauty that she was married already, he
bounced up from his attitude of humility on the carpet,
uttering exclamations which caused poor little Beauty to
be more frightened than she was when she made her
avowal. "Married; you're joking," the Baronet cried, after
the first explosion of rage and wonder. "You're
making vun of me, Becky. Who'd ever go to marry you
without a shilling to your vortune?"
"Married! married!" Rebecca said, in an agony of tears
--her voice choking with emotion, her handkerchief up
to her ready eyes, fainting against the mantelpiece a
figure of woe fit to melt the most obdurate heart. "0
Sir Pitt, dear Sir Pitt, do not think me ungrateful for all
your goodness to me. It is only your generosity that has
extorted my secret."
"Generosity be hanged!" Sir Pitt roared out. "Who is
it tu, then, you're married? Where was it?"
"Let me come back with you to the country, sir! Let
me watch over you as faithfully as ever! Don't, don't
separate me from dear Queen's Crawley!"
"The feller has left you, has he?" the Baronet said,
beginning, as he fancied, to comprehend. "Well, Becky--
come back if you like. You can't eat your cake and have
it. Any ways I made you a vair offer. Coom back as
governess--you shall have it all your own way." She
held out one hand. She cried fit to break her heart; her
ringlets fell over her face, and over the marble
mantelpiece where she laid it.
"So the rascal ran off, eh?" Sir Pitt said, with a hideous
attempt at consolation. "Never mind, Becky, I'LL take
care of 'ee."
"Oh, sir! it would be the pride of my life to go back
to Queen's Crawley, and take care of the children, and
of you as formerly, when you said you were pleased with
the services of your little Rebecca. When I think of what
you have just offered me, my heart fills with gratitude
indeed it does. I can't be your wife, sir; let me--let me be
your daughter."
Saying which, Rebecca went down on HER knees in a
most tragical way, and, taking Sir Pitt's horny black
hand between her own two (which were very pretty and
white, and as soft as satin), looked up in his face with an
expression of exquisite pathos and confidence, when--
when the door opened, and Miss Crawley sailed in.
Mrs. Firkin and Miss Briggs, who happened by chance
to be at the parlour door soon after the Baronet and
Rebecca entered the apartment, had also seen accidentally,
through the keyhole, the old gentleman prostrate
before the governess, and had heard the generous proposal
which he made her. It was scarcely out of his mouth
when Mrs. Firkin and Miss Briggs had streamed up the
stairs, had rushed into the drawing-room where Miss
Crawley was reading the French novel, and had given
that old lady the astounding intelligence that Sir Pitt
was on his knees, proposing to Miss Sharp. And if you
calculate the time for the above dialogue to take place
--the time for Briggs and Firkin to fly to the drawing-
room--the time for Miss Crawley to be astonished, and
to drop her volume of Pigault le Brun--and the time for
her to come downstairs--you will see how exactly
accurate this history is, and how Miss Crawley must have
appeared at the very instant when Rebecca had assumed
the attitude of humility.
"It is the lady on the ground, and not the gentleman,"
Miss Crawley said, with a look and voice of great scorn.
"They told me that YOU were on your knees, Sir Pitt: do
kneel once more, and let me see this pretty couple!"
"I have thanked Sir Pitt Crawley, Ma'am," Rebecca
said, rising, "and have told him that--that I never can
become Lady Crawley."
"Refused him!" Miss Crawley said, more bewildered
than ever. Briggs and Firkin at the door opened the eyes
of astonishment and the lips of wonder.
"Yes--refused," Rebecca continued, with a sad,
tearful voice.
"And am I to credit my ears that you absolutely
proposed to her, Sir Pitt?" the old lady asked.
"Ees," said the Baronet, "I did."
"And she refused you as she says?"
"Ees," Sir Pitt said, his features on a broad grin.
"It does not seem to break your heart at any rate,"
Miss Crawley remarked.
"Nawt a bit," answered Sir Pitt, with a coolness and
good-humour which set Miss Crawley almost mad with
bewilderment. That an old gentleman of station should
fall on his knees to a penniless governess, and burst out
laughing because she refused to marry him--that a
penniless governess should refuse a Baronet with four
thousand a year--these were mysteries which Miss Crawley
could never comprehend. It surpassed any complications
of intrigue in her favourite Pigault le Brun.
"I'm glad you think it good sport, brother," she
continued, groping wildly through this amazement.
"Vamous," said Sir Pitt. "Who'd ha' thought it! what a
sly little devil! what a little fox it waws!" he muttered
to himself, chuckling with pleasure.
"Who'd have thought what?" cries Miss Crawley,
stamping with her foot. "Pray, Miss Sharp, are you
waiting for the Prince Regent's divorce, that you don't think
our family good enough for you?"
"My attitude," Rebecca said, "when you came in,
ma'am, did not look as if I despised such an honour as
this good--this noble man has deigned to offer me. Do
you think I have no heart? Have you all loved me, and
been so kind to the poor orphan--deserted--girl, and
am I to feel nothing? O my friends! O my benefactors!
may not my love, my life, my duty, try to repay the
confidence you have shown me? Do you grudge me even
gratitude, Miss Crawley? It is too much--my heart is
too full"; and she sank down in a chair so pathetically,
that most of the audience present were perfectly melted
with her sadness.
"Whether you marry me or not, you're a good little
girl, Becky, and I'm your vriend, mind," said Sir Pitt, and
putting on his crape-bound hat, he walked away--greatly
to Rebecca's relief; for it was evident that her secret
was unrevealed to Miss Crawley, and she had the
advantage of a brief reprieve.
Putting her handkerchief to her eyes, and nodding
away honest Briggs, who would have followed her
upstairs, she went up to her apartment; while Briggs and
Miss Crawley, in a high state of excitement, remained
to discuss the strange event, and Firkin, not less moved,
dived down into the kitchen regions, and talked of it
with all the male and female company there. And so
impressed was Mrs. Firkin with the news, that she thought
proper to write off by that very night's post, "with her
humble duty to Mrs. Bute Crawley and the family at the
Rectory, and Sir Pitt has been and proposed for to marry
Miss Sharp, wherein she has refused him, to the wonder
of all."
The two ladies in the dining-room (where worthy
Miss Briggs was delighted to be admitted once more to
confidential conversation with her patroness) wondered
to their hearts' content at Sir Pitt's offer, and Rebecca's
refusal; Briggs very acutely suggesting that there must
have been some obstacle in the shape of a previous
attachment, otherwise no young woman in her senses would
ever have refused so advantageous a proposal.
"You would have accepted it yourself, wouldn't you,
Briggs?" Miss Crawley said, kindly.
"Would it not be a privilege to be Miss Crawley's
sister?" Briggs replied, with meek evasion.
"Well, Becky would have made a good Lady Crawley,
after all," Miss Crawley remarked (who was mollified by
the girl's refusal, and very liberal and generous now there
was no call for her sacrifices). "She has brains in plenty
(much more wit in her little finger than you have, my
poor dear Briggs, in all your head). Her manners are
excellent, now I have formed her. She is a Montmorency,
Briggs, and blood is something, though I despise it for
my part; and she would have held her own amongst those
pompous stupid Hampshire people much better than that
unfortunate ironmonger's daughter."
Briggs coincided as usual, and the "previous attachment"
was then discussed in conjectures. "You poor
friendless creatures are always having some foolish
tendre," Miss Crawley said. "You yourself, you know,
were in love with a writing-master (don't cry, Briggs--
you're always crying, and it won't bring him to life again),
and I suppose this unfortunate Becky has been silly
and sentimental too--some apothecary, or house-steward,
or painter, or young curate, or something of that sort."
"Poor thing! poor thing!" says Briggs (who was thinking
of twenty-four years back, and that hectic young
writing-master whose lock of yellow hair, and whose
letters, beautiful in their illegibility, she cherished in
her old desk upstairs). "Poor thing, poor thing!" says
Briggs. Once more she was a fresh-cheeked lass of eighteen;
she was at evening church, and the hectic writing-master
and she were quavering out of the same psalm-book.
"After such conduct on Rebecca's part," Miss Crawley
said enthusiastically, "our family should do something.
Find out who is the objet, Briggs. I'll set him up in a
shop; or order my portrait of him, you know; or speak
to my cousin, the Bishop and I'll doter Becky, and
we'll have a wedding, Briggs, and you shall make the
breakfast, and be a bridesmaid."
Briggs declared that it would be delightful, and vowed
that her dear Miss Crawley was always kind and generous,
and went up to Rebecca's bedroom to console her
and prattle about the offer, and the refusal, and the
cause thereof; and to hint at the generous intentions of
Miss Crawley, and to find out who was the gentleman
that had the mastery of Miss Sharp's heart.
Rebecca was very kind, very affectionate and affected
--responded to Briggs's offer of tenderness with grateful
fervour--owned there was a secret attachment--a
delicious mystery--what a pity Miss Briggs had not
remained half a minute longer at the keyhole! Rebecca
might, perhaps, have told more: but five minutes after
Miss Briggs's arrival in Rebecca's apartment, Miss Crawley
actually made her appearance there--an unheard-of
honour--her impatience had overcome her; she could not
wait for the tardy operations of her ambassadress: so
she came in person, and ordered Briggs out of the room.
And expressing her approval of Rebecca's conduct, she
asked particulars of the interview, and the previous
transactions which had brought about the astonishing
offer of Sir Pitt.
Rebecca said she had long had some notion of the
partiality with which Sir Pitt honoured her (for he was
in the habit of making his feelings known in a very frank
and unreserved manner) but, not to mention private
reasons with which she would not for the present trouble
Miss Crawley, Sir Pitt's age, station, and habits were
such as to render a marriage quite impossible; and
could a woman with any feeling of self-respect and any
decency listen to proposals at such a moment, when
the funeral of the lover's deceased wife had not actually
taken place?
"Nonsense, my dear, you would never have refused
him had there not been some one else in the case," Miss
Crawley said, coming to her point at once. "Tell me the
private reasons; what are the private reasons? There is
some one; who is it that has touched your heart?"
Rebecca cast down her eyes, and owned there was.
"You have guessed right, dear lady," she said, with a
sweet simple faltering voice. "You wonder at one so
poor and friendless having an attachment, don't you?
I have never heard that poverty was any safeguard
against it. I wish it were."
"My poor dear child," cried Miss Crawley, who was
always quite ready to be sentimental, "is our passion
unrequited, then? Are we pining in secret? Tell me all,
and let me console you."
"I wish you could, dear Madam," Rebecca said in the
same tearful tone. "Indeed, indeed, I need it." And she
laid her head upon Miss Crawley's shoulder and wept
there so naturally that the old lady, surprised into
sympathy, embraced her with an almost maternal
kindness, uttered many soothing protests of regard and
affection for her, vowed that she loved her as a daughter,
and would do everything in her power to serve her. "And
now who is it, my dear? Is it that pretty Miss Sedley's
brother? You said something about an affair with him.
I'll ask him here, my dear. And you shall have him:
indeed you shall."
"Don't ask me now," Rebecca said. "You shall know
all soon. Indeed you shall. Dear kind Miss Crawley--
dear friend, may I say so?"
"That you may, my child," the old lady replied, kissing
her.
"I can't tell you now," sobbed out Rebecca, "I am
very miserable. But O! love me always--promise you will
love me always." And in the midst of mutual tears--for
the emotions of the younger woman had awakened the
sympathies of the elder--this promise was solemnly given
by Miss Crawley, who left her little protege, blessing
and admiring her as a dear, artless, tender-hearted,
affectionate, incomprehensible creature.
And now she was left alone to think over the sudden
and wonderful events of the day, and of what had been
and what might have been. What think you were the
private feelings of Miss, no (begging her pardon) of
Mrs. Rebecca? If, a few pages back, the present writer
claimed the privilege of peeping into Miss Amelia
Sedley's bedroom, and understanding with the omniscience
of the novelist all the gentle pains and passions which
were tossing upon that innocent pillow, why should he
not declare himself to be Rebecca's confidante too,
master of her secrets, and seal-keeper of that young
woman's conscience?
Well, then, in the first place, Rebecca gave way to
some very sincere and touching regrets that a piece of
marvellous good fortune should have been so near her,
and she actually obliged to decline it. In this natural
emotion every properly regulated mind will certainly
share. What good mother is there that would not
commiserate a penniless spinster, who might have been
my lady, and have shared four thousand a year? What
well-bred young person is there in all Vanity Fair, who
will not feel for a hard-working, ingenious, meritorious
girl, who gets such an honourable, advantageous, provoking
offer, just at the very moment when it is out of her
power to accept it? I am sure our friend Becky's
disappointment deserves and will command every
sympathy.
I remember one night being in the Fair myself, at an
evening party. I observed old Miss Toady there also
present, single out for her special attentions and flattery
little Mrs. Briefless, the barrister's wife, who is of a
good family certainly, but, as we all know, is as poor
as poor can be.
What, I asked in my own mind, can cause this
obsequiousness on the part of Miss Toady; has Briefless
got a county court, or has his wife had a fortune left her?
Miss Toady explained presently, with that simplicity
which distinguishes all her conduct. "You know," she
said, "Mrs.Briefless is granddaughter of Sir John Redhand,
who is so ill at Cheltenham that he can't last six
months. Mrs. Briefless's papa succeeds; so you see she
will be a baronet's daughter." And Toady asked Briefless
and his wife to dinner the very next week.
If the mere chance of becoming a baronet's daughter
can procure a lady such homage in the world, surely,
surely we may respect the agonies of a young woman
who has lost the opportunity of becoming a baronet's
wife. Who would have dreamed of Lady Crawley dying
so soon? She was one of those sickly women that
might have lasted these ten years--Rebecca thought to
herself, in all the woes of repentance--and I might have
been my lady! I might have led that old man whither I
would. I might have thanked Mrs. Bute for her
patronage, and Mr. Pitt for his insufferable condescension. I
would have had the town-house newly furnished and
decorated. I would have had the handsomest carriage in
London, and a box at the opera; and I would have
been presented next season. All this might have been;
and now--now all was doubt and mystery.
But Rebecca was a young lady of too much resolution
and energy of character to permit herself much useless
and unseemly sorrow for the irrevocable past; so, having
devoted only the proper portion of regret to it, she wisely
turned her whole attention towards the future, which
was now vastly more important to her. And she
surveyed her position, and its hopes, doubts, and chances.
In the first place, she was MARRIED--that was a great
fact. Sir Pitt knew it. She was not so much surprised into
the avowal, as induced to make it by a sudden calculation.
It must have come some day: and why not now
as at a later period? He who would have married her
himself must at least be silent with regard to her marriage.
How Miss Crawley would bear the news--was the great
question. Misgivings Rebecca had; but she remembered
all Miss Crawley had said; the old lady's avowed
contempt for birth; her daring liberal opinions; her
general romantic propensities; her almost doting attachment
to her nephew, and her repeatedly expressed fondness for
Rebecca herself. She is so fond of him, Rebecca thought,
that she will forgive him anything: she is so used to me
that I don't think she could be comfortable without
me: when the eclaircissement comes there will be a
scene, and hysterics, and a great quarrel, and then a
great reconciliation. At all events, what use was there
in delaying? the die was thrown, and now or to-morrow
the issue must be the same. And so, resolved that Miss
Crawley should have the news, the young person
debated in her mind as to the best means of conveying it
to her; and whether she should face the storm that must
come, or fly and avoid it until its first fury was blown
over. In this state of meditation she wrote the following
letter:
Dearest Friend,
The great crisis which we have debated
about so often is COME. Half of my secret is known, and
I have thought and thought, until I am quite sure that
now is the time to reveal THE WHOLE OF THE MYSTERY. Sir
Pitt came to me this morning, and made--what do you
think?--A DECLARATION IN FORM. Think of that! Poor
little me. I might have been Lady Crawley. How pleased
Mrs. Bute would have been: and ma tante if I had taken
precedence of her! I might have been somebody's
mamma, instead of--O, I tremble, I tremble, when I
think how soon we must tell all!
Sir Pitt knows I am married, and not knowing to
whom, is not very much displeased as yet. Ma tante is
ACTUALLY ANGRY that I should have refused him. But she
is all kindness and graciousness. She condescends to say
I would have made him a good wife; and vows that
she will be a mother to your little Rebecca. She will be
shaken when she first hears the news. But need we fear
anything beyond a momentary anger? I think not: I AM
SURE not. She dotes upon you so (you naughty, good-for-
nothing man), that she would pardon you ANYTHING:
and, indeed, I believe, the next place in her heart is
mine: and that she would be miserable without me.
Dearest! something TELLS ME we shall conquer. You shall
leave that odious regiment: quit gaming, racing, and BE
A GOOD BOY; and we shall all live in Park Lane, and ma
tante shall leave us all her money.
I shall try and walk to-morrow at 3 in the usual place.
If Miss B. accompanies me, you must come to dinner,
and bring an answer, and put it in the third volume of
Porteus's Sermons. But, at all events, come to your own
R.
To Miss Eliza Styles,
At Mr. Barnet's, Saddler, Knightsbridge.
And I trust there is no reader of this little story who
has not discernment enough to perceive that the Miss
Eliza Styles (an old schoolfellow, Rebecca said, with
whom she had resumed an active correspondence of late,
and who used to fetch these letters from the saddler's),
wore brass spurs, and large curling mustachios, and was
indeed no other than Captain Rawdon Crawley.
CHAPTER XVI
The Letter on the Pincushion
How they were married is not of the slightest
consequence to anybody. What is to hinder a Captain who
is a major, and a young lady who is of age, from purchasing
a licence, and uniting themselves at any church in this
town? Who needs to be told, that if a woman has a will
she will assuredly find a way?--My belief is that one
day, when Miss Sharp had gone to pass the forenoon
with her dear friend Miss Amelia Sedley in Russell
Square, a lady very like her might have been seen
entering a church in the City, in company with a gentleman
with dyed mustachios, who, after a quarter of an hour's
interval, escorted her back to the hackney-coach in
waiting, and that this was a quiet bridal party.
And who on earth, after the daily experience we have,
can question the probability of a gentleman marrying
anybody? How many of the wise and learned have
married their cooks? Did not Lord Eldon himself, the
most prudent of men, make a runaway match? Were not
Achilles and Ajax both in love with their servant maids?
And are we to expect a heavy dragoon with strong
desires and small brains, who had never controlled a
passion in his life, to become prudent all of a sudden,
and to refuse to pay any price for an indulgence to
which he had a mind? If people only made prudent
marriages, what a stop to population there would be!
It seems to me, for my part, that Mr. Rawdon's marriage
was one of the honestest actions which we shall have to
record in any portion of that gentleman's biography which
has to do with the present history. No one will say it is
unmanly to be captivated by a woman, or, being
captivated, to marry her; and the admiration, the delight, the
passion, the wonder, the unbounded confidence, and frantic adoration with which, by degrees, this big warrior got
to regard the little Rebecca, were feelings which the ladies
at least will pronounce were not altogether discreditable
to him. When she sang, every note thrilled in his dull
soul, and tingled through his huge frame. When she spoke,
he brought all the force of his brains to listen and wonder.
If she was jocular, he used to revolve her jokes in his
mind, and explode over them half an hour afterwards in
the street, to the surprise of the groom in the tilbury by
his side, or the comrade riding with him in Rotten Row.
Her words were oracles to him, her smallest actions
marked by an infallible grace and wisdom. "How she
sings,--how she paints," thought he. "How she rode that
kicking mare at Queen's Crawley!" And he would say to
her in confidential moments, "By Jove, Beck, you're fit
to be Commander-in-Chief, or Archbishop of Canterbury,
by Jove." Is his case a rare one? and don't we see every
day in the world many an honest Hercules at the
apron-strings of Omphale, and great whiskered Samsons
prostrate in Delilah's lap?
When, then, Becky told him that the great crisis was
near, and the time for action had arrived, Rawdon
expressed himself as ready to act under her orders, as he
would be to charge with his troop at the command of his
colonel. There was no need for him to put his letter into
the third volume of Porteus. Rebecca easily found a
means to get rid of Briggs, her companion, and met her
faithful friend in "the usual place" on the next day. She
had thought over matters at night, and communicated to
Rawdon the result of her determinations. He agreed, of
course, to everything; was quite sure that it was all
right: that what she proposed was best; that Miss Crawley
would infallibly relent, or "come round," as he said, after
a time. Had Rebecca's resolutions been entirely different,
he would have followed them as implicitly. "You have
head enough for both of us, Beck," said he. "You're sure
to get us out of the scrape. I never saw your equal, and
I've met with some clippers in my time too." And with
this simple confession of faith, the love-stricken dragoon
left her to execute his part of the project which she had
formed for the pair.
It consisted simply in the hiring of quiet lodgings at
Brompton, or in the neighbourhood of the barracks, for
Captain and Mrs. Crawley. For Rebecca had determined,
and very prudently, we think, to fly. Rawdon was
only too happy at her resolve; he had been entreating
her to take this measure any time for weeks past. He
pranced off to engage the lodgings with all the impetuosity
of love. He agreed to pay two guineas a week so readily,
that the landlady regretted she had asked him so little.
He ordered in a piano, and half a nursery-house full of
flowers: and a heap of good things. As for shawls, kid
gloves, silk stockings, gold French watches, bracelets and
perfumery, he sent them in with the profusion of blind
love and unbounded credit. And having relieved his mind
by this outpouring of generosity, he went and dined
nervously at the club, waiting until the great moment of his
life should come.
The occurrences of the previous day; the admirable
conduct of Rebecca in refusing an offer so advantageous
to her, the secret unhappiness preying upon her, the
sweetness and silence with which she bore her affliction,
made Miss Crawley much more tender than usual. An
event of this nature, a marriage, or a refusal, or a
proposal, thrills through a whole household of women, and
sets all their hysterical sympathies at work. As an
observer of human nature, I regularly frequent St. George's,
Hanover Square, during the genteel marriage season; and
though I have never seen the bridegroom's male friends
give way to tears, or the beadles and officiating clergy
any way affected, yet it is not at all uncommon to see
women who are not in the least concerned in the
operations going on--old ladies who are long past marrying,
stout middle-aged females with plenty of sons and daughters,
let alone pretty young creatures in pink bonnets, who
are on their promotion, and may naturally take an
interest in the ceremony--I say it is quite common to see
the women present piping, sobbing, sniffling; hiding their
little faces in their little useless pocket-handkerchiefs;
and heaving, old and young, with emotion. When my
friend, the fashionable John Pimlico, married the lovely
Lady Belgravia Green Parker, the excitement was so
general that even the little snuffy old pew-opener who let me
into the seat was in tears. And wherefore? I inquired of
my own soul: she was not going to be married.
Miss Crawley and Briggs in a word, after the affair of
Sir Pitt, indulged in the utmost luxury of sentiment, and
Rebecca became an object of the most tender interest to
them. In her absence Miss Crawley solaced herself with
the most sentimental of the novels in her library. Little
Sharp, with her secret griefs, was the heroine of the day.
That night Rebecca sang more sweetly and talked more
pleasantly than she had ever been heard to do in Park
Lane. She twined herself round the heart of Miss Crawley.
She spoke lightly and laughingly of Sir Pitt's proposal,
ridiculed it as the foolish fancy of an old man; and her
eyes filled with tears, and Briggs's heart with unutterable
pangs of defeat, as she said she desired no other lot than
to remain for ever with her dear benefactress. "My dear
little creature," the old lady said, "I don't intend to let
you stir for years, that you may depend upon it. As for
going back to that odious brother of mine after what
has passed, it is out of the question. Here you stay with me
and Briggs. Briggs wants to go to see her relations very
often. Briggs, you may go when you like. But as for you,
my dear, you must stay and take care of the old woman."
If Rawdon Crawley had been then and there present,
instead of being at the club nervously drinking claret, the
pair might have gone down on their knees before the old
spinster, avowed all, and been forgiven in a twinkling.
But that good chance was denied to the young couple,
doubtless in order that this story might be written, in
which numbers of their wonderful adventures are narrated
--adventures which could never have occurred to them
if they had been housed and sheltered under the
comfortable uninteresting forgiveness of Miss Crawley.
Under Mrs. Firkin's orders, in the Park Lane establishment,
was a young woman from Hampshire, whose business it was,
among other duties, to knock at Miss Sharp's door with
that jug of hot water which Firkin would rather have
perished than have presented to the intruder. This
girl, bred on the family estate, had a brother in Captain
Crawley's troop, and if the truth were known, I daresay
it would come out that she was aware of certain arrangements,
which have a great deal to do with this history.
At any rate she purchased a yellow shawl, a pair of green
boots, and a light blue hat with a red feather with three
guineas which Rebecca gave her, and as little Sharp was
by no means too liberal with her money, no doubt it
was for services rendered that Betty Martin was so bribed.
On the second day after Sir Pitt Crawley's offer to
Miss Sharp, the sun rose as usual, and at the usual hour
Betty Martin, the upstairs maid, knocked at the door of
the governess's bedchamber.
No answer was returned, and she knocked again. Silence
was still uninterrupted; and Betty, with the hot water,
opened the door and entered the chamber.
The little white dimity bed was as smooth and trim as
on the day previous, when Betty's own hands had helped
to make it. Two little trunks were corded in one end of
the room; and on the table before the window--on the
pincushion the great fat pincushion lined with pink
inside, and twilled like a lady's nightcap--lay a letter. It
had been reposing there probably all night.
Betty advanced towards it on tiptoe, as if she were
afraid to awake it--looked at it, and round the room,
with an air of great wonder and satisfaction; took up the
letter, and grinned intensely as she turned it round and
over, and finally carried it into Miss Briggs's room
below.
How could Betty tell that the letter was for Miss Briggs,
I should like to know? All the schooling Betty had had
was at Mrs. Bute Crawley's Sunday school, and she could
no more read writing than Hebrew.
"La, Miss Briggs," the girl exclaimed, "O, Miss,
inquired.
"Presentable?--oh, very well. You wouldn't see any
difference," Captain Crawley answered. "Do let's have
him, when you begin to see a few people; and his
whatdyecallem--his inamorato--eh, Miss Sharp; that's what
you call it--comes. Gad, I'll write him a note, and have
him; and I'll try if he can play piquet as well as billiards.
Where does he live, Miss Sharp?"
Miss Sharp told Crawley the Lieutenant's town address;
and a few days after this conversation, Lieutenant
Osborne received a letter, in Captain Rawdon's
schoolboy hand, and enclosing a note of invitation from
Miss Crawley.
Rebecca despatched also an invitation to her darling
Amelia, who, you may be sure, was ready enough to
accept it when she heard that George was to be of the
party. It was arranged that Amelia was to spend the
morning with the ladies of Park Lane, where all were
very kind to her. Rebecca patronised her with calm
superiority: she was so much the cleverer of the two, and
her friend so gentle and unassuming, that she always
yielded when anybody chose to command, and so took
Rebecca's orders with perfect meekness and good humour.
Miss Crawley's graciousness was also remarkable. She
continued her raptures about little Amelia, talked about
her before her face as if she were a doll, or a servant,
or a picture, and admired her with the most benevolent
wonder possible. I admire that admiration which the
genteel world sometimes extends to the commonalty.
There is no more agreeable object in life than to see
Mayfair folks condescending. Miss Crawley's prodigious
benevolence rather fatigued poor little Amelia, and I am
not sure that of the three ladies in Park Lane she did
not find honest Miss Briggs the most agreeable. She
sympathised with Briggs as with all neglected or gentle
people: she wasn't what you call a woman of spirit.
George came to dinner--a repast en garcon with
Captain Crawley.
The great family coach of the Osbornes transported
him to Park Lane from Russell Square; where the young
ladies, who were not themselves invited, and professed
the greatest indifference at that slight, nevertheless looked
at Sir Pitt Crawley's name in the baronetage; and learned
everything which that work had to teach about the
Crawley family and their pedigree, and the Binkies, their
relatives, &c., &c. Rawdon Crawley received George Osborne
with great frankness and graciousness: praised his play at
billiards: asked him when he would have his revenge:
was interested about Osborne's regiment: and would have
proposed piquet to him that very evening, but Miss
Crawley absolutely forbade any gambling in her house;
so that the young Lieutenant's purse was not lightened
by his gallant patron, for that day at least. However, they
made an engagement for the next, somewhere: to look
at a horse that Crawley had to sell, and to try him in the
Park; and to dine together, and to pass the evening with
some jolly fellows. "That is, if you're not on duty to that
pretty Miss Sedley," Crawley said, with a knowing wink.
"Monstrous nice girl, 'pon my honour, though, Osborne,"
he was good enough to add. "Lots of tin, I suppose, eh?"
Osborne wasn't on duty; he would join Crawley with
pleasure: and the latter, when they met the next day,
praised his new friend's horsemanship--as he might with
perfect honesty--and introduced him to three or four
young men of the first fashion, whose acquaintance
immensely elated the simple young officer.
"How's little Miss Sharp, by-the-bye?" Osborne inquired
of his friend over their wine, with a dandified air.
"Good-natured little girl that. Does she suit you well at
Queen's Crawley? Miss Sedley liked her a good deal last
year."
Captain Crawley looked savagely at the Lieutenant out
of his little blue eyes, and watched him when he went up
to resume his acquaintance with the fair governess. Her
conduct must have relieved Crawley if there was any
jealousy in the bosom of that life-guardsman.
When the young men went upstairs, and after
Osborne's introduction to Miss Crawley, he walked up to
Rebecca with a patronising, easy swagger. He was going
to be kind to her and protect her. He would even shake
hands with her, as a friend of Amelia's; and saying, "Ah,
Miss Sharp! how-dy-doo?" held out his left hand towards
her, expecting that she would be quite confounded at
the honour.
Miss Sharp put out her right forefinger, and gave him
a little nod, so cool and killing, that Rawdon Crawley,
watching the operations from the other room, could
hardly restrain his laughter as he saw the Lieutenant's
entire discomfiture; the start he gave, the pause, and the
perfect clumsiness with which he at length condescended
to take the finger which was offered for his embrace.
"She'd beat the devil, by Jove!" the Captain said, in a
rapture; and the Lieutenant, by way of beginning the
conversation, agreeably asked Rebecca how she liked her
new place.
"My place?" said Miss Sharp, coolly, "how kind of you
to remind me of it! It's a tolerably good place: the wages
are pretty good--not so good as Miss Wirt's, I believe,
with your sisters in Russell Square. How are those young
ladies?--not that I ought to ask."
"Why not?" Mr. Osborne said, amazed.
"Why, they never condescended to speak to me, or to
ask me into their house, whilst I was staying with Amelia;
but we poor governesses, you know, are used to slights of
this sort."
"My dear Miss Sharp!" Osborne ejaculated.
"At least in some families," Rebecca continued. "You
can't think what a difference there is though. We are not
so wealthy in Hampshire as you lucky folks of the City.
But then I am in a gentleman's family--good old
English stock. I suppose you know Sir Pitt's father refused a
peerage. And you see how I am treated. I am pretty
comfortable. Indeed it is rather a good place. But how
very good of you to inquire!"
Osborne was quite savage. The little governess
patronised him and persiffled him until this young
British Lion felt quite uneasy; nor could he muster sufficient
presence of mind to find a pretext for backing out
of this most delectable conversation.
"I thought you liked the City families pretty well," he
said, haughtily.
"Last year you mean, when I was fresh from that
horrid vulgar school? Of course I did. Doesn't every girl like
to come home for the holidays? And how was I to know
any better? But oh, Mr. Osborne, what a difference
eighteen months' experience makes! eighteen months spent,
pardon me for saying so, with gentlemen. As for dear
Amelia, she, I grant you, is a pearl, and would be charming anywhere. There now, I see you are beginning to be
in a good humour; but oh these queer odd City people!
And Mr. Jos--how is that wonderful Mr. Joseph?"
"It seems to me you didn't dislike that wonderful Mr.
Joseph last year," Osborne said kindly.
"How severe of you! Well, entre nous, I didn't break
my heart about him; yet if he had asked me to do what
you mean by your looks (and very expressive and kind
they are, too), I wouldn't have said no."
Mr. Osborne gave a look as much as to say, "Indeed,
how very obliging!"
"What an honour to have had you for a brother-in-law,
you are thinking? To be sister-in-law to George
Osborne, Esquire, son of John Osborne, Esquire, son of--
what was your grandpapa, Mr. Osborne? Well, don't be
angry. You can't help your pedigree, and I quite agree
with you that I would have married Mr. Joe Sedley; for
could a poor penniless girl do better? Now you know
the whole secret. I'm frank and open; considering all
things, it was very kind of you to allude to the
circumstance--very kind and polite. Amelia dear, Mr.
Osborne and I were talking about your poor brother Joseph.
How is he?"
Thus was George utterly routed. Not that Rebecca was
in the right; but she had managed most successfully to
put him in the wrong. And he now shamefully fled,
feeling, if he stayed another minute, that he would have
been made to look foolish in the presence of Amelia.
Though Rebecca had had the better of him, George was
above the meanness of talebearing or revenge upon a
lady--only he could not help cleverly confiding to
Captain Crawley, next day, some notions of his regarding
Miss Rebecca--that she was a sharp one, a dangerous
one, a desperate flirt, &c.; in all of which opinions
Crawley agreed laughingly, and with every one of which Miss
Rebecca was made acquainted before twenty-four hours
were over. They added to her original regard for Mr.
Osborne. Her woman's instinct had told her that it was
George who had interrupted the success of her first
love-passage, and she esteemed him accordingly.
"I only just warn you," he said to Rawdon Crawley,
with a knowing look--he had bought the horse, and lost
some score of guineas after dinner, "I just warn you--I
know women, and counsel you to be on the look-out."
"Thank you, my boy," said Crawley, with a look of
peculiar gratitude. "You're wide awake, I see." And
George went off, thinking Crawley was quite right.
He told Amelia of what he had done, and how he had
counselled Rawdon Crawley--a devilish good,
straightforward fellow--to be on his guard against that
little sly, scheming Rebecca.
"Against whom?" Amelia cried.
"Your friend the governess.--Don't look so astonished."
"O George, what have you done?" Amelia said. For her
woman's eyes, which Love had made sharp-sighted, had
in one instant discovered a secret which was invisible to
Miss Crawley, to poor virgin Briggs, and above all,
to the stupid peepers of that young whiskered prig,
Lieutenant Osborne.
For as Rebecca was shawling her in an upper apartment,
where these two friends had an opportunity for a
little of that secret talking and conspiring which form
the delight of female life, Amelia, coming up to Rebecca,
and taking her two little hands in hers, said, "Rebecca,
I see it all."
Rebecca kissed her.
And regarding this delightful secret, not one syllable
more was said by either of the young women. But it was
destined to come out before long.
Some short period after the above events, and Miss
Rebecca Sharp still remaining at her patroness's house
in Park Lane, one more hatchment might have been seen
in Great Gaunt Street, figuring amongst the many which
usually ornament that dismal quarter. It was over Sir
Pitt Crawley's house; but it did not indicate the worthy
baronet's demise. It was a feminine hatchment, and
indeed a few years back had served as a funeral compliment
to Sir Pitt's old mother, the late dowager Lady Crawley.
Its period of service over, the hatchment had come
down from the front of the house, and lived in retirement somewhere in the back premises of Sir Pitt's mansion.
It reappeared now for poor Rose Dawson. Sir Pitt
was a widower again. The arms quartered on the shield
along with his own were not, to be sure, poor Rose's.
She had no arms. But the cherubs painted on the
scutcheon answered as well for her as for Sir Pitt's
mother, and Resurgam was written under the coat,
flanked by the Crawley Dove and Serpent. Arms and
Hatchments, Resurgam.--Here is an opportunity for
moralising!
Mr. Crawley had tended that otherwise friendless
bedside. She went out of the world strengthened by such
words and comfort as he could give her. For many years
his was the only kindness she ever knew; the only
friendship that solaced in any way that feeble, lonely soul.
Her heart was dead long before her body. She had sold
it to become Sir Pitt Crawley's wife. Mothers and
daughters are making the same bargain every day in
Vanity Fair.
When the demise took place, her husband was in
London attending to some of his innumerable schemes,
and busy with his endless lawyers. He had found time,
nevertheless, to call often in Park Lane, and to despatch
many notes to Rebecca, entreating her, enjoining her,
commanding her to return to her young pupils in the
country, who were now utterly without companionship
during their mother's illness. But Miss Crawley would
not hear of her departure; for though there was no lady
of fashion in London who would desert her friends more
complacently as soon as she was tired of their society,
and though few tired of them sooner, yet as long as her
engoument lasted her attachment was prodigious, and
she clung still with the greatest energy to Rebecca.
The news of Lady Crawley's death provoked no more
grief or comment than might have been expected in Miss
Crawley's family circle. "I suppose I must put off my
party for the 3rd," Miss Crawley said; and added, after a
pause, "I hope my brother will have the decency not to
marry again." "What a confounded rage Pitt will be in if
he does," Rawdon remarked, with his usual regard for his
elder brother. Rebecca said nothing. She seemed by far the
gravest and most impressed of the family. She left the
room before Rawdon went away that day; but they met
by chance below, as he was going away after taking leave,
and had a parley together.
On the morrow, as Rebecca was gazing from the window,
she startled Miss Crawley, who was placidly occupied
with a French novel, by crying out in an alarmed
tone, "Here's Sir Pitt, Ma'am!" and the Baronet's knock
followed this announcement.
"My dear, I can't see him. I won't see him. Tell Bowls
not at home, or go downstairs and say I'm too ill to
receive any one. My nerves really won't bear my brother
at this moment," cried out Miss Crawley, and resumed
the novel.
"She's too ill to see you, sir," Rebecca said, tripping
down to Sir Pitt, who was preparing to ascend.
"So much the better," Sir Pitt answered. "I want to
see YOU, Miss Becky. Come along a me into the parlour,"
and they entered that apartment together.
"I wawnt you back at Queen's Crawley, Miss," the
baronet said, fixing his eyes upon her, and taking off his
black gloves and his hat with its great crape hat-band.
His eyes had such a strange look, and fixed upon her so
steadfastly, that Rebecca Sharp began almost to tremble.
"I hope to come soon," she said in a low voice, "as
soon as Miss Crawley is better--and return to--to the
dear children."
"You've said so these three months, Becky," replied
Sir Pitt, "and still you go hanging on to my sister, who'll
fling you off like an old shoe, when she's wore you out.
I tell you I want you. I'm going back to the Vuneral.
Will you come back? Yes or no?"
"I daren't--I don't think--it would be right--to be
alone--with you, sir," Becky said, seemingly in great
agitation.
"I say agin, I want you," Sir Pitt said, thumping the
table. "I can't git on without you. I didn't see what it was
till you went away. The house all goes wrong. It's not
the same place. All my accounts has got muddled agin.
You MUST come back. Do come back. Dear Becky, do
come."
"Come--as what, sir?" Rebecca gasped out.
"Come as Lady Crawley, if you like," the Baronet
said, grasping his crape hat. "There! will that zatusfy you?
Come back and be my wife. Your vit vor't. Birth be
hanged. You're as good a lady as ever I see. You've got
more brains in your little vinger than any baronet's wife
in the county. Will you come? Yes or no?"
"Oh, Sir Pitt!" Rebecca said, very much moved.
"Say yes, Becky," Sir Pitt continued. "I'm an old man,
but a good'n. I'm good for twenty years. I'll make you
happy, zee if I don't. You shall do what you like; spend
what you like; and 'ave it all your own way. I'll make
you a zettlement. I'll do everything reglar. Look year!"
and the old man fell down on his knees and leered at
her like a satyr.
Rebecca started back a picture of consternation. In
the course of this history we have never seen her lose her
presence of mind; but she did now, and wept some of the
most genuine tears that ever fell from her eyes.
"Oh, Sir Pitt!" she said. "Oh, sir--I--I'm married
ALREADY."
CHAPTER XV
In Which Rebecca's Husband Appears
for a Short Time
Every reader of a sentimental turn (and we desire
no other) must have been pleased with the
tableau with which the last act of our little
drama concluded; for what can be prettier than
an image of Love on his knees before Beauty?
But when Love heard that awful confession from
Beauty that she was married already, he
bounced up from his attitude of humility on the carpet,
uttering exclamations which caused poor little Beauty to
be more frightened than she was when she made her
avowal. "Married; you're joking," the Baronet cried, after
the first explosion of rage and wonder. "You're
making vun of me, Becky. Who'd ever go to marry you
without a shilling to your vortune?"
"Married! married!" Rebecca said, in an agony of tears
--her voice choking with emotion, her handkerchief up
to her ready eyes, fainting against the mantelpiece a
figure of woe fit to melt the most obdurate heart. "0
Sir Pitt, dear Sir Pitt, do not think me ungrateful for all
your goodness to me. It is only your generosity that has
extorted my secret."
"Generosity be hanged!" Sir Pitt roared out. "Who is
it tu, then, you're married? Where was it?"
"Let me come back with you to the country, sir! Let
me watch over you as faithfully as ever! Don't, don't
separate me from dear Queen's Crawley!"
"The feller has left you, has he?" the Baronet said,
beginning, as he fancied, to comprehend. "Well, Becky--
come back if you like. You can't eat your cake and have
it. Any ways I made you a vair offer. Coom back as
governess--you shall have it all your own way." She
held out one hand. She cried fit to break her heart; her
ringlets fell over her face, and over the marble
mantelpiece where she laid it.
"So the rascal ran off, eh?" Sir Pitt said, with a hideous
attempt at consolation. "Never mind, Becky, I'LL take
care of 'ee."
"Oh, sir! it would be the pride of my life to go back
to Queen's Crawley, and take care of the children, and
of you as formerly, when you said you were pleased with
the services of your little Rebecca. When I think of what
you have just offered me, my heart fills with gratitude
indeed it does. I can't be your wife, sir; let me--let me be
your daughter."
Saying which, Rebecca went down on HER knees in a
most tragical way, and, taking Sir Pitt's horny black
hand between her own two (which were very pretty and
white, and as soft as satin), looked up in his face with an
expression of exquisite pathos and confidence, when--
when the door opened, and Miss Crawley sailed in.
Mrs. Firkin and Miss Briggs, who happened by chance
to be at the parlour door soon after the Baronet and
Rebecca entered the apartment, had also seen accidentally,
through the keyhole, the old gentleman prostrate
before the governess, and had heard the generous proposal
which he made her. It was scarcely out of his mouth
when Mrs. Firkin and Miss Briggs had streamed up the
stairs, had rushed into the drawing-room where Miss
Crawley was reading the French novel, and had given
that old lady the astounding intelligence that Sir Pitt
was on his knees, proposing to Miss Sharp. And if you
calculate the time for the above dialogue to take place
--the time for Briggs and Firkin to fly to the drawing-
room--the time for Miss Crawley to be astonished, and
to drop her volume of Pigault le Brun--and the time for
her to come downstairs--you will see how exactly
accurate this history is, and how Miss Crawley must have
appeared at the very instant when Rebecca had assumed
the attitude of humility.
"It is the lady on the ground, and not the gentleman,"
Miss Crawley said, with a look and voice of great scorn.
"They told me that YOU were on your knees, Sir Pitt: do
kneel once more, and let me see this pretty couple!"
"I have thanked Sir Pitt Crawley, Ma'am," Rebecca
said, rising, "and have told him that--that I never can
become Lady Crawley."
"Refused him!" Miss Crawley said, more bewildered
than ever. Briggs and Firkin at the door opened the eyes
of astonishment and the lips of wonder.
"Yes--refused," Rebecca continued, with a sad,
tearful voice.
"And am I to credit my ears that you absolutely
proposed to her, Sir Pitt?" the old lady asked.
"Ees," said the Baronet, "I did."
"And she refused you as she says?"
"Ees," Sir Pitt said, his features on a broad grin.
"It does not seem to break your heart at any rate,"
Miss Crawley remarked.
"Nawt a bit," answered Sir Pitt, with a coolness and
good-humour which set Miss Crawley almost mad with
bewilderment. That an old gentleman of station should
fall on his knees to a penniless governess, and burst out
laughing because she refused to marry him--that a
penniless governess should refuse a Baronet with four
thousand a year--these were mysteries which Miss Crawley
could never comprehend. It surpassed any complications
of intrigue in her favourite Pigault le Brun.
"I'm glad you think it good sport, brother," she
continued, groping wildly through this amazement.
"Vamous," said Sir Pitt. "Who'd ha' thought it! what a
sly little devil! what a little fox it waws!" he muttered
to himself, chuckling with pleasure.
"Who'd have thought what?" cries Miss Crawley,
stamping with her foot. "Pray, Miss Sharp, are you
waiting for the Prince Regent's divorce, that you don't think
our family good enough for you?"
"My attitude," Rebecca said, "when you came in,
ma'am, did not look as if I despised such an honour as
this good--this noble man has deigned to offer me. Do
you think I have no heart? Have you all loved me, and
been so kind to the poor orphan--deserted--girl, and
am I to feel nothing? O my friends! O my benefactors!
may not my love, my life, my duty, try to repay the
confidence you have shown me? Do you grudge me even
gratitude, Miss Crawley? It is too much--my heart is
too full"; and she sank down in a chair so pathetically,
that most of the audience present were perfectly melted
with her sadness.
"Whether you marry me or not, you're a good little
girl, Becky, and I'm your vriend, mind," said Sir Pitt, and
putting on his crape-bound hat, he walked away--greatly
to Rebecca's relief; for it was evident that her secret
was unrevealed to Miss Crawley, and she had the
advantage of a brief reprieve.
Putting her handkerchief to her eyes, and nodding
away honest Briggs, who would have followed her
upstairs, she went up to her apartment; while Briggs and
Miss Crawley, in a high state of excitement, remained
to discuss the strange event, and Firkin, not less moved,
dived down into the kitchen regions, and talked of it
with all the male and female company there. And so
impressed was Mrs. Firkin with the news, that she thought
proper to write off by that very night's post, "with her
humble duty to Mrs. Bute Crawley and the family at the
Rectory, and Sir Pitt has been and proposed for to marry
Miss Sharp, wherein she has refused him, to the wonder
of all."
The two ladies in the dining-room (where worthy
Miss Briggs was delighted to be admitted once more to
confidential conversation with her patroness) wondered
to their hearts' content at Sir Pitt's offer, and Rebecca's
refusal; Briggs very acutely suggesting that there must
have been some obstacle in the shape of a previous
attachment, otherwise no young woman in her senses would
ever have refused so advantageous a proposal.
"You would have accepted it yourself, wouldn't you,
Briggs?" Miss Crawley said, kindly.
"Would it not be a privilege to be Miss Crawley's
sister?" Briggs replied, with meek evasion.
"Well, Becky would have made a good Lady Crawley,
after all," Miss Crawley remarked (who was mollified by
the girl's refusal, and very liberal and generous now there
was no call for her sacrifices). "She has brains in plenty
(much more wit in her little finger than you have, my
poor dear Briggs, in all your head). Her manners are
excellent, now I have formed her. She is a Montmorency,
Briggs, and blood is something, though I despise it for
my part; and she would have held her own amongst those
pompous stupid Hampshire people much better than that
unfortunate ironmonger's daughter."
Briggs coincided as usual, and the "previous attachment"
was then discussed in conjectures. "You poor
friendless creatures are always having some foolish
tendre," Miss Crawley said. "You yourself, you know,
were in love with a writing-master (don't cry, Briggs--
you're always crying, and it won't bring him to life again),
and I suppose this unfortunate Becky has been silly
and sentimental too--some apothecary, or house-steward,
or painter, or young curate, or something of that sort."
"Poor thing! poor thing!" says Briggs (who was thinking
of twenty-four years back, and that hectic young
writing-master whose lock of yellow hair, and whose
letters, beautiful in their illegibility, she cherished in
her old desk upstairs). "Poor thing, poor thing!" says
Briggs. Once more she was a fresh-cheeked lass of eighteen;
she was at evening church, and the hectic writing-master
and she were quavering out of the same psalm-book.
"After such conduct on Rebecca's part," Miss Crawley
said enthusiastically, "our family should do something.
Find out who is the objet, Briggs. I'll set him up in a
shop; or order my portrait of him, you know; or speak
to my cousin, the Bishop and I'll doter Becky, and
we'll have a wedding, Briggs, and you shall make the
breakfast, and be a bridesmaid."
Briggs declared that it would be delightful, and vowed
that her dear Miss Crawley was always kind and generous,
and went up to Rebecca's bedroom to console her
and prattle about the offer, and the refusal, and the
cause thereof; and to hint at the generous intentions of
Miss Crawley, and to find out who was the gentleman
that had the mastery of Miss Sharp's heart.
Rebecca was very kind, very affectionate and affected
--responded to Briggs's offer of tenderness with grateful
fervour--owned there was a secret attachment--a
delicious mystery--what a pity Miss Briggs had not
remained half a minute longer at the keyhole! Rebecca
might, perhaps, have told more: but five minutes after
Miss Briggs's arrival in Rebecca's apartment, Miss Crawley
actually made her appearance there--an unheard-of
honour--her impatience had overcome her; she could not
wait for the tardy operations of her ambassadress: so
she came in person, and ordered Briggs out of the room.
And expressing her approval of Rebecca's conduct, she
asked particulars of the interview, and the previous
transactions which had brought about the astonishing
offer of Sir Pitt.
Rebecca said she had long had some notion of the
partiality with which Sir Pitt honoured her (for he was
in the habit of making his feelings known in a very frank
and unreserved manner) but, not to mention private
reasons with which she would not for the present trouble
Miss Crawley, Sir Pitt's age, station, and habits were
such as to render a marriage quite impossible; and
could a woman with any feeling of self-respect and any
decency listen to proposals at such a moment, when
the funeral of the lover's deceased wife had not actually
taken place?
"Nonsense, my dear, you would never have refused
him had there not been some one else in the case," Miss
Crawley said, coming to her point at once. "Tell me the
private reasons; what are the private reasons? There is
some one; who is it that has touched your heart?"
Rebecca cast down her eyes, and owned there was.
"You have guessed right, dear lady," she said, with a
sweet simple faltering voice. "You wonder at one so
poor and friendless having an attachment, don't you?
I have never heard that poverty was any safeguard
against it. I wish it were."
"My poor dear child," cried Miss Crawley, who was
always quite ready to be sentimental, "is our passion
unrequited, then? Are we pining in secret? Tell me all,
and let me console you."
"I wish you could, dear Madam," Rebecca said in the
same tearful tone. "Indeed, indeed, I need it." And she
laid her head upon Miss Crawley's shoulder and wept
there so naturally that the old lady, surprised into
sympathy, embraced her with an almost maternal
kindness, uttered many soothing protests of regard and
affection for her, vowed that she loved her as a daughter,
and would do everything in her power to serve her. "And
now who is it, my dear? Is it that pretty Miss Sedley's
brother? You said something about an affair with him.
I'll ask him here, my dear. And you shall have him:
indeed you shall."
"Don't ask me now," Rebecca said. "You shall know
all soon. Indeed you shall. Dear kind Miss Crawley--
dear friend, may I say so?"
"That you may, my child," the old lady replied, kissing
her.
"I can't tell you now," sobbed out Rebecca, "I am
very miserable. But O! love me always--promise you will
love me always." And in the midst of mutual tears--for
the emotions of the younger woman had awakened the
sympathies of the elder--this promise was solemnly given
by Miss Crawley, who left her little protege, blessing
and admiring her as a dear, artless, tender-hearted,
affectionate, incomprehensible creature.
And now she was left alone to think over the sudden
and wonderful events of the day, and of what had been
and what might have been. What think you were the
private feelings of Miss, no (begging her pardon) of
Mrs. Rebecca? If, a few pages back, the present writer
claimed the privilege of peeping into Miss Amelia
Sedley's bedroom, and understanding with the omniscience
of the novelist all the gentle pains and passions which
were tossing upon that innocent pillow, why should he
not declare himself to be Rebecca's confidante too,
master of her secrets, and seal-keeper of that young
woman's conscience?
Well, then, in the first place, Rebecca gave way to
some very sincere and touching regrets that a piece of
marvellous good fortune should have been so near her,
and she actually obliged to decline it. In this natural
emotion every properly regulated mind will certainly
share. What good mother is there that would not
commiserate a penniless spinster, who might have been
my lady, and have shared four thousand a year? What
well-bred young person is there in all Vanity Fair, who
will not feel for a hard-working, ingenious, meritorious
girl, who gets such an honourable, advantageous, provoking
offer, just at the very moment when it is out of her
power to accept it? I am sure our friend Becky's
disappointment deserves and will command every
sympathy.
I remember one night being in the Fair myself, at an
evening party. I observed old Miss Toady there also
present, single out for her special attentions and flattery
little Mrs. Briefless, the barrister's wife, who is of a
good family certainly, but, as we all know, is as poor
as poor can be.
What, I asked in my own mind, can cause this
obsequiousness on the part of Miss Toady; has Briefless
got a county court, or has his wife had a fortune left her?
Miss Toady explained presently, with that simplicity
which distinguishes all her conduct. "You know," she
said, "Mrs.Briefless is granddaughter of Sir John Redhand,
who is so ill at Cheltenham that he can't last six
months. Mrs. Briefless's papa succeeds; so you see she
will be a baronet's daughter." And Toady asked Briefless
and his wife to dinner the very next week.
If the mere chance of becoming a baronet's daughter
can procure a lady such homage in the world, surely,
surely we may respect the agonies of a young woman
who has lost the opportunity of becoming a baronet's
wife. Who would have dreamed of Lady Crawley dying
so soon? She was one of those sickly women that
might have lasted these ten years--Rebecca thought to
herself, in all the woes of repentance--and I might have
been my lady! I might have led that old man whither I
would. I might have thanked Mrs. Bute for her
patronage, and Mr. Pitt for his insufferable condescension. I
would have had the town-house newly furnished and
decorated. I would have had the handsomest carriage in
London, and a box at the opera; and I would have
been presented next season. All this might have been;
and now--now all was doubt and mystery.
But Rebecca was a young lady of too much resolution
and energy of character to permit herself much useless
and unseemly sorrow for the irrevocable past; so, having
devoted only the proper portion of regret to it, she wisely
turned her whole attention towards the future, which
was now vastly more important to her. And she
surveyed her position, and its hopes, doubts, and chances.
In the first place, she was MARRIED--that was a great
fact. Sir Pitt knew it. She was not so much surprised into
the avowal, as induced to make it by a sudden calculation.
It must have come some day: and why not now
as at a later period? He who would have married her
himself must at least be silent with regard to her marriage.
How Miss Crawley would bear the news--was the great
question. Misgivings Rebecca had; but she remembered
all Miss Crawley had said; the old lady's avowed
contempt for birth; her daring liberal opinions; her
general romantic propensities; her almost doting attachment
to her nephew, and her repeatedly expressed fondness for
Rebecca herself. She is so fond of him, Rebecca thought,
that she will forgive him anything: she is so used to me
that I don't think she could be comfortable without
me: when the eclaircissement comes there will be a
scene, and hysterics, and a great quarrel, and then a
great reconciliation. At all events, what use was there
in delaying? the die was thrown, and now or to-morrow
the issue must be the same. And so, resolved that Miss
Crawley should have the news, the young person
debated in her mind as to the best means of conveying it
to her; and whether she should face the storm that must
come, or fly and avoid it until its first fury was blown
over. In this state of meditation she wrote the following
letter:
Dearest Friend,
The great crisis which we have debated
about so often is COME. Half of my secret is known, and
I have thought and thought, until I am quite sure that
now is the time to reveal THE WHOLE OF THE MYSTERY. Sir
Pitt came to me this morning, and made--what do you
think?--A DECLARATION IN FORM. Think of that! Poor
little me. I might have been Lady Crawley. How pleased
Mrs. Bute would have been: and ma tante if I had taken
precedence of her! I might have been somebody's
mamma, instead of--O, I tremble, I tremble, when I
think how soon we must tell all!
Sir Pitt knows I am married, and not knowing to
whom, is not very much displeased as yet. Ma tante is
ACTUALLY ANGRY that I should have refused him. But she
is all kindness and graciousness. She condescends to say
I would have made him a good wife; and vows that
she will be a mother to your little Rebecca. She will be
shaken when she first hears the news. But need we fear
anything beyond a momentary anger? I think not: I AM
SURE not. She dotes upon you so (you naughty, good-for-
nothing man), that she would pardon you ANYTHING:
and, indeed, I believe, the next place in her heart is
mine: and that she would be miserable without me.
Dearest! something TELLS ME we shall conquer. You shall
leave that odious regiment: quit gaming, racing, and BE
A GOOD BOY; and we shall all live in Park Lane, and ma
tante shall leave us all her money.
I shall try and walk to-morrow at 3 in the usual place.
If Miss B. accompanies me, you must come to dinner,
and bring an answer, and put it in the third volume of
Porteus's Sermons. But, at all events, come to your own
R.
To Miss Eliza Styles,
At Mr. Barnet's, Saddler, Knightsbridge.
And I trust there is no reader of this little story who
has not discernment enough to perceive that the Miss
Eliza Styles (an old schoolfellow, Rebecca said, with
whom she had resumed an active correspondence of late,
and who used to fetch these letters from the saddler's),
wore brass spurs, and large curling mustachios, and was
indeed no other than Captain Rawdon Crawley.
CHAPTER XVI
The Letter on the Pincushion
How they were married is not of the slightest
consequence to anybody. What is to hinder a Captain who
is a major, and a young lady who is of age, from purchasing
a licence, and uniting themselves at any church in this
town? Who needs to be told, that if a woman has a will
she will assuredly find a way?--My belief is that one
day, when Miss Sharp had gone to pass the forenoon
with her dear friend Miss Amelia Sedley in Russell
Square, a lady very like her might have been seen
entering a church in the City, in company with a gentleman
with dyed mustachios, who, after a quarter of an hour's
interval, escorted her back to the hackney-coach in
waiting, and that this was a quiet bridal party.
And who on earth, after the daily experience we have,
can question the probability of a gentleman marrying
anybody? How many of the wise and learned have
married their cooks? Did not Lord Eldon himself, the
most prudent of men, make a runaway match? Were not
Achilles and Ajax both in love with their servant maids?
And are we to expect a heavy dragoon with strong
desires and small brains, who had never controlled a
passion in his life, to become prudent all of a sudden,
and to refuse to pay any price for an indulgence to
which he had a mind? If people only made prudent
marriages, what a stop to population there would be!
It seems to me, for my part, that Mr. Rawdon's marriage
was one of the honestest actions which we shall have to
record in any portion of that gentleman's biography which
has to do with the present history. No one will say it is
unmanly to be captivated by a woman, or, being
captivated, to marry her; and the admiration, the delight, the
passion, the wonder, the unbounded confidence, and frantic adoration with which, by degrees, this big warrior got
to regard the little Rebecca, were feelings which the ladies
at least will pronounce were not altogether discreditable
to him. When she sang, every note thrilled in his dull
soul, and tingled through his huge frame. When she spoke,
he brought all the force of his brains to listen and wonder.
If she was jocular, he used to revolve her jokes in his
mind, and explode over them half an hour afterwards in
the street, to the surprise of the groom in the tilbury by
his side, or the comrade riding with him in Rotten Row.
Her words were oracles to him, her smallest actions
marked by an infallible grace and wisdom. "How she
sings,--how she paints," thought he. "How she rode that
kicking mare at Queen's Crawley!" And he would say to
her in confidential moments, "By Jove, Beck, you're fit
to be Commander-in-Chief, or Archbishop of Canterbury,
by Jove." Is his case a rare one? and don't we see every
day in the world many an honest Hercules at the
apron-strings of Omphale, and great whiskered Samsons
prostrate in Delilah's lap?
When, then, Becky told him that the great crisis was
near, and the time for action had arrived, Rawdon
expressed himself as ready to act under her orders, as he
would be to charge with his troop at the command of his
colonel. There was no need for him to put his letter into
the third volume of Porteus. Rebecca easily found a
means to get rid of Briggs, her companion, and met her
faithful friend in "the usual place" on the next day. She
had thought over matters at night, and communicated to
Rawdon the result of her determinations. He agreed, of
course, to everything; was quite sure that it was all
right: that what she proposed was best; that Miss Crawley
would infallibly relent, or "come round," as he said, after
a time. Had Rebecca's resolutions been entirely different,
he would have followed them as implicitly. "You have
head enough for both of us, Beck," said he. "You're sure
to get us out of the scrape. I never saw your equal, and
I've met with some clippers in my time too." And with
this simple confession of faith, the love-stricken dragoon
left her to execute his part of the project which she had
formed for the pair.
It consisted simply in the hiring of quiet lodgings at
Brompton, or in the neighbourhood of the barracks, for
Captain and Mrs. Crawley. For Rebecca had determined,
and very prudently, we think, to fly. Rawdon was
only too happy at her resolve; he had been entreating
her to take this measure any time for weeks past. He
pranced off to engage the lodgings with all the impetuosity
of love. He agreed to pay two guineas a week so readily,
that the landlady regretted she had asked him so little.
He ordered in a piano, and half a nursery-house full of
flowers: and a heap of good things. As for shawls, kid
gloves, silk stockings, gold French watches, bracelets and
perfumery, he sent them in with the profusion of blind
love and unbounded credit. And having relieved his mind
by this outpouring of generosity, he went and dined
nervously at the club, waiting until the great moment of his
life should come.
The occurrences of the previous day; the admirable
conduct of Rebecca in refusing an offer so advantageous
to her, the secret unhappiness preying upon her, the
sweetness and silence with which she bore her affliction,
made Miss Crawley much more tender than usual. An
event of this nature, a marriage, or a refusal, or a
proposal, thrills through a whole household of women, and
sets all their hysterical sympathies at work. As an
observer of human nature, I regularly frequent St. George's,
Hanover Square, during the genteel marriage season; and
though I have never seen the bridegroom's male friends
give way to tears, or the beadles and officiating clergy
any way affected, yet it is not at all uncommon to see
women who are not in the least concerned in the
operations going on--old ladies who are long past marrying,
stout middle-aged females with plenty of sons and daughters,
let alone pretty young creatures in pink bonnets, who
are on their promotion, and may naturally take an
interest in the ceremony--I say it is quite common to see
the women present piping, sobbing, sniffling; hiding their
little faces in their little useless pocket-handkerchiefs;
and heaving, old and young, with emotion. When my
friend, the fashionable John Pimlico, married the lovely
Lady Belgravia Green Parker, the excitement was so
general that even the little snuffy old pew-opener who let me
into the seat was in tears. And wherefore? I inquired of
my own soul: she was not going to be married.
Miss Crawley and Briggs in a word, after the affair of
Sir Pitt, indulged in the utmost luxury of sentiment, and
Rebecca became an object of the most tender interest to
them. In her absence Miss Crawley solaced herself with
the most sentimental of the novels in her library. Little
Sharp, with her secret griefs, was the heroine of the day.
That night Rebecca sang more sweetly and talked more
pleasantly than she had ever been heard to do in Park
Lane. She twined herself round the heart of Miss Crawley.
She spoke lightly and laughingly of Sir Pitt's proposal,
ridiculed it as the foolish fancy of an old man; and her
eyes filled with tears, and Briggs's heart with unutterable
pangs of defeat, as she said she desired no other lot than
to remain for ever with her dear benefactress. "My dear
little creature," the old lady said, "I don't intend to let
you stir for years, that you may depend upon it. As for
going back to that odious brother of mine after what
has passed, it is out of the question. Here you stay with me
and Briggs. Briggs wants to go to see her relations very
often. Briggs, you may go when you like. But as for you,
my dear, you must stay and take care of the old woman."
If Rawdon Crawley had been then and there present,
instead of being at the club nervously drinking claret, the
pair might have gone down on their knees before the old
spinster, avowed all, and been forgiven in a twinkling.
But that good chance was denied to the young couple,
doubtless in order that this story might be written, in
which numbers of their wonderful adventures are narrated
--adventures which could never have occurred to them
if they had been housed and sheltered under the
comfortable uninteresting forgiveness of Miss Crawley.
Under Mrs. Firkin's orders, in the Park Lane establishment,
was a young woman from Hampshire, whose business it was,
among other duties, to knock at Miss Sharp's door with
that jug of hot water which Firkin would rather have
perished than have presented to the intruder. This
girl, bred on the family estate, had a brother in Captain
Crawley's troop, and if the truth were known, I daresay
it would come out that she was aware of certain arrangements,
which have a great deal to do with this history.
At any rate she purchased a yellow shawl, a pair of green
boots, and a light blue hat with a red feather with three
guineas which Rebecca gave her, and as little Sharp was
by no means too liberal with her money, no doubt it
was for services rendered that Betty Martin was so bribed.
On the second day after Sir Pitt Crawley's offer to
Miss Sharp, the sun rose as usual, and at the usual hour
Betty Martin, the upstairs maid, knocked at the door of
the governess's bedchamber.
No answer was returned, and she knocked again. Silence
was still uninterrupted; and Betty, with the hot water,
opened the door and entered the chamber.
The little white dimity bed was as smooth and trim as
on the day previous, when Betty's own hands had helped
to make it. Two little trunks were corded in one end of
the room; and on the table before the window--on the
pincushion the great fat pincushion lined with pink
inside, and twilled like a lady's nightcap--lay a letter. It
had been reposing there probably all night.
Betty advanced towards it on tiptoe, as if she were
afraid to awake it--looked at it, and round the room,
with an air of great wonder and satisfaction; took up the
letter, and grinned intensely as she turned it round and
over, and finally carried it into Miss Briggs's room
below.
How could Betty tell that the letter was for Miss Briggs,
I should like to know? All the schooling Betty had had
was at Mrs. Bute Crawley's Sunday school, and she could
no more read writing than Hebrew.
"La, Miss Briggs," the girl exclaimed, "O, Miss,