Chapter: 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 a little present," Osborne said to his friend in
confidence, "only I am quite out of cash until my father tips up." But
Dobbin would not allow this good nature and generosity to be balked,
and so accommodated Mr. Osborne with a few pound notes, which the
latter took after a little faint scruple.

And I dare say he would have bought something very handsome for Amelia;
only, getting off the coach in Fleet Street, he was attracted by a
handsome shirt-pin in a jeweller's window, which he could not resist;
and having paid for that, had very little money to spare for indulging
in any further exercise of kindness.  Never mind: you may be sure it
was not his presents Amelia wanted.  When he came to Russell Square,
her face lighted up as if he had been sunshine.  The little cares,
fears, tears, timid misgivings, sleepless fancies of I don't know how
many days and nights, were forgotten, under one moment's influence of
that familiar, irresistible smile.  He beamed on her from the
drawing-room door--magnificent, with ambrosial whiskers, like a god.
Sambo, whose face as he announced Captain Osbin (having conferred a
brevet rank on that young officer) blazed with a sympathetic grin, saw
the little girl start, and flush, and jump up from her watching-place
in the window; and Sambo retreated: and as soon as the door was shut,
she went fluttering to Lieutenant George Osborne's heart as if it was
the only natural home for her to nestle in.  Oh, thou poor panting
little soul!  The very finest tree in the whole forest, with the
straightest stem, and the strongest arms, and the thickest foliage,
wherein you choose to build and coo, may be marked, for what you know,
and may be down with a crash ere long.  What an old, old simile that
is, between man and timber!

In the meanwhile, George kissed her very kindly on her forehead and
glistening eyes, and was very gracious and good; and she thought his
diamond shirt-pin (which she had not known him to wear before) the
prettiest ornament ever seen.

The observant reader, who has marked our young Lieutenant's previous
behaviour, and has preserved our report of the brief conversation which
he has just had with Captain Dobbin, has possibly come to certain
conclusions regarding the character of Mr. Osborne.  Some cynical
Frenchman has said that there are two parties to a love-transaction:
the one who loves and the other who condescends to be so treated.
Perhaps the love is occasionally on the man's side; perhaps on the
lady's. Perhaps some infatuated swain has ere this mistaken
insensibility for modesty, dulness for maiden reserve, mere vacuity for
sweet bashfulness, and a goose, in a word, for a swan. Perhaps some
beloved female subscriber has arrayed an ass in the splendour and glory
of her imagination; admired his dulness as manly simplicity; worshipped
his selfishness as manly superiority; treated his stupidity as majestic
gravity, and used him as the brilliant fairy Titania did a certain
weaver at Athens.  I think I have seen such comedies of errors going on
in the world.  But this is certain, that Amelia believed her lover to
be one of the most gallant and brilliant men in the empire: and it is
possible Lieutenant Osborne thought so too.

He was a little wild: how many young men are; and don't girls like a
rake better than a milksop?  He hadn't sown his wild oats as yet, but
he would soon: and quit the army now that peace was proclaimed; the
Corsican monster locked up at Elba; promotion by consequence over; and
no chance left for the display of his undoubted military talents and
valour: and his allowance, with Amelia's settlement, would enable them
to take a snug place in the country somewhere, in a good sporting
neighbourhood; and he would hunt a little, and farm a little; and they
would be very happy.  As for remaining in the army as a married man,
that was impossible. Fancy Mrs. George Osborne in lodgings in a county
town; or, worse still, in the East or West Indies, with a society of
officers, and patronized by Mrs. Major O'Dowd! Amelia died with
laughing at Osborne's stories about Mrs. Major O'Dowd.  He loved her
much too fondly to subject her to that horrid woman and her
vulgarities, and the rough treatment of a soldier's wife.  He didn't
care for himself--not he; but his dear little girl should take the
place in society to which, as his wife, she was entitled: and to these
proposals you may be sure she acceded, as she would to any other from
the same author.

Holding this kind of conversation, and building numberless castles in
the air (which Amelia adorned with all sorts of flower-gardens, rustic
walks, country churches, Sunday schools, and the like; while George had
his mind's eye directed to the stables, the kennel, and the cellar),
this young pair passed away a couple of hours very pleasantly; and as
the Lieutenant had only that single day in town, and a great deal of
most important business to transact, it was proposed that Miss Emmy
should dine with her future sisters-in-law. This invitation was
accepted joyfully.  He conducted her to his sisters; where he left her
talking and prattling in a way that astonished those ladies, who
thought that George might make something of her; and he then went off
to transact his business.

In a word, he went out and ate ices at a pastry-cook's shop in Charing
Cross; tried a new coat in Pall Mall; dropped in at the Old
Slaughters', and called for Captain Cannon; played eleven games at
billiards with the Captain, of which he won eight, and returned to
Russell Square half an hour late for dinner, but in very good humour.

It was not so with old Mr. Osborne.  When that gentleman came from the
City, and was welcomed in the drawing-room by his daughters and the
elegant Miss Wirt, they saw at once by his face--which was puffy,
solemn, and yellow at the best of times--and by the scowl and twitching
of his black eyebrows, that the heart within his large white waistcoat
was disturbed and uneasy.  When Amelia stepped forward to salute him,
which she always did with great trembling and timidity, he gave a surly
grunt of recognition, and dropped the little hand out of his great
hirsute paw without any attempt to hold it there.  He looked round
gloomily at his eldest daughter; who, comprehending the meaning of his
look, which asked unmistakably, "Why the devil is she here?" said at
once:

"George is in town, Papa; and has gone to the Horse Guards, and will be
back to dinner."

"O he is, is he? I won't have the dinner kept waiting for him, Jane";
with which this worthy man lapsed into his particular chair, and then
the utter silence in his genteel, well-furnished drawing-room was only
interrupted by the alarmed ticking of the great French clock.

When that chronometer, which was surmounted by a cheerful brass group
of the sacrifice of Iphigenia, tolled five in a heavy cathedral tone,
Mr. Osborne pulled the bell at his right hand--violently, and the
butler rushed up.

"Dinner!" roared Mr. Osborne.

"Mr. George isn't come in, sir," interposed the man.

"Damn Mr. George, sir.  Am I master of the house? DINNER!" Mr. Osborne
scowled.  Amelia trembled.  A telegraphic communication of eyes passed
between the other three ladies.  The obedient bell in the lower regions
began ringing the announcement of the meal.  The tolling over, the head
of the family thrust his hands into the great tail-pockets of his great
blue coat with brass buttons, and without waiting for a further
announcement strode downstairs alone, scowling over his shoulder at the
four females.

"What's the matter now, my dear?" asked one of the other, as they rose
and tripped gingerly behind the sire.    "I suppose the funds are
falling," whispered Miss Wirt; and so, trembling and in silence, this
hushed female company followed their dark leader.  They took their
places in silence.  He growled out a blessing, which sounded as gruffly
as a curse.  The great silver dish-covers were removed. Amelia trembled
in her place, for she was next to the awful Osborne, and alone on her
side of the table--the gap being occasioned by the absence of George.

"Soup?" says Mr. Osborne, clutching the ladle, fixing his eyes on her,
in a sepulchral tone; and having helped her and the rest, did not speak
for a while.

"Take Miss Sedley's plate away," at last he said.  "She can't eat the
soup--no more can I.  It's beastly.  Take away the soup, Hicks, and
to-morrow turn the cook out of the house, Jane."

Having concluded his observations upon the soup, Mr. Osborne made a few
curt remarks respecting the fish, also of a savage and satirical
tendency, and cursed Billingsgate with an emphasis quite worthy of the
place. Then he lapsed into silence, and swallowed sundry glasses of
wine, looking more and more terrible, till a brisk knock at the door
told of George's arrival when everybody began to rally.

"He could not come before.  General Daguilet had kept him waiting at
the Horse Guards.  Never mind soup or fish.  Give him anything--he
didn't care what.  Capital mutton--capital everything." His good humour
contrasted with his father's severity; and he rattled on unceasingly
during dinner, to the delight of all--of one especially, who need not
be mentioned.

As soon as the young ladies had discussed the orange and the glass of
wine which formed the ordinary conclusion of the dismal banquets at Mr.
Osborne's house, the signal to make sail for the drawing-room was
given, and they all arose and departed.  Amelia hoped George would soon
join them there.  She began playing some of his favourite waltzes (then
newly imported) at the great carved-legged, leather-cased grand piano
in the drawing-room overhead.  This little artifice did not bring him.
He was deaf to the waltzes; they grew fainter and fainter; the
discomfited performer left the huge instrument presently; and though
her three friends performed some of the loudest and most brilliant new
pieces of their repertoire, she did not hear a single note, but sate
thinking, and boding evil.  Old Osborne's scowl, terrific always, had
never before looked so deadly to her.  His eyes followed her out of the
room, as if she had been guilty of something. When they brought her
coffee, she started as though it were a cup of poison which Mr. Hicks,
the butler, wished to propose to her.  What mystery was there lurking?
Oh, those women! They nurse and cuddle their presentiments, and make
darlings of their ugliest thoughts, as they do of their deformed
children.

The gloom on the paternal countenance had also impressed George Osborne
with anxiety.  With such eyebrows, and a look so decidedly bilious, how
was he to extract that money from the governor, of which George was
consumedly in want? He began praising his father's wine.  That was
generally a successful means of cajoling the old gentleman.

"We never got such Madeira in the West Indies, sir, as yours. Colonel
Heavytop took off three bottles of that you sent me down, under his
belt the other day."

"Did he?" said the old gentleman.  "It stands me in eight shillings a
bottle."

"Will you take six guineas a dozen for it, sir?" said George, with a
laugh.  "There's one of the greatest men in the kingdom wants some."

"Does he?" growled the senior.  "Wish he may get it."

"When General Daguilet was at Chatham, sir, Heavytop gave him a
breakfast, and asked me for some of the wine.  The General liked it
just as well--wanted a pipe for the Commander-in-Chief.  He's his Royal
Highness's right-hand man."

"It is devilish fine wine," said the Eyebrows, and they looked more
good-humoured; and George was going to take advantage of this
complacency, and bring the supply question on the mahogany, when the
father, relapsing into solemnity, though rather cordial in manner, bade
him ring the bell for claret.  "And we'll see if that's as good as the
Madeira, George, to which his Royal Highness is welcome, I'm sure.  And
as we are drinking it, I'll talk to you about a matter of importance."

Amelia heard the claret bell ringing as she sat nervously upstairs. She
thought, somehow, it was a mysterious and presentimental bell. Of the
presentiments which some people are always having, some surely must
come right.

"What I want to know, George," the old gentleman said, after slowly
smacking his first bumper--"what I want to know is, how you
and--ah--that little thing upstairs, are carrying on?"

"I think, sir, it is not hard to see," George said, with a
self-satisfied grin.  "Pretty clear, sir.--What capital wine!"

"What d'you mean, pretty clear, sir?"

"Why, hang it, sir, don't push me too hard.  I'm a modest man.
I--ah--I don't set up to be a lady-killer; but I do own that she's as
devilish fond of me as she can be.  Anybody can see that with half an
eye."

"And you yourself?"

"Why, sir, didn't you order me to marry her, and ain't I a good boy?
Haven't our Papas settled it ever so long?"

"A pretty boy, indeed.  Haven't I heard of your doings, sir, with Lord
Tarquin, Captain Crawley of the Guards, the Honourable Mr. Deuceace and
that set.  Have a care sir, have a care."

The old gentleman pronounced these aristocratic names with the greatest
gusto.  Whenever he met a great man he grovelled before him, and
my-lorded him as only a free-born Briton can do.  He came home and
looked out his history in the Peerage: he introduced his name into his
daily conversation; he bragged about his Lordship to his daughters.  He
fell down prostrate and basked in him as a Neapolitan beggar does in
the sun.  George was alarmed when he heard the names.  He feared his
father might have been informed of certain transactions at play.  But
the old moralist eased him by saying serenely:

"Well, well, young men will be young men.  And the comfort to me is,
George, that living in the best society in England, as I hope you do;
as I think you do; as my means will allow you to do--"

"Thank you, sir," says George, making his point at once.  "One can't
live with these great folks for nothing; and my purse, sir, look at
it"; and he held up a little token which had been netted by Amelia, and
contained the very last of Dobbin's pound notes.

"You shan't want, sir.  The British merchant's son shan't want, sir. My
guineas are as good as theirs, George, my boy; and I don't grudge 'em.
Call on Mr. Chopper as you go through the City to-morrow; he'll have
something for you.  I don't grudge money when I know you're in good
society, because I know that good society can never go wrong.  There's
no pride in me.  I was a humbly born man--but you have had advantages.
Make a good use of 'em.  Mix with the young nobility. There's many of
'em who can't spend a dollar to your guinea, my boy.  And as for the
pink bonnets (here from under the heavy eyebrows there came a knowing
and not very pleasing leer)--why boys will be boys.  Only there's one
thing I order you to avoid, which, if you do not, I'll cut you off with
a shilling, by Jove; and that's gambling."

"Oh, of course, sir," said George.

"But to return to the other business about Amelia: why shouldn't you
marry higher than a stockbroker's daughter, George--that's what I want
to know?"

"It's a family business, sir," says George, cracking filberts.  "You
and Mr. Sedley made the match a hundred years ago."

"I don't deny it; but people's positions alter, sir.  I don't deny that
Sedley made my fortune, or rather put me in the way of acquiring, by my
own talents and genius, that proud position, which, I may say, I occupy
in the tallow trade and the City of London. I've shown my gratitude to
Sedley; and he's tried it of late, sir, as my cheque-book can show.
George!  I tell you in confidence I don't like the looks of Mr.
Sedley's affairs.  My chief clerk, Mr. Chopper, does not like the looks
of 'em, and he's an old file, and knows 'Change as well as any man in
London.  Hulker & Bullock are looking shy at him.  He's been dabbling
on his own account I fear. They say the Jeune Amelie was his, which was
taken by the Yankee privateer Molasses.  And that's flat--unless I see
Amelia's ten thousand down you don't marry her.  I'll have no lame
duck's daughter in my family.  Pass the wine, sir--or ring for coffee."

With which Mr. Osborne spread out the evening paper, and George knew
from this signal that the colloquy was ended, and that his papa was
about to take a nap.

He hurried upstairs to Amelia in the highest spirits. What was it that
made him more attentive to her on that night than he had been for a
long time--more eager to amuse her, more tender, more brilliant in
talk?  Was it that his generous heart warmed to her at the prospect of
misfortune; or that the idea of losing the dear little prize made him
value it more?

She lived upon the recollections of that happy evening for many days
afterwards, remembering his words; his looks; the song he sang; his
attitude, as he leant over her or looked at her from a distance.  As it
seemed to her, no night ever passed so quickly at Mr. Osborne's house
before; and for once this young person was almost provoked to be angry
by the premature arrival of Mr. Sambo with her shawl.

George came and took a tender leave of her the next morning; and then
hurried off to the City, where he visited Mr. Chopper, his father's
head man, and received from that gentleman a document which he
exchanged at Hulker & Bullock's for a whole pocketful of money. As
George entered the house, old John Sedley was passing out of the
banker's parlour, looking very dismal.  But his godson was much too
elated to mark the worthy stockbroker's depression, or the dreary eyes
which the kind old gentleman cast upon him.  Young Bullock did not come
grinning out of the parlour with him as had been his wont in former
years.

And as the swinging doors of Hulker, Bullock & Co. closed upon Mr.
Sedley, Mr. Quill, the cashier (whose benevolent occupation it is to
hand out crisp bank-notes from a drawer and dispense sovereigns out of
a copper shovel), winked at Mr. Driver, the clerk at the desk on his
right.  Mr. Driver winked again.

"No go," Mr. D. whispered.

"Not at no price," Mr. Q. said.  "Mr. George Osborne,  sir, how will
you take it?" George crammed eagerly a quantity of notes into his
pockets, and paid Dobbin fifty pounds that very evening at mess.

That very evening Amelia wrote him the tenderest of long letters. Her
heart was overflowing with tenderness, but it still foreboded evil.
What was the cause of Mr. Osborne's dark looks? she asked. Had any
difference arisen between him and her papa? Her poor papa returned so
melancholy from the City, that all were alarmed about him at home--in
fine, there were four pages of loves and fears and hopes and
forebodings.

"Poor little Emmy--dear little Emmy.  How fond she is of me," George
said, as he perused the missive--"and Gad, what a headache that mixed
punch has given me!" Poor little Emmy, indeed.



Miss Crawley at Home

About this time there drove up to an exceedingly snug and
well-appointed house in Park Lane, a travelling chariot with a lozenge on
the panels, a discontented female in a green veil and crimped curls on
the rumble, and a large and confidential man on the box.  It was the
equipage of our friend Miss Crawley, returning from Hants.  The
carriage windows were shut; the fat spaniel, whose head and tongue
ordinarily lolled out of one of them, reposed on the lap of the
discontented female.  When the vehicle stopped, a large round bundle of
shawls was taken out of the carriage by the aid of various domestics
and a young lady who accompanied the heap of cloaks.  That bundle
contained Miss Crawley, who was conveyed upstairs forthwith, and put
into a bed and chamber warmed properly as for the reception of an
invalid.  Messengers went off for her physician and medical man.  They
came, consulted, prescribed, vanished.  The young companion of Miss
Crawley, at the conclusion of their interview, came in to receive their
instructions, and administered those antiphlogistic medicines which the
eminent men ordered.

Captain Crawley of the Life Guards rode up from Knightsbridge Barracks
the next day; his black charger pawed the straw before his invalid
aunt's door.  He was most affectionate in his inquiries regarding that
amiable relative.  There seemed to be much source of apprehension. He
found Miss Crawley's maid (the discontented female) unusually sulky and
despondent; he found Miss Briggs, her dame de compagnie, in tears alone
in the drawing-room.  She had hastened home, hearing of her beloved
friend's illness.  She wished to fly to her couch, that couch which
she, Briggs, had so often smoothed in the hour of sickness.  She was
denied admission to Miss Crawley's apartment.  A stranger was
administering her medicines--a stranger from the country--an odious
Miss ... --tears choked the utterance of the dame de compagnie, and
she buried her crushed affections and her poor old red nose in her
pocket handkerchief.

Rawdon Crawley sent up his name by the sulky femme de chambre, and Miss
Crawley's new companion, coming tripping down from the sick-room, put
a little hand into his as he stepped forward eagerly to meet her, gave
a glance of great scorn at the bewildered Briggs, and beckoning the
young Guardsman out of the back drawing-room, led him downstairs into
that now desolate dining-parlour, where so many a good dinner had been
celebrated.

Here these two talked for ten minutes, discussing, no doubt, the
symptoms of the old invalid above stairs; at the end of which period
the parlour bell was rung briskly, and answered on that instant by Mr.
Bowls, Miss Crawley's large confidential butler (who, indeed, happened
to be at the keyhole during the most part of the interview); and the
Captain coming out, curling his mustachios, mounted the black charger
pawing among the straw, to the admiration of the little blackguard boys
collected in the street.  He looked in at the dining-room window,
managing his horse, which curvetted and capered beautifully--for one
instant the young person might be seen at the window, when her figure
vanished, and, doubtless, she went upstairs again to resume the
affecting duties of benevolence.

Who could this young woman be, I wonder?  That evening a little dinner
for two persons was laid in the dining-room--when Mrs. Firkin, the
lady's maid, pushed into her mistress's apartment, and bustled about
there during the vacancy occasioned by the departure of the new
nurse--and the latter and Miss Briggs sat down to the neat little meal.

Briggs was so much choked by emotion that she could hardly take a
morsel of meat.  The young person carved a fowl with the utmost
delicacy, and asked so distinctly for egg-sauce, that poor Briggs,
before whom that delicious condiment was placed, started, made a great
clattering with the ladle, and once more fell back in the most gushing
hysterical state.

"Had you not better give Miss Briggs a glass of wine?" said the person
to Mr. Bowls, the large confidential man. He did so.  Briggs seized it
mechanically, gasped it down convulsively, moaned a little, and began
to play with the chicken on her plate.

"I think we shall be able to help each other," said the person with
great suavity: "and shall have no need of Mr. Bowls's kind services.
Mr. Bowls, if you please, we will ring when we want you." He went
downstairs, where, by the way, he vented the most horrid curses upon
the unoffending footman, his subordinate.

"It is a pity you take on so, Miss Briggs," the young lady said, with a
cool, slightly sarcastic, air.

"My dearest friend is so ill, and wo-o-on't see me," gurgled out Briggs
in an agony of renewed grief.

"She's not very ill any more.  Console yourself, dear Miss Briggs. She
has only overeaten herself--that is all. She is greatly better. She
will soon be quite restored again. She is weak from being cupped and
from medical treatment, but she will rally immediately.  Pray console
yourself, and take a little more wine."

"But why, why won't she see me again?" Miss Briggs bleated out. "Oh,
Matilda, Matilda, after three-and-twenty years' tenderness! is this the
return to your poor, poor Arabella?"

"Don't cry too much, poor Arabella," the other said (with ever so
little of a grin); "she only won't see you, because she says you don't
nurse her as well as I do. It's no pleasure to me to sit up all night.
I wish you might do it instead."

"Have I not tended that dear couch for years?" Arabella said, "and
now--"

"Now she prefers somebody else.  Well, sick people have these fancies,
and must be humoured.  When she's well I shall go."

"Never, never," Arabella exclaimed, madly inhaling her salts-bottle.

"Never be well or never go, Miss Briggs?" the other said, with the same
provoking good-nature.  "Pooh--she will be well in a fortnight, when I
shall go back to my little pupils at Queen's Crawley, and to their
mother, who is a great deal more sick than our friend.  You need not be
jealous about me, my dear Miss Briggs.  I am a poor little girl without
any friends, or any harm in me. I don't want to supplant you in Miss
Crawley's good graces.  She will forget me a week after I am gone: and
her affection for you has been the work of years.  Give me a little
wine if you please, my dear Miss Briggs, and let us be friends.  I'm
sure I want friends."

The placable and soft-hearted Briggs speechlessly pushed out her hand
at this appeal; but she felt the desertion most keenly for all that,
and bitterly, bitterly moaned the fickleness of her Matilda. At the end
of half an hour, the meal over, Miss Rebecca Sharp (for such,
astonishing to state, is the name of her who has been described
ingeniously as "the person" hitherto), went upstairs again to her
patient's rooms, from which, with the most engaging politeness, she
eliminated poor Firkin. "Thank you, Mrs. Firkin, that will quite do;
how nicely you make it! I will ring when anything is wanted." "Thank
you"; and Firkin came downstairs in a tempest of jealousy, only the
more dangerous because she was forced to confine it in her own bosom.

Could it be the tempest which, as she passed the landing of the first
floor, blew open the drawing-room door? No; it was stealthily opened by
the hand of Briggs. Briggs had been on the watch. Briggs too well heard
the creaking Firkin descend the stairs, and the clink of the spoon and
gruel-basin the neglected female carried.

"Well, Firkin?" says she, as the other entered the apartment. "Well,
Jane?"

"Wuss and wuss, Miss B.," Firkin said, wagging her head.

"Is she not better then?"

"She never spoke but once, and I asked her if she felt a little more
easy, and she told me to hold my stupid tongue. Oh, Miss B., I never
thought to have seen this day!"  And the water-works again began to
play.

"What sort of a person is this Miss Sharp, Firkin? I little thought,
while enjoying my Christmas revels in the elegant home of my firm
friends, the Reverend Lionel Delamere and his amiable lady, to find a
stranger had taken my place in the affections of my dearest, my still
dearest Matilda!"  Miss Briggs, it will be seen by her language, was of
a literary and sentimental turn, and had once published a volume of
poems--"Trills of the Nightingale"--by subscription.

"Miss B., they are all infatyated about that young woman," Firkin
replied. "Sir Pitt wouldn't have let her go, but he daredn't refuse
Miss Crawley anything. Mrs. Bute at the Rectory jist as bad--never
happy out of her sight. The Capting quite wild about her. Mr. Crawley
mortial jealous. Since Miss C. was took ill, she won't have nobody near
her but Miss Sharp, I can't tell for where nor for why; and I think
somethink has bewidged everybody."

Rebecca passed that night in constant watching upon Miss Crawley; the
next night the old lady slept so comfortably, that Rebecca had time for
several hours' comfortable repose herself on the sofa, at the foot of
her patroness's bed; very soon, Miss Crawley was so well that she sat
up and laughed heartily at a perfect imitation of Miss Briggs and her
grief, which Rebecca described to her. Briggs' weeping snuffle, and her
manner of using the handkerchief, were so completely rendered that Miss
Crawley became quite cheerful, to the admiration of the doctors when
they visited her, who usually found this worthy woman of the world,
when the least sickness attacked her, under the most abject depression
and terror of death.

Captain Crawley came every day, and received bulletins from Miss
Rebecca respecting his aunt's health. This improved so rapidly, that
poor Briggs was allowed to see her patroness; and persons with tender
hearts may imagine the smothered emotions of that sentimental female,
and the affecting nature of the interview.

Miss Crawley liked to have Briggs in a good deal soon.  Rebecca used to
mimic her to her face with the most admirable gravity, thereby
rendering the imitation doubly piquant to her worthy patroness.

The causes which had led to the deplorable illness of Miss Crawley, and
her departure from her brother's house in the country, were of such an
unromantic nature that they are hardly fit to be explained in this
genteel and sentimental novel.  For how is it possible to hint of a
delicate female, living in good society, that she ate and drank too
much, and that a hot supper of lobsters profusely enjoyed at the
Rectory was the reason of an indisposition which Miss Crawley herself
persisted was solely attributable to the dampness of the weather?  The
attack was so sharp that Matilda--as his Reverence expressed it--was
very nearly "off the hooks"; all the family were in a fever of
expectation regarding the will, and Rawdon Crawley was making sure of
at least forty thousand pounds before the commencement of the London
season.  Mr. Crawley sent over a choice parcel of tracts, to prepare
her for the change from Vanity Fair and Park Lane for another world;
but a good doctor from Southampton being called in in time, vanquished
the lobster which was so nearly fatal to her, and gave her sufficient
strength to enable her to return to London. The Baronet did not
disguise his exceeding mortification at the turn which affairs took.

While everybody was attending on Miss Crawley, and messengers every
hour from the Rectory were carrying news of her health to the
affectionate folks there, there was a lady in another part of the
house, being exceedingly ill, of whom no one took any notice at all;
and this was the lady of Crawley herself.  The good doctor shook his
head after seeing her; to which visit Sir Pitt consented, as it could
be paid without a fee; and she was left fading away in her lonely
chamber, with no more heed paid to her than to a weed in the park.

The young ladies, too, lost much of the inestimable benefit of their
governess's instruction, So affectionate a nurse was Miss Sharp, that
Miss Crawley would take her medicines from no other hand. Firkin had
been deposed long before her mistress's departure from the country.
That faithful attendant found a gloomy consolation on returning to
London, in seeing Miss Briggs suffer the same pangs of jealousy and
undergo the same faithless treatment to which she herself had been
subject.

Captain Rawdon got an extension of leave on his aunt's illness, and
remained dutifully at home.  He was always in her antechamber.  (She
lay sick in the state bedroom, into which you entered by the little
blue saloon.) His father was always meeting him there; or if he came
down the corridor ever so quietly, his father's door was sure to open,
and the hyena face of the old gentleman to glare out.  What was it set
one to watch the other so?  A generous rivalry, no doubt, as to which
should be most attentive to the dear sufferer in the state bedroom.
Rebecca used to come out and comfort both of them; or one or the other
of them rather.  Both of these worthy gentlemen were most anxious to
have news of the invalid from her little confidential messenger.

At dinner--to which meal she descended for half an hour--she kept the
peace between them: after which she disappeared for the night; when
Rawdon would ride over to the depot of the 150th at Mudbury, leaving
his papa to the society of Mr. Horrocks and his rum and water. She
passed as weary a fortnight as ever mortal spent in Miss Crawley's
sick-room; but her little nerves seemed to be of iron, as she was quite
unshaken by the duty and the tedium of the sick-chamber.

She never told until long afterwards how painful that duty was; how
peevish a patient was the jovial old lady; how angry; how sleepless; in
what horrors of death; during what long nights she lay moaning, and in
almost delirious agonies respecting that future world which she quite
ignored when she was in good health.--Picture to yourself, oh fair
young reader, a worldly, selfish, graceless, thankless, religionless
old woman, writhing in pain and fear, and without her wig.  Picture her
to yourself, and ere you be old, learn to love and pray!

Sharp watched this graceless bedside with indomitable patience. Nothing
escaped her; and, like a prudent steward, she found a use for
everything.  She told many a good story about Miss Crawley's illness in
after days--stories which made the lady blush through her artificial
carnations.  During the illness she was never out of temper; always
alert; she slept light, having a perfectly clear conscience; and could
take that refreshment at almost any minute's warning.  And so you saw
very few traces of fatigue in her appearance.  Her face might be a
trifle paler, and the circles round her eyes a little blacker than
usual; but whenever she came out from the sick-room she was always
smiling, fresh, and neat, and looked as trim in her little
dressing-gown and cap, as in her smartest evening suit.

The Captain thought so, and raved about her in uncouth convulsions. The
barbed shaft of love had penetrated his dull hide.  Six
weeks--appropinquity--opportunity--had victimised him completely.  He
made a confidante of his aunt at the Rectory, of all persons in the
world.  She rallied him about it; she had perceived his folly; she
warned him; she finished by owning that little Sharp was the most clever,
droll, odd, good-natured, simple, kindly creature in England.  Rawdon
must not trifle with her affections, though--dear Miss Crawley would
never pardon him for that; for she, too, was quite overcome by the little
governess, and loved Sharp like a daughter.  Rawdon must go away--go
back to his regiment and naughty London, and not play with a poor
artless girl's feelings.

Many and many a time this good-natured lady, compassionating the
forlorn life-guardsman's condition, gave him an opportunity of seeing
Miss Sharp at the Rectory, and of walking home with her, as we have
seen.  When men of a certain sort, ladies, are in love, though they see
the hook and the string, and the whole apparatus with which they are to
be taken, they gorge the bait nevertheless--they must come to it--they
must swallow it--and are presently struck and landed gasping.  Rawdon
saw there was a manifest intention on Mrs. Bute's part to captivate him
with Rebecca.  He was not very wise; but he was a man about town, and
had seen several seasons.  A light dawned upon his dusky soul, as he
thought, through a speech of Mrs. Bute's.

"Mark my words, Rawdon," she said.  "You will have Miss Sharp one day
for your relation."

"What relation--my cousin, hey, Mrs. Bute? James sweet on her, hey?"
inquired the waggish officer.

"More than that," Mrs. Bute said, with a flash from her black eyes.

"Not Pitt?  He sha'n't have her.  The sneak a'n't worthy of her. He's
booked to Lady Jane Sheepshanks."

"You men perceive nothing.  You silly, blind creature--if anything
happens to Lady Crawley, Miss Sharp will be your mother-in-law; and
that's what will happen."

Rawdon Crawley, Esquire, gave vent to a prodigious whistle, in token of
astonishment at this announcement. He couldn't deny it.  His father's
evident liking for Miss Sharp had not escaped him.  He knew the old
gentleman's character well; and a more unscrupulous old--whyou--he did
not conclude the sentence, but walked home, curling his mustachios, and
convinced he had found a clue to Mrs. Bute's mystery.

"By Jove, it's too bad," thought Rawdon, "too bad, by Jove! I do
believe the woman wants the poor girl to be ruined, in order that she
shouldn't come into the family as Lady Crawley."

When he saw Rebecca alone, he rallied her about his father's attachment
in his graceful way.  She flung up her head scornfully, looked him full
in the face, and said,

"Well, suppose he is fond of me.  I know he is, and others too.  You
don't think I am afraid of him, Captain Crawley?  You don't suppose I
can't defend my own honour," said the little woman, looking as stately
as a queen.

"Oh, ah, why--give you fair warning--look out, you know--that's all,"
said the mustachio-twiddler.

"You hint at something not honourable, then?" said she, flashing out.

"O Gad--really--Miss Rebecca," the heavy dragoon interposed.

"Do you suppose I have no feeling of self-respect, because I am poor
and friendless, and because rich people have none?  Do you think,
because I am a governess, I have not as much sense, and feeling, and
good breeding as you gentlefolks in Hampshire? I'm a Montmorency. Do
you suppose a Montmorency is not as good as a Crawley?"

When Miss Sharp was agitated, and alluded to her maternal relatives,
she spoke with ever so slight a foreign accent, which gave a great
charm to her clear ringing voice.  "No," she continued, kindling as she
spoke to the Captain; "I can endure poverty, but not shame--neglect,
but not insult; and insult from--from you."

Her feelings gave way, and she burst into tears.

"Hang it, Miss Sharp--Rebecca--by Jove--upon my soul, I wouldn't for a
thousand pounds.  Stop, Rebecca!"

She was gone.  She drove out with Miss Crawley that day.  It was before
the latter's illness.  At dinner she was unusually brilliant and
lively; but she would take no notice of the hints, or the nods, or the
clumsy expostulations of the humiliated, infatuated guardsman.
Skirmishes of this sort passed perpetually during the little
campaign--tedious to relate, and similar in result.  The Crawley heavy
cavalry was maddened by defeat, and routed every day.

If the Baronet of Queen's Crawley had not had the fear of losing his
sister's legacy before his eyes, he never would have permitted his dear
girls to lose the educational blessings which their invaluable
governess was conferring upon them.  The old house at home seemed a
desert without her, so useful and pleasant had Rebecca made herself
there.  Sir Pitt's letters were not copied and corrected; his books not
made up; his household business and manifold schemes neglected, now
that his little secretary was away.  And it was easy to see how
necessary such an amanuensis was to him, by the tenor and spelling of
the numerous letters which he sent to her, entreating her and
commanding her to return.  Almost every day brought a frank from the
Baronet, enclosing the most urgent prayers to Becky for her return, or
conveying pathetic statements to Miss Crawley, regarding the neglected
state of his daughters' education; of which documents Miss Crawley took
very little heed.

Miss Briggs was not formally dismissed, but her place as companion was
a sinecure and a derision; and her company was the fat spaniel in the
drawing-room, or occasionally the discontented Firkin in the
housekeeper's closet.  Nor though the old lady would by no means hear
of Rebecca's departure, was the latter regularly installed in office in
Park Lane.  Like many wealthy people, it was Miss Crawley's habit to
accept as much service as she could get from her inferiors; and
good-naturedly to take leave of them when she no longer found them
useful.  Gratitude among certain rich folks is scarcely natural or to
be thought of.  They take needy people's services as their due.  Nor
have you, O poor parasite and humble hanger-on, much reason to
complain!  Your friendship for Dives is about as sincere as the return
which it usually gets.  It is money you love, and not the man; and were
Croesus and his footman to change places you know, you poor rogue, who
would have the benefit of your allegiance.

And I am not sure that, in spite of Rebecca's simplicity and activity,
and gentleness and untiring good humour, the shrewd old London lady,
upon whom these treasures of friendship were lavished, had not a
lurking suspicion all the while of her affectionate nurse and friend.
It must have often crossed Miss Crawley's mind that nobody does
anything for nothing.  If she measured her own feeling towards the
world, she must have been pretty well able to gauge those of the world
towards herself; and perhaps she reflected that it is the ordinary lot
of people to have no friends if they themselves care for nobody.

Well, meanwhile Becky was the greatest comfort and convenience to her,
and she gave her a couple of new gowns, and an old necklace and shawl,
and showed her friendship by abusing all her intimate acquaintances to
her new confidante (than which there can't be a more touching proof of
regard), and meditated vaguely some great future benefit--to marry her
perhaps to Clump, the apothecary, or to settle her in some advantageous
way of life; or at any rate, to send her back to Queen's Crawley when
she had done with her, and the full London season had begun.

When Miss Crawley was convalescent and descended to the drawing-room,
Becky sang to her, and otherwise amused her; when she was well enough
to drive out, Becky accompanied her.  And amongst the drives which they
took, whither, of all places in the world, did Miss Crawley's admirable
good-nature and friendship actually induce her to penetrate, but to
Russell Square, Bloomsbury, and the house of John Sedley, Esquire.

Ere that event, many notes had passed, as may be imagined, between the
two dear friends.  During the months of Rebecca's stay in Hampshire,
the eternal friendship had (must it be owned?) suffered considerable
diminution, and grown so decrepit and feeble with old age as to
threaten demise altogether.  The fact is, both girls had their own real
affairs to think of: Rebecca her advance with her employers--Amelia her
own absorbing topic.  When the two girls met, and flew into each
other's arms with that impetuosity which distinguishes the behaviour of
young ladies towards each other, Rebecca performed her part of the
embrace with the most perfect briskness and energy.  Poor little Amelia
blushed as she kissed her friend, and thought she had been guilty of
something very like coldness towards her.

Their first interview was but a very short one.  Amelia was just ready
to go out for a walk.  Miss Crawley was waiting in her carriage below,
her people wondering at the locality in which they found themselves,
and gazing upon honest Sambo, the black footman of Bloomsbury, as one
of the queer natives of the place.  But when Amelia came down with her
kind smiling looks (Rebecca must introduce her to her friend, Miss
Crawley was longing to see her, and was too ill to leave her
carriage)--when, I say, Amelia came down, the Park Lane shoulder-knot
aristocracy wondered more and more that such a thing could come out of
Bloomsbury; and Miss Crawley was fairly captivated by the sweet
blushing face of the young lady who came forward so timidly and so
gracefully to pay her respects to the protector of her friend.

"What a complexion, my dear! What a sweet voice!" Miss Crawley said, as
they drove away westward after the little interview.  "My dear Sharp,
your young friend is charming.  Send for her to Park Lane, do you
hear?" Miss Crawley had a good taste.  She liked natural manners--a
little timidity only set them off.  She liked pretty faces near her; as
she liked pretty pictures and nice china.  She talked of Amelia with
rapture half a dozen times that day.  She mentioned her to Rawdon
Crawley, who came dutifully to partake of his aunt's chicken.

Of course, on this Rebecca instantly stated that Amelia was engaged to
be married--to a Lieutenant Osborne--a very old flame.

"Is he a man in a line-regiment?" Captain Crawley asked, remembering
after an effort, as became a guardsman, the number of the regiment,
the --th.

Rebecca thought that was the regiment.  "The Captain's name," she said,
"was Captain Dobbin."

"A lanky gawky fellow," said Crawley, "tumbles over everybody.  I know
him; and Osborne's a goodish-looking fellow, with large black whiskers?"

"Enormous," Miss Rebecca Sharp said, "and enormously proud of them, I
assure you."

Captain Rawdon Crawley burst into a horse-laugh by way of reply; and
being pressed by the ladies to explain, did so when the explosion of
hilarity was over.  "He fancies he can play at billiards," said he. "I
won two hundred of him at the Cocoa-Tree.  HE play, the young flat!
He'd have played for anything that day, but his friend Captain Dobbin
carried him off, hang him!"

"Rawdon, Rawdon, don't be so wicked," Miss Crawley remarked, highly
pleased.

"Why, ma'am, of all the young fellows I've seen out of the line, I
think this fellow's the greenest.  Tarquin and Deuceace get what money
they like out of him.  He'd go to the deuce to be seen with a lord.  He
pays their dinners at Greenwich, and they invite the company."

"And very pretty company too, I dare say."

"Quite right, Miss Sharp.  Right, as usual, Miss Sharp. Uncommon pretty
company--haw, haw!" and the Captain laughed more and more, thinking he
had made a good joke.

"Rawdon, don't be naughty!" his aunt exclaimed.

"Well, his father's a City man--immensely rich, they say.  Hang those
City fellows, they must bleed; and I've not done with him yet, I can
tell you.  Haw, haw!"

"Fie, Captain Crawley; I shall warn Amelia.  A gambling husband!"

"Horrid, ain't he, hey?" the Captain said with great solemnity; and
then added, a sudden thought having struck him: "Gad, I say, ma'am,
we'll have him here."

"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."


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.  "O 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.



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, something must have
happened--there's nobody in Miss Sharp's room; the bed ain't been slep
in, and she've run away, and left this letter for you, Miss."

"WHAT!" cries Briggs, dropping her comb, the thin wisp of faded hair
falling over her shoulders; "an elopement! Miss Sharp a fugitive! What,
what is this?" and she eagerly broke the neat seal, and, as they say,
"devoured the contents" of the letter addressed to her.

Dear Miss Briggs [the refugee wrote], the kindest heart in the world,
as yours is, will pity and sympathise with me and excuse me. With
tears, and prayers, and blessings, I leave the home where the poor
orphan has ever met with kindness and affection.  Claims even superior
to those of my benefactress call me hence.  I go to my duty--to my
HUSBAND.  Yes, I am married.  My husband COMMANDS me to seek the HUMBLE
HOME which we call ours.  Dearest Miss Briggs, break the news as your
delicate sympathy will know how to do it--to my dear, my beloved friend
and benefactress.  Tell her, ere I went, I shed tears on her dear
pillow--that pillow that I have so often soothed in sickness--that I
long AGAIN to watch--Oh, with what joy shall I return to dear Park
Lane! How I tremble for the answer which is to SEAL MY FATE! When Sir
Pitt deigned to offer me his hand, an honour of which my beloved Miss
Crawley said I was DESERVING (my blessings go with her for judging the
poor orphan worthy to be HER SISTER!) I told Sir Pitt that I was
already A WIFE.  Even he forgave me.  But my courage failed me, when I
should have told him all--that I could not be his wife, for I WAS HIS
DAUGHTER!  I am wedded to the best and most generous of men--Miss
Crawley's Rawdon is MY Rawdon. At his COMMAND I open my lips, and
follow him to our humble home, as I would THROUGH THE WORLD.  O, my
excellent and kind friend, intercede with my Rawdon's beloved aunt for
him and the poor girl to whom all HIS NOBLE RACE have shown such
UNPARALLELED AFFECTION.  Ask Miss Crawley to receive HER CHILDREN.  I
can say no more, but blessings, blessings on all in the dear house I
leave, prays

Your affectionate and GRATEFUL Rebecca Crawley. Midnight.

Just as Briggs had finished reading this affecting and interesting
document, which reinstated her in her position as first confidante of
Miss Crawley, Mrs. Firkin entered the room.  "Here's Mrs. Bute Crawley
just arrived by the mail from Hampshire, and wants some tea; will you
come down and make breakfast, Miss?"

And to the surprise of Firkin, clasping her dressing-gown around her,
the wisp of hair floating dishevelled behind her, the little
curl-papers still sticking in bunches round her forehead, Briggs sailed
down to Mrs. Bute with the letter in her hand containing the wonderful
news.

"Oh, Mrs. Firkin," gasped Betty, "sech a business.  Miss Sharp have a
gone and run away with the Capting, and they're off to Gretney Green!"
We would devote a chapter to describe the emotions of Mrs. Firkin, did
not the passions of her mistresses occupy our genteeler muse.

When Mrs. Bute Crawley, numbed with midnight travelling, and warming
herself at the newly crackling parlour fire, heard from Miss Briggs the
intelligence of the clandestine marriage, she declared it was quite
providential that she should have arrived at such a time to assist poor
dear Miss Crawley in supporting the shock--that Rebecca was an artful
little hussy of whom she had always had her suspicions; and that as for
Rawdon Crawley, she never could account for his aunt's infatuation
regarding him, and had long considered him a profligate, lost, and
abandoned being.  And this awful conduct, Mrs. Bute said, will have at
least this good effect, it will open poor dear Miss Crawley's eyes to
the real character of this wicked man.  Then Mrs. Bute had a
comfortable hot toast and tea; and as there was a vacant room in the
house now, there was no need for her to remain at the Gloster Coffee
House where the Portsmouth mail had set her down, and whence she
ordered Mr. Bowls's aide-de-camp the footman to bring away her trunks.

Miss Crawley, be it known, did not leave her room until near noon--taking
chocolate in bed in the morning, while Becky Sharp read the
Morning Post to her, or otherwise amusing herself or dawdling.  The
conspirators below agreed that they would spare the dear lady's
feelings until she appeared in her drawing-room: meanwhile it was
announced to her that Mrs. Bute Crawley had come up from Hampshire by
the mail, was staying at the Gloster, sent her love to Miss Crawley,
and asked for breakfast with Miss Briggs.  The arrival of Mrs. Bute,
which would not have caused any extreme delight at another period, was
hailed with pleasure now; Miss Crawley being pleased at the notion of a
gossip with her sister-in-law regarding the late Lady Crawley, the
funeral arrangements pending, and Sir Pitt's abrupt proposal to Rebecca.

It was not until the old lady was fairly ensconced in her usual
arm-chair in the drawing-room, and the preliminary embraces and inquiries
had taken place between the ladies, that the conspirators thought it
advisable to submit her to the operation.  Who has not admired the
artifices and delicate approaches with which women "prepare" their
friends for bad news?  Miss Crawley's two friends made such an
apparatus of mystery before they broke the intelligence to her, that
they worked her up to the necessary degree of doubt and alarm.

"And she refused Sir Pitt, my dear, dear Miss Crawley, prepare yourself
for it," Mrs. Bute said, "because--because she couldn't help herself."

"Of course there was a reason," Miss Crawley answered. "She liked
somebody else.  I told Briggs so yesterday."

"LIKES somebody else!" Briggs gasped.  "O my dear friend, she is
married already."

"Married already," Mrs. Bute chimed in; and both sate with clasped
hands looking from each other at their victim.

"Send her to me, the instant she comes in.  The little sly wretch: how
dared she not tell me?" cried out Miss Crawley.

"She won't come in soon.  Prepare yourself, dear friend--she's gone out
for a long time--she's--she's gone altogether."

"Gracious goodness, and who's to make my chocolate? Send for her and
have her back; I desire that she come back," the old lady said.

"She decamped last night, Ma'am," cried Mrs. Bute.

"She left a letter for me," Briggs exclaimed.  "She's married to--"

"Prepare her, for heaven's sake.  Don't torture her, my dear Miss
Briggs."

"She's married to whom?" cries the spinster in a nervous fury.

"To--to a relation of--"

"She refused Sir Pitt," cried the victim.  "Speak at once. Don't drive
me mad."

"O Ma'am--prepare her, Miss Briggs--she's married to Rawdon Crawley."

"Rawdon married Rebecca--governess--nobod-- Get out of my house, you
fool, you idiot--you stupid old Briggs--how dare you? You're in the
plot--you made him marry, thinking that I'd leave my money from him--you
did, Martha," the poor old lady screamed in hysteric sentences.

"I, Ma'am, ask a member of this family to marry a drawing-master's
daughter?"

"Her mother was a Montmorency," cried out the old lady, pulling at the
bell with all her might.

"Her mother was an opera girl, and she has been on the stage or worse
herself," said Mrs. Bute.

Miss Crawley gave a final scream, and fell back in a faint.  They were
forced to take her back to the room which she had just quitted. One fit
of hysterics succeeded another.  The doctor was sent for--the
apothecary arrived. Mrs. Bute took up the post of nurse by her bedside.
"Her relations ought to be round about her," that amiable woman said.

She had scarcely been carried up to her room, when a new person arrived
to whom it was also necessary to break the news.  This was Sir Pitt.
"Where's Becky?" he said, coming in.  "Where's her traps? She's coming
with me to Queen's Crawley."

"Have you not heard the astonishing intelligence regarding her
surreptitious union?" Briggs asked.

"What's that to me?" Sir Pitt asked.  "I know she's married.  That
makes no odds.  Tell her to come down at once, and not keep me."

"Are you not aware, sir," Miss Briggs asked, "that she has left our
roof, to the dismay of Miss Crawley, who is nearly killed by the
intelligence of Captain Rawdon's union with her?"

When Sir Pitt Crawley heard that Rebecca was married to his son, he
broke out into a fury of language, which it would do no good to repeat
in this place, as indeed it sent poor Briggs shuddering out of the
room; and with her we will shut the door upon the figure of the
frenzied old man, wild with hatred and insane with baffled desire.

One day after he went to Queen's Crawley, he burst like a madman into
the room she had used when there--dashed open her boxes with his foot,
and flung about her papers, clothes, and other relics. Miss Horrocks,
the butler's daughter, took some of them.  The children dressed
themselves and acted plays in the others.  It was but a few days after
the poor mother had gone to her lonely burying-place; and was laid,
unwept and disregarded, in a vault full of strangers.

"Suppose the old lady doesn't come to," Rawdon said to his little wife,
as they sate together in the snug little Brompton lodgings. She had
been trying the new piano all the morning.  The new gloves fitted her
to a nicety; the new shawls became her wonderfully; the new rings
glittered on her little hands, and the new watch ticked at her waist;
"suppose she don't come round, eh, Becky?"

"I'LL make your fortune," she said; and Delilah patted Samson's cheek.

"You can do anything," he said, kissing the little hand. "By Jove you
can; and we'll drive down to the Star and Garter, and dine, by Jove."



How Captain Dobbin Bought a Piano

If there is any exhibition in all Vanity Fair which Satire and
Sentiment can visit arm in arm together; where you light on the
strangest contrasts laughable and tearful: where you may be gentle and
pathetic, or savage and cynical with perfect propriety: it is at one of
those public assemblies, a crowd of which are advertised every day in
the last page of the Times newspaper, and over which the late Mr.
George Robins used to preside with so much dignity. There are very few
London people, as I fancy, who have not attended at these meetings, and
all with a taste for moralizing must have thought, with a sensation and
interest not a little startling and queer, of the day when their turn
shall come too, and Mr. Hammerdown will sell by the orders of Diogenes'
assignees, or will be instructed by the executors, to offer to public
competition, the library, furniture, plate, wardrobe, and choice cellar
of wines of Epicurus deceased.

Even with the most selfish disposition, the Vanity Fairian, as he
witnesses this sordid part of the obsequies of a departed friend, can't
but feel some sympathies and regret. My Lord Dives's remains are in the
family vault: the statuaries are cutting an inscription veraciously
commemorating his virtues, and the sorrows of his heir, who is
disposing of his goods.  What guest at Dives's table can pass the
familiar house without a sigh?--the familiar house of which the lights
used to shine so cheerfully at seven o'clock, of which the hall-doors
opened so readily, of which the obsequious servants, as you passed up
the comfortable stair, sounded your name from landing to landing, until
it reached the apartment where jolly old Dives welcomed his friends!
What a number of them he had; and what a noble way of entertaining
them.  How witty people used to be here who were morose when they got
out of the door; and how courteous and friendly men who slandered and
hated each other everywhere else!  He was pompous, but with such a cook
what would one not swallow? he was rather dull, perhaps, but would not
such wine make any conversation pleasant?  We must get some of his
Burgundy at any price, the mourners cry at his club.  "I got this box
at old Dives's sale," Pincher says, handing it round, "one of Louis
XV's mistresses--pretty thing, is it not?--sweet miniature," and they
talk of the way in which young Dives is dissipating his fortune.

How changed the house is, though!  The front is patched over with
bills, setting forth the particulars of the furniture in staring
capitals.  They have hung a shred of carpet out of an upstairs
window--a half dozen of porters are lounging on the dirty steps--the
hall swarms with dingy guests of oriental countenance, who thrust
printed cards into your hand, and offer to bid.  Old women and amateurs
have invaded the upper apartments, pinching the bed-curtains, poking
into the feathers, shampooing the mattresses, and clapping the wardrobe
drawers to and fro. Enterprising young housekeepers are measuring the
looking-glasses and hangings to see if they will suit the new menage
(Snob will brag for years that he has purchased this or that at Dives's
sale), and Mr. Hammerdown is sitting on the great mahogany
dining-tables, in the dining-room below, waving the ivory hammer, and
employing all the artifices of eloquence, enthusiasm, entreaty, reason,
despair; shouting to his people; satirizing Mr. Davids for his
sluggishness; inspiriting Mr. Moss into action; imploring, commanding,
bellowing, until down comes the hammer like fate, and we pass to the
next lot.  O Dives, who would ever have thought, as we sat round the
broad table sparkling with plate and spotless linen, to have seen such
a dish at the head of it as that roaring auctioneer?

It was rather late in the sale.  The excellent drawing-room furniture
by the best makers; the rare and famous wines selected, regardless of
cost, and with the well-known taste of the purchaser; the rich and
complete set of family plate had been sold on the previous days.
Certain of the best wines (which all had a great character among
amateurs in the neighbourhood) had been purchased for his master, who
knew them very well, by the butler of our friend John Osborne, Esquire,
of Russell Square.  A small portion of the most useful articles of the
plate had been bought by some young stockbrokers from the City.  And
now the public being invited to the purchase of minor objects, it
happened that the orator on the table was expatiating on the merits of
a picture, which he sought to recommend to his audience: it was by no
means so select or numerous a company as had attended the previous days
of the auction.

"No. 369," roared Mr. Hammerdown.  "Portrait of a gentleman on an
elephant.  Who'll bid for the gentleman on the elephant?  Lift up the
picture, Blowman, and let the company examine this lot." A long, pale,
military-looking gentleman, seated demurely at the mahogany table,
could not help grinning as this valuable lot was shown by Mr. Blowman.
"Turn the elephant to the Captain, Blowman.  What shall we say, sir,
for the elephant?" but the Captain, blushing in a very hurried and
discomfited manner, turned away his head.

"Shall we say twenty guineas for this work of art?--fifteen, five, name
your own price.  The gentleman without the elephant is worth five
pound."

"I wonder it ain't come down with him," said a professional wag, "he's
anyhow a precious big one"; at which (for the elephant-rider was
represented as of a very stout figure) there was a general giggle in
the room.

"Don't be trying to deprecate the value of the lot, Mr. Moss," Mr.
Hammerdown said; "let the company examine it as a work of art--the
attitude of the gallant animal quite according to natur'; the gentleman
in a nankeen jacket, his gun in his hand, is going to the chase; in the
distance a banyhann tree and a pagody, most likely resemblances of some
interesting spot in our famous Eastern possessions.  How much for this
lot? Come, gentlemen, don't keep me here all day."

Some one bid five shillings, at which the military gentleman looked
towards the quarter from which this splendid offer had come, and there
saw another officer with a young lady on his arm, who both appeared to
be highly amused with the scene, and to whom, finally, this lot was
knocked down for half a guinea.  He at the table looked more surprised
and discomposed than ever when he spied this pair, and his head sank
into his military collar, and he turned his back upon them, so as to
avoid them altogether.

Of all the other articles which Mr. Hammerdown had the honour to offer
for public competition that day it is not our purpose to make mention,
save of one only, a little square piano, which came down from the upper
regions of the house (the state grand piano having been disposed of
previously); this the young lady tried with a rapid and skilful hand
(making the officer blush and start again), and for it, when its turn
came, her agent began to bid.

But there was an opposition here.  The Hebrew aide-de-camp in the
service of the officer at the table bid against the Hebrew gentleman
employed by the elephant purchasers, and a brisk battle ensued over
this little piano, the combatants being greatly encouraged by Mr.
Hammerdown.

At last, when the competition had been prolonged for some time, the
elephant captain and lady desisted from the race; and the hammer coming
down, the auctioneer said:--"Mr. Lewis, twenty-five," and Mr. Lewis's
chief thus became the proprietor of the little square piano. Having
effected the purchase, he sate up as if he was greatly relieved, and
the unsuccessful competitors catching a glimpse of him at this moment,
the lady said to her friend,

"Why, Rawdon, it's Captain Dobbin."

I suppose Becky was discontented with the new piano her husband had
hired for her, or perhaps the proprietors of that instrument had
fetched it away, declining farther credit, or perhaps she had a
particular attachment for the one which she had just tried to purchase,
recollecting it in old days, when she used to play upon it, in the
little sitting-room of our dear Amelia Sedley.

The sale was at the old house in Russell Square, where we passed some
evenings together at the beginning of this story.  Good old John Sedley
was a ruined man.  His name had been proclaimed as a defaulter on the
Stock Exchange, and his bankruptcy and commercial extermination had
followed.  Mr. Osborne's butler came to buy some of the famous port
wine to transfer to the cellars over the way. As for one dozen
well-manufactured silver spoons and forks at per oz., and one dozen
dessert ditto ditto, there were three young stockbrokers (Messrs. Dale,
Spiggot, and Dale, of Threadneedle Street, indeed), who, having had
dealings with the old man, and kindnesses from him in days when he was
kind to everybody with whom he dealt, sent this little spar out of the
wreck with their love to good Mrs. Sedley; and with respect to the
piano, as it had been Amelia's, and as she might miss it and want one
now, and as Captain William Dobbin could no more play upon it than he
could dance on the tight rope, it is probable that he did not purchase
the instrument for his own use.

In a word, it arrived that evening at a wonderful small cottage in a
street leading from the Fulham Road--one of those streets which have
the finest romantic names--(this was called St. Adelaide Villas,
Anna-Maria Road West), where the houses look like baby-houses; where
the people, looking out of the first-floor windows, must infallibly, as
you think, sit with their feet in the parlours; where the shrubs in the
little gardens in front bloom with a perennial display of little
children's pinafores, little red socks, caps, &c. (polyandria
polygynia); whence you hear the sound of jingling spinets and women
singing; where little porter pots hang on the railings sunning
themselves; whither of evenings you see City clerks padding wearily:
here it was that Mr. Clapp, the clerk of Mr. Sedley, had his domicile,
and in this asylum the good old gentleman hid his head with his wife
and daughter when the crash came.

Jos Sedley had acted as a man of his disposition would, when the
announcement of the family misfortune reached him.  He did not come to
London, but he wrote to his mother to draw upon his agents for whatever
money was wanted, so that his kind broken-spirited old parents had no
present poverty to fear.  This done, Jos went on at the boarding-house
at Cheltenham pretty much as before.  He drove his curricle; he drank
his claret; he played his rubber; he told his Indian stories, and the
Irish widow consoled and flattered him as usual. His present of money,
needful as it was, made little impression on his parents; and I have
heard Amelia say that the first day on which she saw her father lift up
his head after the failure was on the receipt of the packet of forks
and spoons with the young stockbrokers' love, over which he burst out
crying like a child, being greatly more affected than even his wife, to
whom the present was addressed.  Edward Dale, the junior of the house,
who purchased the spoons for the firm, was, in fact, very sweet upon
Amelia, and offered for her in spite of all. He married Miss Louisa
Cutts (daughter of Higham and Cutts, the eminent cornfactors) with a
handsome fortune in 1820; and is now living in splendour, and with a
numerous family, at his elegant villa, Muswell Hill.  But we must not
let the recollections of this good fellow cause us to diverge from the
principal history.

I hope the reader has much too good an opinion of Captain and Mrs.
Crawley to suppose that they ever would have dreamed of paying a visit
to so remote a district as Bloomsbury, if they thought the family whom
they proposed to honour with a visit were not merely out of fashion,
but out of money, and could be serviceable to them in no possible
manner.  Rebecca was entirely surprised at the sight of the comfortable
old house where she had met with no small kindness, ransacked by
brokers and bargainers, and its quiet family treasures given up to
public desecration and plunder.  A month after her flight, she had
bethought her of Amelia, and Rawdon, with a horse-laugh, had expressed
a perfect willingness to see young George Osborne again.  "He's a very
agreeable acquaintance, Beck," the wag added.  "I'd like to sell him
another horse, Beck.  I'd like to play a few more games at billiards
with him.  He'd be what I call useful just now, Mrs. C.--ha, ha!" by
which sort of speech it is not to be supposed that Rawdon Crawley had a
deliberate desire to cheat Mr. Osborne at play, but only wished to take
that fair advantage of him which almost every sporting gentleman in
Vanity Fair considers to be his due from his neighbour.

The old aunt was long in "coming-to." A month had elapsed.  Rawdon was
denied the door by Mr. Bowls; his servants could not get a lodgment in
the house at Park Lane; his letters were sent back unopened.  Miss
Crawley never stirred out--she was unwell--and Mrs. Bute remained still
and never left her.  Crawley and his wife both of them augured evil
from the continued presence of Mrs. Bute.

"Gad, I begin to perceive now why she was always bringing us together
at Queen's Crawley," Rawdon said.

"What an artful little woman!" ejaculated Rebecca.

"Well, I don't regret it, if you don't," the Captain cried, still in an
amorous rapture with his wife, who rewarded him with a kiss by way of
reply, and was indeed not a little gratified by the generous confidence
of her husband.

"If he had but a little more brains," she thought to herself, "I might
make something of him"; but she never let him perceive the opinion she
had of him; listened with indefatigable complacency to his stories of
the stable and the mess; laughed at all his jokes; felt the greatest
interest in Jack Spatterdash, whose cab-horse had come down, and Bob
Martingale, who had been taken up in a gambling-house, and Tom
Cinqbars, who was going to ride the steeplechase. When he came home she
was alert and happy: when he went out she pressed him to go: when he
stayed at home, she played and sang for him, made him good drinks,
superintended his dinner, warmed his slippers, and steeped his soul in
comfort.  The best of women (I have heard my grandmother say) are
hypocrites.  We don't know how much they hide from us: how watchful
they are when they seem most artless and confidential: how often those
frank smiles which they wear so easily, are traps to cajole or elude or
disarm--I don't mean in your mere coquettes, but your domestic models,
and paragons of female virtue. Who has not seen a woman hide the
dulness of a stupid husband, or coax the fury of a savage one?  We
accept this amiable slavishness, and praise a woman for it: we call
this pretty treachery truth.  A good housewife is of necessity a
humbug; and Cornelia's husband was hoodwinked, as Potiphar was--only in
a different way.

By these attentions, that veteran rake, Rawdon Crawley, found himself
converted into a very happy and submissive married man.  His former
haunts knew him not. They asked about him once or twice at his clubs,
but did not miss him much: in those booths of Vanity Fair people seldom
do miss each other.  His secluded wife ever smiling and cheerful, his
little comfortable lodgings, snug meals, and homely evenings, had all
the charms of novelty and secrecy.  The marriage was not yet declared
to the world, or published in the Morning Post.  All his creditors
would have come rushing on him in a body, had they known that he was
united to a woman without fortune. "My relations won't cry fie upon
me," Becky said, with rather a bitter laugh; and she was quite
contented to wait until the old aunt should be reconciled, before she
claimed her place in society.  So she lived at Brompton, and meanwhile
saw no one, or only those few of her husband's male companions who were
admitted into her little dining-room.  These were all charmed with her.
The little dinners, the laughing and chatting, the music afterwards,
delighted all who participated in these enjoyments.  Major Martingale
never thought about asking to see the marriage licence, Captain
Cinqbars was perfectly enchanted with her skill in making punch.  And
young Lieutenant Spatterdash (who was fond of piquet, and whom Crawley
would often invite) was evidently and quickly smitten by Mrs. Crawley;
but her own circumspection and modesty never forsook her for a moment,
and Crawley's reputation as a fire-eating and jealous warrior was a
further and complete defence to his little wife.

There are gentlemen of very good blood and fashion in this city, who
never have entered a lady's drawing-room; so that though Rawdon
Crawley's marriage might be talked about in his county, where, of
course, Mrs. Bute had spread the news, in London it was doubted, or not
heeded, or not talked about at all.  He lived comfortably on credit.
He had a large capital of debts, which laid out judiciously, will carry
a man along for many years, and on which certain men about town
contrive to live a hundred times better than even men with ready money
can do.  Indeed who is there that walks London streets, but can point
out a half-dozen of men riding by him splendidly, while he is on foot,
courted by fashion, bowed into their carriages by tradesmen, denying
themselves nothing, and living on who knows what?  We see Jack
Thriftless prancing in the park, or darting in his brougham down Pall
Mall: we eat his dinners served on his miraculous plate.  "How did this
begin," we say, "or where will it end?" "My dear fellow," I heard Jack
once say, "I owe money in every capital in Europe."  The end must come
some day, but in the meantime Jack thrives as much as ever; people are
glad enough to shake him by the hand, ignore the little dark stories
that are whispered every now and then against him, and pronounce him a
good-natured, jovial, reckless fellow.

Truth obliges us to confess that Rebecca had married a gentleman of
this order.  Everything was plentiful in his house but ready money, of
which their menage pretty early felt the want; and reading the Gazette
one day, and coming upon the announcement of "Lieutenant G. Osborne to
be Captain by purchase, vice Smith, who exchanges," Rawdon uttered that
sentiment regarding Amelia's lover, which ended in the visit to Russell
Square.

When Rawdon and his wife wished to communicate with Captain Dobbin at
the sale, and to know particulars of the catastrophe which had befallen
Rebecca's old acquaintances, the Captain had vanished; and such
information as they got was from a stray porter or broker at the
auction.

"Look at them with their hooked beaks," Becky said, getting into the
buggy, her picture under her arm, in great glee.  "They're like
vultures after a battle."

"Don't know.  Never was in action, my dear.  Ask Martingale; he was in
Spain, aide-de-camp to General Blazes."

"He was a very kind old man, Mr. Sedley," Rebecca said; "I'm really
sorry he's gone wrong."

"O stockbrokers--bankrupts--used to it, you know," Rawdon replied,
cutting a fly off the horse's ear.

"I wish we could have afforded some of the plate, Rawdon," the wife
continued sentimentally.  "Five-and-twenty guineas was monstrously dear
for that little piano. We chose it at Broadwood's for Amelia, when she
came from school.  It only cost five-and-thirty then."

"What-d'-ye-call'em--'Osborne,' will cry off now, I suppose, since the
family is smashed.  How cut up your pretty little friend will be; hey,
Becky?"

"I daresay she'll recover it," Becky said with a smile--and they drove
on and talked about something else.



Who Played on the Piano Captain Dobbin Bought

Our surprised story now finds itself for a moment among very famous
events and personages, and hanging on to the skirts of history. When
the eagles of Napoleon Bonaparte, the Corsican upstart, were flying
from Provence, where they had perched after a brief sojourn in Elba,
and from steeple to steeple until they reached the towers of Notre
Dame, I wonder whether the Imperial birds had any eye for a little
corner of the parish of Bloomsbury, London, which you might have
thought so quiet, that even the whirring and flapping of those mighty
wings would pass unobserved there?

"Napoleon has landed at Cannes."  Such news might create a panic at
Vienna, and cause Russia to drop his cards, and take Prussia into a
corner, and Talleyrand and Metternich to wag their heads together,
while Prince Hardenberg, and even the present Marquis of Londonderry,
were puzzled; but how was this intelligence to affect a young lady in
Russell Square, before whose door the watchman sang the hours when she
was asleep: who, if she strolled in the square, was guarded there by
the railings and the beadle:  who, if she walked ever so short a
distance to buy a ribbon in Southampton Row, was followed by Black
Sambo with an enormous cane:  who was always cared for, dressed, put to
bed, and watched over by ever so many guardian angels, with and without
wages?  Bon Dieu, I say, is it not hard that the fateful rush of the
great Imperial struggle can't take place without affecting a poor
little harmless girl of eighteen, who is occupied in billing and
cooing, or working muslin collars in Russell Square?  You too, kindly,
homely flower!--is the great roaring war tempest coming to sweep you
down, here, although cowering under the shelter of Holborn?  Yes;
Napoleon is flinging his last stake, and poor little Emmy Sedley's
happiness forms, somehow, part of it.

In the first place, her father's fortune was swept down with that fatal
news.  All his speculations had of late gone wrong with the luckless
old gentleman.  Ventures had failed; merchants had broken; funds had
risen when he calculated they would fall.  What need to particularize?
If success is rare and slow, everybody knows how quick and easy ruin
is.  Old Sedley had kept his own sad counsel. Everything seemed to go
on as usual in the quiet, opulent house; the good-natured mistress
pursuing, quite unsuspiciously, her bustling idleness, and daily easy
avocations; the daughter absorbed still in one selfish, tender thought,
and quite regardless of all the world besides, when that final crash
came, under which the worthy family fell.

One night Mrs. Sedley was writing cards for a party; the Osbornes had
given one, and she must not be behindhand; John Sedley, who had come
home very late from the City, sate silent at the chimney side, while
his wife was prattling to him; Emmy had gone up to her room ailing and
low-spirited.  "She's not happy," the mother went on. "George Osborne
neglects her.  I've no patience with the airs of those people.  The
girls have not been in the house these three weeks; and George has been
twice in town without coming.  Edward Dale saw him at the Opera.
Edward would marry her I'm sure: and there's Captain Dobbin who, I
think, would--only I hate all army men.  Such a dandy as George has
become.  With his military airs, indeed!  We must show some folks that
we're as good as they.  Only give Edward Dale any encouragement, and
you'll see.  We must have a party, Mr. S.  Why don't you speak, John?
Shall I say Tuesday fortnight? Why don't you answer? Good God, John,
what has happened?"

John Sedley sprang up out of his chair to meet his wife, who ran to
him.  He seized her in his arms, and said with a hasty voice, "We're
ruined, Mary.  We've got the world to begin over again, dear.  It's
best that you should know all, and at once."  As he spoke, he trembled
in every limb, and almost fell.  He thought the news would have
overpowered his wife--his wife, to whom he had never said a hard word.
But it was he that was the most moved, sudden as the shock was to her.
When he sank back into his seat, it was the wife that took the office
of consoler.  She took his trembling hand, and kissed it, and put it
round her neck: she called him her John--her dear John--her old
man--her kind old man; she poured out a hundred words of incoherent
love and tenderness; her faithful voice and simple caresses wrought
this sad heart up to an inexpressible delight and anguish, and cheered
and solaced his over-burdened soul.

Only once in the course of the long night as they sate together, and
poor Sedley opened his pent-up soul, and told the story of his losses
and embarrassments--the treason of some of his oldest friends, the
manly kindness of some, from whom he never could have expected it--in a
general confession--only once did the faithful wife give way to emotion.

"My God, my God, it will break Emmy's heart," she said.

The father had forgotten the poor girl.  She was lying, awake and
unhappy, overhead.  In the midst of friends, home, and kind parents,
she was alone.  To how many people can any one tell all?  Who will be
open where there is no sympathy, or has call to speak to those who
never can understand?  Our gentle Amelia was thus solitary.  She had no
confidante, so to speak, ever since she had anything to confide.  She
could not tell the old mother her doubts and cares; the would-be
sisters seemed every day more strange to her.  And she had misgivings
and fears which she dared not acknowledge to herself, though she was
always secretly brooding over them.

Her heart tried to persist in asserting that George Osborne was worthy
and faithful to her, though she knew otherwise.  How many a thing had
she said, and got no echo from him.  How many suspicions of selfishness
and indifference had she to encounter and obstinately overcome.  To
whom could the poor little martyr tell these daily struggles and
tortures?  Her hero himself only half understood her. She did not dare
to own that the man she loved was her inferior; or to feel that she had
given her heart away too soon.  Given once, the pure bashful maiden was
too modest, too tender, too trustful, too weak, too much woman to
recall it.  We are Turks with the affections of our women; and have
made them subscribe to our doctrine too.  We let their bodies go abroad
liberally enough, with smiles and ringlets and pink bonnets to disguise
them instead of veils and yakmaks.  But their souls must be seen by
only one man, and they obey not unwillingly, and consent to remain at
home as our slaves--ministering to us and doing drudgery for us.

So imprisoned and tortured was this gentle little heart, when in the
month of March, Anno Domini 1815, Napoleon landed at Cannes, and Louis
XVIII fled, and all Europe was in alarm, and the funds fell, and old
John Sedley was ruined.

We are not going to follow the worthy old stockbroker through those
last pangs and agonies of ruin through which he passed before his
commercial demise befell. They declared him at the Stock Exchange; he
was absent from his house of business: his bills were protested: his
act of bankruptcy formal.  The house and furniture of Russell Square
were seized and sold up, and he and his family were thrust away, as we
have seen, to hide their heads where they might.

John Sedley had not the heart to review the domestic establishment who
have appeared now and anon in our pages and of whom he was now forced
by poverty to take leave.  The wages of those worthy people were
discharged with that punctuality which men frequently show who only owe
in great sums--they were sorry to leave good places--but they did not
break their hearts at parting from their adored master and mistress.
Amelia's maid was profuse in condolences, but went off quite resigned
to better herself in a genteeler quarter of the town.  Black Sambo,
with the infatuation of his profession, determined on setting up a
public-house.  Honest old Mrs. Blenkinsop indeed, who had seen the
birth of Jos and Amelia, and the wooing of John Sedley and his wife,
was for staying by them without wages, having amassed a considerable
sum in their service: and she accompanied the fallen people into their
new and humble place of refuge, where she tended them and grumbled
against them for a while.

Of all Sedley's opponents in his debates with his creditors which now
ensued, and harassed the feelings of the humiliated old gentleman so
severely, that in six weeks he oldened more than he had done for
fifteen years before--the most determined and obstinate seemed to be
John Osborne, his old friend and neighbour--John Osborne, whom he had
set up in life--who was under a hundred obligations to him--and whose
son was to marry Sedley's daughter. Any one of these circumstances
would account for the bitterness of Osborne's opposition.

When one man has been under very remarkable obligations to another,
with whom he subsequently quarrels, a common sense of decency, as it
were, makes of the former a much severer enemy than a mere stranger
would be.  To account for your own hard-heartedness and ingratitude in
such a case, you are bound to prove the other party's crime.  It is not
that you are selfish, brutal, and angry at the failure of a
speculation--no, no--it is that your partner has led you into it by the
basest treachery and with the most sinister motives.  From a mere sense
of consistency, a persecutor is bound to show that the fallen man is a
villain--otherwise he, the persecutor, is a wretch himself.

And as a general rule, which may make all creditors who are inclined to
be severe pretty comfortable in their minds, no men embarrassed are
altogether honest, very likely.  They conceal something; they
exaggerate chances of good luck; hide away the real state of affairs;
say that things are flourishing when they are hopeless, keep a smiling
face (a dreary smile it is) upon the verge of bankruptcy--are ready to
lay hold of any pretext for delay or of any money, so as to stave off
the inevitable ruin a few days longer. "Down with such dishonesty,"
says the creditor in triumph, and reviles his sinking enemy.  "You
fool, why do you catch at a straw?" calm good sense says to the man
that is drowning.  "You villain, why do you shrink from plunging into
the irretrievable Gazette?" says prosperity to the poor devil battling
in that black gulf.  Who has not remarked the readiness with which the
closest of friends and honestest of men suspect and accuse each other
of cheating when they fall out on money matters? Everybody does it.
Everybody is right, I suppose, and the world is a rogue.

Then Osborne had the intolerable sense of former benefits to goad and
irritate him: these are always a cause of hostility aggravated.
Finally, he had to break off the match between Sedley's daughter and
his son; and as it had gone very far indeed, and as the poor girl's
happiness and perhaps character were compromised, it was necessary to
show the strongest reasons for the rupture, and for John Osborne to
prove John Sedley to be a very bad character indeed.

At the meetings of creditors, then, he comported himself with a
savageness and scorn towards Sedley, which almost succeeded in breaking
the heart of that ruined bankrupt man.  On George's intercourse with
Amelia he put an instant veto--menacing the youth with maledictions if
he broke his commands, and vilipending the poor innocent girl as the
basest and most artful of vixens. One of the great conditions of anger
and hatred is, that you must tell and believe lies against the hated
object, in order, as we said, to be consistent.

When the great crash came--the announcement of ruin, and the departure
from Russell Square, and the declaration that all was over between her
and George--all over between her and love, her and happiness, her and
faith in the world--a brutal letter from John Osborne told her in a few
curt lines that her father's conduct had been of such a nature that all
engagements between the families were at an end--when the final award
came, it did not shock her so much as her parents, as her mother rather
expected (for John Sedley himself was entirely prostrate in the ruins
of his own affairs and shattered honour).  Amelia took the news very
palely and calmly. It was only the confirmation of the dark presages
which had long gone before.  It was the mere reading of the
sentence--of the crime she had long ago been guilty--the crime of
loving wrongly, too violently, against reason. She told no more of her
thoughts now than she had before.  She seemed scarcely more unhappy now
when convinced all hope was over, than before when she felt but dared
not confess that it was gone.  So she changed from the large house to
the small one without any mark or difference; remained in her little
room for the most part; pined silently; and died away day by day.  I do
not mean to say that all females are so.  My dear Miss Bullock, I do
not think your heart would break in this way.  You are a strong-minded
young woman with proper principles. I do not venture to say that mine
would; it has suffered, and, it must be confessed, survived. But there
are some souls thus gently constituted, thus frail, and delicate, and
tender.

Whenever old John Sedley thought of the affair between George and
Amelia, or alluded to it, it was with bitterness almost as great as Mr.
Osborne himself had shown.  He cursed Osborne and his family as
heartless, wicked, and ungrateful.  No power on earth, he swore, would
induce him to marry his daughter to the son of such a villain, and he
ordered Emmy to banish George from her mind, and to return all the
presents and letters which she had ever had from him.

She promised acquiescence, and tried to obey.  She put up the two or
three trinkets: and, as for the letters, she drew them out of the place
where she kept them; and read them over--as if she did not know them by
heart already: but she could not part with them.  That effort was too
much for her; she placed them back in her bosom again--as you have seen
a woman nurse a child that is dead.  Young Amelia felt that she would
die or lose her senses outright, if torn away from this last
consolation. How she used to blush and lighten up when those letters
came!  How she used to trip away with a beating heart, so that she
might read unseen!  If they were cold, yet how perversely this fond
little soul interpreted them into warmth.  If they were short or
selfish, what excuses she found for the writer!

It was over these few worthless papers that she brooded and brooded.
She lived in her past life--every letter seemed to recall some
circumstance of it.  How well she remembered them all!  His looks and
tones, his dress, what he said and how--these relics and remembrances
of dead affection were all that were left her in the world. And the
business of her life, was--to watch the corpse of Love.

To death she looked with inexpressible longing.  Then, she thought, I
shall always be able to follow him.  I am not praising her conduct or
setting her up as a model for Miss Bullock to imitate.  Miss B. knows
how to regulate her feelings better than this poor little creature.
Miss B. would never have committed herself as that imprudent Amelia had
done; pledged her love irretrievably; confessed her heart away, and got
back nothing--only a brittle promise which was snapt and worthless in a
moment.  A long engagement is a partnership which one party is free to
keep or to break, but which involves all the capital of the other.

Be cautious then, young ladies; be wary how you engage.  Be shy of
loving frankly; never tell all you feel, or (a better way still), feel
very little.  See the consequences of being prematurely honest and
confiding, and mistrust yourselves and everybody.  Get yourselves
married as they do in France, where the lawyers are the bridesmaids and
confidantes.  At any rate, never have any feelings which may make you
uncomfortable, or make any promises which you cannot at any required
moment command and withdraw.  That is the way to get on, and be
respected, and have a virtuous character in Vanity Fair.

If Amelia could have heard the comments regarding her which were made
in the circle from which her father's ruin had just driven her, she
would have seen what her own crimes were, and how entirely her
character was jeopardised.  Such criminal imprudence Mrs. Smith never
knew of; such horrid familiarities Mrs. Brown had always condemned, and
the end might be a warning to HER daughters. "Captain Osborne, of
course, could not marry a bankrupt's daughter," the Misses Dobbin said.
"It was quite enough to have been swindled by the father.  As for that
little Amelia, her folly had really passed all--"

"All what?" Captain Dobbin roared out.  "Haven't they been engaged ever
since they were children?  Wasn't it as good as a marriage? Dare any
soul on earth breathe a word against the sweetest, the purest, the
tenderest, the most angelical of young women?"

"La, William, don't be so highty-tighty with US.  We're not men.  We
can't fight you," Miss Jane said.  "We've said nothing against Miss
Sedley: but that her conduct throughout was MOST IMPRUDENT, not to call
it by any worse name; and that her parents are people who certainly
merit their misfortunes."

"Hadn't you better, now that Miss Sedley is free, propose for her
yourself, William?" Miss Ann asked sarcastically.  "It would be a most
eligible family connection.  He!  he!"

"I marry her!" Dobbin said, blushing very much, and talking quick. "If
you are so ready, young ladies, to chop and change, do you suppose that
she is?  Laugh and sneer at that angel.  She can't hear it; and she's
miserable and unfortunate, and deserves to be laughed at.  Go on
joking, Ann.  You're the wit of the family, and the others like to hear
it."

"I must tell you again we're not in a barrack, William," Miss Ann
remarked.

"In a barrack, by Jove--I wish anybody in a barrack would say what you
do," cried out this uproused British lion.  "I should like to hear a
man breathe a word against her, by Jupiter.  But men don't talk in this
way, Ann: it's only women, who get together and hiss, and shriek, and
cackle.  There, get away--don't begin to cry.  I only said you were a
couple of geese," Will Dobbin said, perceiving Miss Ann's pink eyes
were beginning to moisten as usual.  "Well, you're not geese, you're
swans--anything you like, only do, do leave Miss Sedley alone."

Anything like William's infatuation about that silly little flirting,
ogling thing was never known, the mamma and sisters agreed together in
thinking: and they trembled lest, her engagement being off with
Osborne, she should take up immediately her other admirer and Captain.
In which forebodings these worthy young women no doubt judged according
to the best of their experience; or rather (for as yet they had had no
opportunities of marrying or of jilting) according to their own notions
of right and wrong.

"It is a mercy, Mamma, that the regiment is ordered abroad," the girls
said.  "THIS danger, at any rate, is spared our brother."

Such, indeed, was the fact; and so it is that the French Emperor comes
in to perform a part in this domestic comedy of Vanity Fair which we
are now playing, and which would never have been enacted without the
intervention of this august mute personage.  It was he that ruined the
Bourbons and Mr. John Sedley.  It was he whose arrival in his capital
called up all France in arms to defend him there; and all Europe to
oust him. While the French nation and army were swearing fidelity round
the eagles in the Champ de Mars, four mighty European hosts were
getting in motion for the great chasse a l'aigle; and one of these was
a British army, of which two heroes of ours, Captain Dobbin and Captain
Osborne, formed a portion.

The news of Napoleon's escape and landing was received by the gallant
--th with a fiery delight and enthusiasm, which everybody can
understand who knows that famous corps.  From the colonel to the
smallest drummer in the regiment, all were filled with hope and
ambition and patriotic fury; and thanked the French Emperor as for a
personal kindness in coming to disturb the peace of Europe.  Now was
the time the --th had so long panted for, to show their comrades in
arms that they could fight as well as the Peninsular veterans, and that
all the pluck and valour of the --th had not been killed by the West
Indies and the yellow fever.  Stubble and Spooney looked to get their
companies without purchase. Before the end of the campaign (which she
resolved to share), Mrs. Major O'Dowd hoped to write herself Mrs.
Colonel O'Dowd, C.B.  Our two friends (Dobbin and Osborne) were quite
as much excited as the rest: and each in his way--Mr. Dobbin very
quietly, Mr. Osborne very loudly and energetically--was bent upon doing
his duty, and gaining his share of honour and distinction.

The agitation thrilling through the country and army in consequence of
this news was so great, that private matters were little heeded: and
hence probably George Osborne, just gazetted to his company, busy with
preparations for the march, which must come inevitably, and panting for
further promotion--was not so much affected by other incidents which
would have interested him at a more quiet period. He was not, it must
be confessed, very much cast down by good old Mr. Sedley's catastrophe.
He tried his new uniform, which became him very handsomely, on the day
when the first meeting of the creditors of the unfortunate gentleman
took place. His father told him of the wicked, rascally, shameful
conduct of the bankrupt, reminded him of what he had said about Amelia,
and that their connection was broken off for ever; and gave him that
evening a good sum of money to pay for the new clothes and epaulets in
which he looked so well.  Money was always useful to this free-handed
young fellow, and he took it without many words. The bills were up in
the Sedley house, where he had passed so many, many happy hours.  He
could see them as he walked from home that night (to the Old
Slaughters', where he put up when in town) shining white in the moon.
That comfortable home was shut, then, upon Amelia and her parents:
where had they taken refuge? The thought of their ruin affected him not
a little.  He was very melancholy that night in the coffee-room at the
Slaughters'; and drank a good deal, as his comrades remarked there.

Dobbin came in presently, cautioned him about the drink, which he only
took, he said, because he was deuced low; but when his friend began to
put to him clumsy inquiries, and asked him for news in a significant
manner, Osborne declined entering into conversation with him, avowing,
however, that he was devilish disturbed and unhappy.

Three days afterwards, Dobbin found Osborne in his room at the
barracks--his head on the table, a number of papers about, the young
Captain evidently in a state of great despondency.  "She--she's sent me
back some things I gave her--some damned trinkets.  Look here!" There
was a little packet directed in the well-known hand to Captain George
Osborne, and some things lying about--a ring, a silver knife he had
bought, as a boy, for her at a fair; a gold chain, and a locket with
hair in it.  "It's all over," said he, with a groan of sickening
remorse. "Look, Will, you may read it if you like."

There was a little letter of a few lines, to which he pointed, which
said:

My papa has ordered me to return to you these presents, which you made
in happier days to me; and I am to write to you for the last time.  I
think, I know you feel as much as I do the blow which has come upon us.
It is I that absolve you from an engagement which is impossible in our
present misery.  I am sure you had no share in it, or in the cruel
suspicions of Mr. Osborne, which are the hardest of all our griefs to
bear.  Farewell. Farewell.  I pray God to strengthen me to bear this
and other calamities, and to bless you always.     A.

I shall often play upon the piano--your piano.  It was like you to send
it.

Dobbin was very soft-hearted.  The sight of women and children in pain
always used to melt him.  The idea of Amelia broken-hearted and lonely
tore that good-natured soul with anguish.  And he broke out into an
emotion, which anybody who likes may consider unmanly. He swore that
Amelia was an angel, to which Osborne said aye with all his heart.  He,
too, had been reviewing the history of their lives--and had seen her
from her childhood to her present age, so sweet, so innocent, so
charmingly simple, and artlessly fond and tender.

What a pang it was to lose all that: to have had it and not prized it!
A thousand homely scenes and recollections crowded on him--in which he
always saw her good and beautiful.  And for himself, he blushed with
remorse and shame, as the remembrance of his own selfishness and
indifference contrasted with that perfect purity. For a while, glory,
war, everything was forgotten, and the pair of friends talked about her
only.

"Where are they?" Osborne asked, after a long talk, and a long
pause--and, in truth, with no little shame at thinking that he had
taken no steps to follow her.  "Where are they? There's no address to
the note."

Dobbin knew.  He had not merely sent the piano; but had written a note
to Mrs. Sedley, and asked permission to come and see her--and he had
seen her, and Amelia too, yesterday, before he came down to Chatham;
and, what is more, he had brought that farewell letter and packet which
had so moved them.

The good-natured fellow had found Mrs. Sedley only too willing to
receive him, and greatly agitated by the arrival of the piano, which,
as she conjectured, MUST have come from George, and was a signal of
amity on his part.  Captain Dobbin did not correct this error of the
worthy lady, but listened to all her story of complaints and
misfortunes with great sympathy--condoled with her losses and
privations, and agreed in reprehending the cruel conduct of Mr. Osborne
towards his first benefactor. When she had eased her overflowing bosom
somewhat, and poured forth many of her sorrows, he had the courage to
ask actually to see Amelia, who was above in her room as usual, and
whom her mother led trembling downstairs.

Her appearance was so ghastly, and her look of despair so pathetic,
that honest William Dobbin was frightened as he beheld it; and read the
most fatal forebodings in that pale fixed face.  After sitting in his
company a minute or two, she put the packet into his hand, and said,
"Take this to Captain Osborne, if you please, and--and I hope he's
quite well--and it was very kind of you to come and see us--and we like
our new house very much. And I--I think I'll go upstairs, Mamma, for
I'm not very strong." And with this, and a curtsey and a smile, the
poor child went her way.  The mother, as she led her up, cast back
looks of anguish towards Dobbin.  The good fellow wanted no such
appeal.  He loved her himself too fondly for that.  Inexpressible
grief, and pity, and terror pursued him, and he came away as if he was
a criminal after seeing her.

When Osborne heard that his friend had found her, he made hot and
anxious inquiries regarding the poor child.  How was she?  How did she
look?  What did she say?  His comrade took his hand, and looked him in
the face.

"George, she's dying," William Dobbin said--and could speak no more.

There was a buxom Irish servant-girl, who performed all the duties of
the little house where the Sedley family had found refuge: and this
girl had in vain, on many previous days, striven to give Amelia aid or
consolation. Emmy was much too sad to answer, or even to be aware of
the attempts the other was making in her favour.

Four hours after the talk between Dobbin and Osborne, this servant-maid
came into Amelia's room, where she sate as usual, brooding
silently over her letters--her little treasures.  The girl, smiling,
and looking arch and happy, made many trials to attract poor Emmy's
attention, who, however, took no heed of her.

"Miss Emmy," said the girl.

"I'm coming," Emmy said, not looking round.

"There's a message," the maid went on.  "There's
something--somebody--sure, here's a new letter for you--don't be reading
them old ones any more." And she gave her a letter, which Emmy took, and
read.

"I must see you," the letter said.  "Dearest Emmy--dearest
love--dearest wife, come to me."

George and her mother were outside, waiting until she had read the
letter.

 George is admired in the military for being a playboy. Dobbin becomes so irate at his behavior that he blurts out that George is engaged to a nice young lady. George does not appreciate Dobbin's interference. Dobbin accuses George of being ashamed of Amelia and mistreating her. George rejects Dobbin's "sermonising" and comments on Amelia's affection for him, observing that there is no fun in a relationship if there is no chase involved. Dobbin's anger quickly abates, but he gives George money, begging him to do something nice for Amelia. George returns to town and purchases a shirt-pin for himself rather than a gift for Amelia. Amelia is elated when he shows up at her house. He suggests that they dine with his sisters, and Amelia spends some time with them while George goes out on the town to gamble. They are surprised at her loquaciousness, thinking that George might be able to "make something of her." Old Osborne, George's father, is a nasty, critical man. He is disappointed to find Amelia in his home, and he does not wait for George to begin dinner. When he and George are alone, he tells him that he must not marry Amelia unless she brings with her 10,000 pounds. Old Osborne is worried about the state of Mr. Sedley's business, and even though George and Amelia have been promised since childhood, Osborne claims that he has sufficiently repaid Mr. Sedley for helping him improve his situation. Miss Matilda Crawley falls ill, and Becky leaves Sir Pitt to take care of her. She has become the only one the old woman trusts. Rawdon pays several visits to Matilda Crawley's home while she is ill, presumably to check in on his aunt. On one of her drives with Miss Crawley, Becky visits Amelia, who she hasn't seen in several months. Miss Crawley likes both George and Amelia and invites them to her home. Rebecca's interaction with George is hostile, since she blames him for her failure with Joseph Sedley. Meanwhile, no one notices that Lady Crawley, severely ill, passed away, except for her stepson Pitt. Sir Pitt, once again a widower, visits Becky at Miss Crawley's home and proposes marriage. Rebecca, in tears over yet another missed opportunity, informs him that she is already married. Sir Pitt informs his sister that Rebecca has refused his marriage proposal, while Rebecca, humiliated and presumably disappointed over a lost opportunity, apologizes profusely. Confused, Aunt Matilda determines to discover the mystery man. Becky regrets turning down Sir Pitt. She reflects on what her life might have been like as the wife of a baronet. She also worries about her relationship with Aunt Matilda, who seems displeased about her decisions. She composes a letter to one "Eliza Styles," detailing what happened but assuring this friend that their inheritance is secure due to the already strong relationship they have built with Miss Crawley. The author reveals the recipient as Becky's husband, Rawdon Crawley. Rawdon is in love with Becky. He enjoys her wit, and he feels like an honest man for having married her. When they discovered that they were in love, they recruited Amelia to appear with them before a judge so that they could be married. Rawdon purchased a house by the military barracks and furnished it for his new bride so that they could live comfortably together. Becky plans to break the news to Aunt Matilda. She spends the entire day preparing, and as a result, Aunt Matilda encourages Becky to move in with her, arguing that she could never return to Crawley as a governess. The next day, one of Miss Crawley's maids comes across a letter Becky has left behind for Mrs. Briggs on one of her suitcases in Miss Crawley's home. She brings it to Mrs. Briggs, who, along with Mrs. Bute Crawley, who has just arrived, exposes the contents to Aunt Matilda. The letter confesses Becky's marriage to Rawdon. At first, Aunt Matilda believes this is one of Mrs. Bute's schemes to secure the inheritance for herself, but then Mrs. Bute rants about Becky's unsavory family and past, and Aunt Matilda faints. Sir Pitt arrives, discovers the news, and leaves in a rage, returning home to go through Becky's things. The Sedleys hold an auction because they have fallen into financial ruin. Amelia's piano is being sold, but Dobbin secretly buys it back and sends it to her. She comes to believe that this was George's doing. Meanwhile, it has been a month since the wedding, and Mrs. Bute has taken Becky's place as caretaker for Miss Crawley. This troubles Rawdon and Rebecca, because they think that she might ruin their chance at any part of the fortune. Also, they have not come out into society yet because in so doing, they have been able to avoid their creditors. Due to events in France, the Sedleys are suffering financially. Mr. and Mrs. Sedley both worry about what the news of their financial situation will do to Amelia. She has been quite lonely lately; George has been staying in town and ignoring her, Rebecca does not visit her, and George's sisters make fun of her. She spends much of her time sulking in her room. Meanwhile, George's father has discovered the Sedleys' situation, and though he feels guilty due to his reliance on Mr. Sedley for his success, he encourages George to break things off with Amelia. To help this cause, he sends a letter to the Sedleys accusing Mr. Sedley of swindling him and therefore destroying any chances for the marriage of his son to their daughter. Amelia accepts this news with surprising grace. While everyone has nothing to say but negative things about Amelia, Dobbin continues to defend her. He reminds his sisters, who are wont to mock her, that she and George have basically been betrothed since childhood and that she has no control over her situation. Mrs. Sedley has meanwhile noticed that Dobbin is in love with her daughter. George is actually rather upset that Amelia has returned all of the things he gave her, as instructed by her father. Dobbin remarks to George that Amelia is "dying." George's interest is piqued by the new, unavailable Amelia, and he resolves to get back together with her.

