Chapter: Miss Crawley at Nurse

We have seen how Mrs. Firkin, the lady's maid, as soon as any event of
importance to the Crawley family came to her knowledge, felt bound to
communicate it to Mrs. Bute Crawley, at the Rectory; and have before
mentioned how particularly kind and attentive that good-natured lady
was to Miss Crawley's confidential servant. She had been a gracious
friend to Miss Briggs, the companion, also; and had secured the
latter's good-will by a number of those attentions and promises, which
cost so little in the making, and are yet so valuable and agreeable to
the recipient.  Indeed every good economist and manager of a household
must know how cheap and yet how amiable these professions are, and what
a flavour they give to the most homely dish in life.  Who was the
blundering idiot who said that "fine words butter no parsnips"?  Half
the parsnips of society are served and rendered palatable with no other
sauce.  As the immortal Alexis Soyer can make more delicious soup for a
half-penny than an ignorant cook can concoct with pounds of vegetables
and meat, so a skilful artist will make a few simple and pleasing
phrases go farther than ever so much substantial benefit-stock in the
hands of a mere bungler. Nay, we know that substantial benefits often
sicken some stomachs; whereas, most will digest any amount of fine
words, and be always eager for more of the same food. Mrs. Bute had
told Briggs and Firkin so often of the depth of her affection for them;
and what she would do, if she had Miss Crawley's fortune, for friends
so excellent and attached, that the ladies in question had the deepest
regard for her; and felt as much gratitude and confidence as if Mrs.
Bute had loaded them with the most expensive favours.

Rawdon Crawley, on the other hand, like a selfish heavy dragoon as he
was, never took the least trouble to conciliate his aunt's aides-de-camp,
showed his contempt for the pair with entire frankness--made
Firkin pull off his boots on one occasion--sent her out in the rain on
ignominious messages--and if he gave her a guinea, flung it to her as
if it were a box on the ear.  As his aunt, too, made a butt of Briggs,
the Captain followed the example, and levelled his jokes at her--jokes
about as delicate as a kick from his charger. Whereas, Mrs. Bute
consulted her in matters of taste or difficulty, admired her poetry,
and by a thousand acts of kindness and politeness, showed her
appreciation of Briggs; and if she made Firkin a twopenny-halfpenny
present, accompanied it with so many compliments, that the
twopence-half-penny was transmuted into gold in the heart of the
grateful waiting-maid, who, besides, was looking forwards quite
contentedly to some prodigious benefit which must happen to her on the
day when Mrs. Bute came into her fortune.

The different conduct of these two people is pointed out respectfully
to the attention of persons commencing the world. Praise everybody, I
say to such: never be squeamish, but speak out your compliment both
point-blank in a man's face, and behind his back, when you know there
is a reasonable chance of his hearing it again.  Never lose a chance of
saying a kind word.  As Collingwood never saw a vacant place in his
estate but he took an acorn out of his pocket and popped it in; so deal
with your compliments through life.  An acorn costs nothing; but it may
sprout into a prodigious bit of timber.

In a word, during Rawdon Crawley's prosperity, he was only obeyed with
sulky acquiescence; when his disgrace came, there was nobody to help or
pity him.  Whereas, when Mrs. Bute took the command at Miss Crawley's
house, the garrison there were charmed to act under such a leader,
expecting all sorts of promotion from her promises, her generosity, and
her kind words.

That he would consider himself beaten, after one defeat, and make no
attempt to regain the position he had lost, Mrs. Bute Crawley never
allowed herself to suppose. She knew Rebecca to be too clever and
spirited and desperate a woman to submit without a struggle; and felt
that she must prepare for that combat, and be incessantly watchful
against assault; or mine, or surprise.

In the first place, though she held the town, was she sure of the
principal inhabitant?  Would Miss Crawley herself hold out; and had she
not a secret longing to welcome back the ousted adversary?  The old
lady liked Rawdon, and Rebecca, who amused her.  Mrs. Bute could not
disguise from herself the fact that none of her party could so
contribute to the pleasures of the town-bred lady.  "My girls' singing,
after that little odious governess's, I know is unbearable," the candid
Rector's wife owned to herself.  "She always used to go to sleep when
Martha and Louisa played their duets. Jim's stiff college manners and
poor dear Bute's talk about his dogs and horses always annoyed her.  If
I took her to the Rectory, she would grow angry with us all, and fly, I
know she would; and might fall into that horrid Rawdon's clutches
again, and be the victim of that little viper of a Sharp.  Meanwhile,
it is clear to me that she is exceedingly unwell, and cannot move for
some weeks, at any rate; during which we must think of some plan to
protect her from the arts of those unprincipled people."

In the very best of moments, if anybody told Miss Crawley that she was,
or looked ill, the trembling old lady sent off for her doctor; and I
daresay she was very unwell after the sudden family event, which might
serve to shake stronger nerves than hers.  At least, Mrs. Bute thought
it was her duty to inform the physician, and the apothecary, and the
dame-de-compagnie, and the domestics, that Miss Crawley was in a most
critical state, and that they were to act accordingly.  She had the
street laid knee-deep with straw; and the knocker put by with Mr.
Bowls's plate.  She insisted that the Doctor should call twice a day;
and deluged her patient with draughts every two hours.  When anybody
entered the room, she uttered a shshshsh so sibilant and ominous, that
it frightened the poor old lady in her bed, from which she could not
look without seeing Mrs. Bute's beady eyes eagerly fixed on her, as the
latter sate steadfast in the arm-chair by the bedside.  They seemed to
lighten in the dark (for she kept the curtains closed) as she moved
about the room on velvet paws like a cat.  There Miss Crawley lay for
days--ever so many days--Mr. Bute reading books of devotion to her: for
nights, long nights, during which she had to hear the watchman sing,
the night-light sputter; visited at midnight, the last thing, by the
stealthy apothecary; and then left to look at Mrs. Bute's twinkling
eyes, or the flicks of yellow that the rushlight threw on the dreary
darkened ceiling.  Hygeia herself would have fallen sick under such a
regimen; and how much more this poor old nervous victim?  It has been
said that when she was in health and good spirits, this venerable
inhabitant of Vanity Fair had as free notions about religion and morals
as Monsieur de Voltaire himself could desire, but when illness overtook
her, it was aggravated by the most dreadful terrors of death, and an
utter cowardice took possession of the prostrate old sinner.

Sick-bed homilies and pious reflections are, to be sure, out of place
in mere story-books, and we are not going (after the fashion of some
novelists of the present day) to cajole the public into a sermon, when
it is only a comedy that the reader pays his money to witness.  But,
without preaching, the truth may surely be borne in mind, that the
bustle, and triumph, and laughter, and gaiety which Vanity Fair
exhibits in public, do not always pursue the performer into private
life, and that the most dreary depression of spirits and dismal
repentances sometimes overcome him.  Recollection of the best ordained
banquets will scarcely cheer sick epicures. Reminiscences of the most
becoming dresses and brilliant ball triumphs will go very little way to
console faded beauties.  Perhaps statesmen, at a particular period of
existence, are not much gratified at thinking over the most triumphant
divisions; and the success or the pleasure of yesterday becomes of very
small account when a certain (albeit uncertain) morrow is in view,
about which all of us must some day or other be speculating.  O brother
wearers of motley!  Are there not moments when one grows sick of
grinning and tumbling, and the jingling of cap and bells?  This, dear
friends and companions, is my amiable object--to walk with you through
the Fair, to examine the shops and the shows there; and that we should
all come home after the flare, and the noise, and the gaiety, and be
perfectly miserable in private.

"If that poor man of mine had a head on his shoulders," Mrs. Bute
Crawley thought to herself, "how useful he might be, under present
circumstances, to this unhappy old lady!  He might make her repent of
her shocking free-thinking ways; he might urge her to do her duty, and
cast off that odious reprobate who has disgraced himself and his
family; and he might induce her to do justice to my dear girls and the
two boys, who require and deserve, I am sure, every assistance which
their relatives can give them."

And, as the hatred of vice is always a progress towards virtue, Mrs.
Bute Crawley endeavoured to instil her sister-in-law a proper
abhorrence for all Rawdon Crawley's manifold sins: of which his uncle's
wife brought forward such a catalogue as indeed would have served to
condemn a whole regiment of young officers.  If a man has committed
wrong in life, I don't know any moralist more anxious to point his
errors out to the world than his own relations; so Mrs. Bute showed a
perfect family interest and knowledge of Rawdon's history.  She had all
the particulars of that ugly quarrel with Captain Marker, in which
Rawdon, wrong from the beginning, ended in shooting the Captain.  She
knew how the unhappy Lord Dovedale, whose mamma had taken a house at
Oxford, so that he might be educated there, and who had never touched a
card in his life till he came to London, was perverted by Rawdon at the
Cocoa-Tree, made helplessly tipsy by this abominable seducer and
perverter of youth, and fleeced of four thousand pounds.  She described
with the most vivid minuteness the agonies of the country families whom
he had ruined--the sons whom he had plunged into dishonour and
poverty--the daughters whom he had inveigled into perdition.  She knew
the poor tradesmen who were bankrupt by his extravagance--the mean
shifts and rogueries with which he had ministered to it--the astounding
falsehoods by which he had imposed upon the most generous of aunts, and
the ingratitude and ridicule by which he had repaid her sacrifices.
She imparted these stories gradually to Miss Crawley; gave her the
whole benefit of them; felt it to be her bounden duty as a Christian
woman and mother of a family to do so; had not the smallest remorse or
compunction for the victim whom her tongue was immolating; nay, very
likely thought her act was quite meritorious, and plumed herself upon
her resolute manner of performing it.  Yes, if a man's character is to
be abused, say what you will, there's nobody like a relation to do the
business.  And one is bound to own, regarding this unfortunate wretch
of a Rawdon Crawley, that the mere truth was enough to condemn him, and
that all inventions of scandal were quite superfluous pains on his
friends' parts.

Rebecca, too, being now a relative, came in for the fullest share of
Mrs. Bute's kind inquiries.  This indefatigable pursuer of truth
(having given strict orders that the door was to be denied to all
emissaries or letters from Rawdon), took Miss Crawley's carriage, and
drove to her old friend Miss Pinkerton, at Minerva House, Chiswick
Mall, to whom she announced the dreadful intelligence of Captain
Rawdon's seduction by Miss Sharp, and from whom she got sundry strange
particulars regarding the ex-governess's birth and early history.  The
friend of the Lexicographer had plenty of information to give.  Miss
Jemima was made to fetch the drawing-master's receipts and letters.
This one was from a spunging-house: that entreated an advance: another
was full of gratitude for Rebecca's reception by the ladies of
Chiswick: and the last document from the unlucky artist's pen was that
in which, from his dying bed, he recommended his orphan child to Miss
Pinkerton's protection. There were juvenile letters and petitions from
Rebecca, too, in the collection, imploring aid for her father or
declaring her own gratitude.  Perhaps in Vanity Fair there are no
better satires than letters.  Take a bundle of your dear friend's of
ten years back--your dear friend whom you hate now.  Look at a file of
your sister's! how you clung to each other till you quarrelled about
the twenty-pound legacy!  Get down the round-hand scrawls of your son
who has half broken your heart with selfish undutifulness since; or a
parcel of your own, breathing endless ardour and love eternal, which
were sent back by your mistress when she married the Nabob--your
mistress for whom you now care no more than for Queen Elizabeth. Vows,
love, promises, confidences, gratitude, how queerly they read after a
while!  There ought to be a law in Vanity Fair ordering the destruction
of every written document (except receipted tradesmen's bills) after a
certain brief and proper interval.  Those quacks and misanthropes who
advertise indelible Japan ink should be made to perish along with their
wicked discoveries.  The best ink for Vanity Fair use would be one that
faded utterly in a couple of days, and left the paper clean and blank,
so that you might write on it to somebody else.

From Miss Pinkerton's the indefatigable Mrs. Bute followed the track of
Sharp and his daughter back to the lodgings in Greek Street, which the
defunct painter had occupied; and where portraits of the landlady in
white satin, and of the husband in brass buttons, done by Sharp in lieu
of a quarter's rent, still decorated the parlour walls.  Mrs. Stokes
was a communicative person, and quickly told all she knew about Mr.
Sharp; how dissolute and poor he was; how good-natured and amusing;
how he was always hunted by bailiffs and duns; how, to the landlady's
horror, though she never could abide the woman, he did not marry his
wife till a short time before her death; and what a queer little wild
vixen his daughter was; how she kept them all laughing with her fun and
mimicry; how she used to fetch the gin from the public-house, and was
known in all the studios in the quarter--in brief, Mrs. Bute got such a
full account of her new niece's parentage, education, and behaviour as
would scarcely have pleased Rebecca, had the latter known that such
inquiries were being made concerning her.

Of all these industrious researches Miss Crawley had the full benefit.
Mrs. Rawdon Crawley was the daughter of an opera-girl. She had danced
herself.  She had been a model to the painters.  She was brought up as
became her mother's daughter.  She drank gin with her father, &c. &c.
It was a lost woman who was married to a lost man; and the moral to be
inferred from Mrs. Bute's tale was, that the knavery of the pair was
irremediable, and that no properly conducted person should ever notice
them again.

These were the materials which prudent Mrs. Bute gathered together in
Park Lane, the provisions and ammunition as it were with which she
fortified the house against the siege which she knew that Rawdon and
his wife would lay to Miss Crawley.

But if a fault may be found with her arrangements, it is this, that she
was too eager: she managed rather too well; undoubtedly she made Miss
Crawley more ill than was necessary; and though the old invalid
succumbed to her authority, it was so harassing and severe, that the
victim would be inclined to escape at the very first chance which fell
in her way.  Managing women, the ornaments of their sex--women who
order everything for everybody, and know so much better than any person
concerned what is good for their neighbours, don't sometimes speculate
upon the possibility of a domestic revolt, or upon other extreme
consequences resulting from their overstrained authority.

Thus, for instance, Mrs. Bute, with the best intentions no doubt in the
world, and wearing herself to death as she did by foregoing sleep,
dinner, fresh air, for the sake of her invalid sister-in-law, carried
her conviction of the old lady's illness so far that she almost managed
her into her coffin.  She pointed out her sacrifices and their results
one day to the constant apothecary, Mr. Clump.

"I am sure, my dear Mr. Clump," she said, "no efforts of mine have been
wanting to restore our dear invalid, whom the ingratitude of her nephew
has laid on the bed of sickness.  I never shrink from personal
discomfort: I never refuse to sacrifice myself."

"Your devotion, it must be confessed, is admirable," Mr. Clump says,
with a low bow; "but--"

"I have scarcely closed my eyes since my arrival: I give up sleep,
health, every comfort, to my sense of duty. When my poor James was in
the smallpox, did I allow any hireling to nurse him?  No."

"You did what became an excellent mother, my dear Madam--the best of
mothers; but--"

"As the mother of a family and the wife of an English clergyman, I
humbly trust that my principles are good," Mrs. Bute said, with a happy
solemnity of conviction; "and, as long as Nature supports me, never,
never, Mr. Clump, will I desert the post of duty.  Others may bring
that grey head with sorrow to the bed of sickness (here Mrs. Bute,
waving her hand, pointed to one of old Miss Crawley's coffee-coloured
fronts, which was perched on a stand in the dressing-room), but I will
never quit it. Ah, Mr. Clump!  I fear, I know, that the couch needs
spiritual as well as medical consolation."

"What I was going to observe, my dear Madam,"--here the resolute Clump
once more interposed with a bland air--"what I was going to observe
when you gave utterance to sentiments which do you so much honour, was
that I think you alarm yourself needlessly about our kind friend, and
sacrifice your own health too prodigally in her favour."

"I would lay down my life for my duty, or for any member of my
husband's family," Mrs. Bute interposed.

"Yes, Madam, if need were; but we don't want Mrs Bute Crawley to be a
martyr," Clump said gallantly.  "Dr Squills and myself have both
considered Miss Crawley's case with every anxiety and care, as you may
suppose.  We see her low-spirited and nervous; family events have
agitated her."

"Her nephew will come to perdition," Mrs. Crawley cried.

"Have agitated her: and you arrived like a guardian angel, my dear
Madam, a positive guardian angel, I assure you, to soothe her under the
pressure of calamity. But Dr. Squills and I were thinking that our
amiable friend is not in such a state as renders confinement to her bed
necessary.  She is depressed, but this confinement perhaps adds to her
depression.  She should have change, fresh air, gaiety; the most
delightful remedies in the pharmacopoeia," Mr. Clump said, grinning and
showing his handsome teeth.  "Persuade her to rise, dear Madam; drag
her from her couch and her low spirits; insist upon her taking little
drives.  They will restore the roses too to your cheeks, if I may so
speak to Mrs. Bute Crawley."

"The sight of her horrid nephew casually in the Park, where I am told
the wretch drives with the brazen partner of his crimes," Mrs. Bute
said (letting the cat of selfishness out of the bag of secrecy), "would
cause her such a shock, that we should have to bring her back to bed
again.  She must not go out, Mr. Clump.  She shall not go out as long
as I remain to watch over her; And as for my health, what matters it?
I give it cheerfully, sir.  I sacrifice it at the altar of my duty."

"Upon my word, Madam," Mr. Clump now said bluntly, "I won't answer for
her life if she remains locked up in that dark room.  She is so nervous
that we may lose her any day; and if you wish Captain Crawley to be her
heir, I warn you frankly, Madam, that you are doing your very best to
serve him."

"Gracious mercy! is her life in danger?" Mrs. Bute cried.  "Why, why,
Mr. Clump, did you not inform me sooner?"

The night before, Mr. Clump and Dr. Squills had had a consultation
(over a bottle of wine at the house of Sir Lapin Warren, whose lady was
about to present him with a thirteenth blessing), regarding Miss
Crawley and her case.

"What a little harpy that woman from Hampshire is, Clump," Squills
remarked, "that has seized upon old Tilly Crawley.  Devilish good
Madeira."

"What a fool Rawdon Crawley has been," Clump replied, "to go and marry
a governess!  There was something about the girl, too."

"Green eyes, fair skin, pretty figure, famous frontal development,"
Squills remarked.  "There is something about her; and Crawley was a
fool, Squills."

"A d---- fool--always was," the apothecary replied.

"Of course the old girl will fling him over," said the physician, and
after a pause added, "She'll cut up well, I suppose."

"Cut up," says Clump with a grin; "I wouldn't have her cut up for two
hundred a year."

"That Hampshire woman will kill her in two months, Clump, my boy, if
she stops about her," Dr. Squills said. "Old woman; full feeder;
nervous subject; palpitation of the heart; pressure on the brain;
apoplexy; off she goes. Get her up, Clump; get her out: or I wouldn't
give many weeks' purchase for your two hundred a year." And it was
acting upon this hint that the worthy apothecary spoke with so much
candour to Mrs. Bute Crawley.

Having the old lady under her hand: in bed: with nobody near, Mrs. Bute
had made more than one assault upon her, to induce her to alter her
will.  But Miss Crawley's usual terrors regarding death increased
greatly when such dismal propositions were made to her, and Mrs. Bute
saw that she must get her patient into cheerful spirits and health
before she could hope to attain the pious object which she had in view.
Whither to take her was the next puzzle. The only place where she is
not likely to meet those odious Rawdons is at church, and that won't
amuse her, Mrs. Bute justly felt.  "We must go and visit our beautiful
suburbs of London," she then thought.  "I hear they are the most
picturesque in the world"; and so she had a sudden interest for
Hampstead, and Hornsey, and found that Dulwich had great charms for
her, and getting her victim into her carriage, drove her to those
rustic spots, beguiling the little journeys with conversations about
Rawdon and his wife, and telling every story to the old lady which
could add to her indignation against this pair of reprobates.

Perhaps Mrs. Bute pulled the string unnecessarily tight. For though she
worked up Miss Crawley to a proper dislike of her disobedient nephew,
the invalid had a great hatred and secret terror of her victimizer, and
panted to escape from her.  After a brief space, she rebelled against
Highgate and Hornsey utterly.  She would go into the Park.  Mrs. Bute
knew they would meet the abominable Rawdon there, and she was right.
One day in the ring, Rawdon's stanhope came in sight; Rebecca was
seated by him.  In the enemy's equipage Miss Crawley occupied her usual
place, with Mrs. Bute on her left, the poodle and Miss Briggs on the
back seat.  It was a nervous moment, and Rebecca's heart beat quick as
she recognized the carriage; and as the two vehicles crossed each other
in a line, she clasped her hands, and looked towards the spinster with
a face of agonized attachment and devotion. Rawdon himself trembled,
and his face grew purple behind his dyed mustachios.  Only old Briggs
was moved in the other carriage, and cast her great eyes nervously
towards her old friends.  Miss Crawley's bonnet was resolutely turned
towards the Serpentine.  Mrs. Bute happened to be in ecstasies with the
poodle, and was calling him a little darling, and a sweet little zoggy,
and a pretty pet.  The carriages moved on, each in his line.

"Done, by Jove," Rawdon said to his wife.

"Try once more, Rawdon," Rebecca answered.  "Could not you lock your
wheels into theirs, dearest?"

Rawdon had not the heart for that manoeuvre.  When the carriages met
again, he stood up in his stanhope; he raised his hand ready to doff
his hat; he looked with all his eyes.  But this time Miss Crawley's
face was not turned away; she and Mrs. Bute looked him full in the
face, and cut their nephew pitilessly.  He sank back in his seat with
an oath, and striking out of the ring, dashed away desperately
homewards.

It was a gallant and decided triumph for Mrs. Bute. But she felt the
danger of many such meetings, as she saw the evident nervousness of
Miss Crawley; and she determined that it was most necessary for her
dear friend's health, that they should leave town for a while, and
recommended Brighton very strongly.



In Which Captain Dobbin Acts as the Messenger of Hymen

Without knowing how, Captain William Dobbin found himself the great
promoter, arranger, and manager of the match between George Osborne and
Amelia.  But for him it never would have taken place:  he could not but
confess as much to himself, and smiled rather bitterly as he thought
that he of all men in the world should be the person upon whom the care
of this marriage had fallen. But though indeed the conducting of this
negotiation was about as painful a task as could be set to him, yet
when he had a duty to perform, Captain Dobbin was accustomed to go
through it without many words or much hesitation: and, having made up
his mind completely, that if Miss Sedley was balked of her husband she
would die of the disappointment, he was determined to use all his best
endeavours to keep her alive.

I forbear to enter into minute particulars of the interview between
George and Amelia, when the former was brought back to the feet (or
should we venture to say the arms?) of his young mistress by the
intervention of his friend honest William.  A much harder heart than
George's would have melted at the sight of that sweet face so sadly
ravaged by grief and despair, and at the simple tender accents in which
she told her little broken-hearted story: but as she did not faint when
her mother, trembling, brought Osborne to her; and as she only gave
relief to her overcharged grief, by laying her head on her lover's
shoulder and there weeping for a while the most tender, copious, and
refreshing tears--old Mrs. Sedley, too greatly relieved, thought it was
best to leave the young persons to themselves; and so quitted Emmy
crying over George's hand, and kissing it humbly, as if he were her
supreme chief and master, and as if she were quite a guilty and
unworthy person needing every favour and grace from him.

This prostration and sweet unrepining obedience exquisitely touched and
flattered George Osborne.  He saw a slave before him in that simple
yielding faithful creature, and his soul within him thrilled secretly
somehow at the knowledge of his power.  He would be generous-minded,
Sultan as he was, and raise up this kneeling Esther and make a queen of
her:  besides, her sadness and beauty touched him as much as her
submission, and so he cheered her, and raised her up and forgave her,
so to speak.  All her hopes and feelings, which were dying and
withering, this her sun having been removed from her, bloomed again and
at once, its light being restored. You would scarcely have recognised
the beaming little face upon Amelia's pillow that night as the one that
was laid there the night before, so wan, so lifeless, so careless of
all round about.  The honest Irish maid-servant, delighted with the
change, asked leave to kiss the face that had grown all of a sudden so
rosy.  Amelia put her arms round the girl's neck and kissed her with
all her heart, like a child.  She was little more.  She had that night
a sweet refreshing sleep, like one--and what a spring of inexpressible
happiness as she woke in the morning sunshine!

"He will be here again to-day," Amelia thought.  "He is the greatest
and best of men."  And the fact is, that George thought he was one of
the generousest creatures alive: and that he was making a tremendous
sacrifice in marrying this young creature.

While she and Osborne were having their delightful tete-a-tete above
stairs, old Mrs. Sedley and Captain Dobbin were conversing below upon
the state of the affairs, and the chances and future arrangements of
the young people.  Mrs. Sedley having brought the two lovers together
and left them embracing each other with all their might, like a true
woman, was of opinion that no power on earth would induce Mr. Sedley to
consent to the match between his daughter and the son of a man who had
so shamefully, wickedly, and monstrously treated him.  And she told a
long story about happier days and their earlier splendours, when
Osborne lived in a very humble way in the New Road, and his wife was
too glad to receive some of Jos's little baby things, with which Mrs.
Sedley accommodated her at the birth of one of Osborne's own children.
The fiendish ingratitude of that man, she was sure, had broken Mr. S.'s
heart: and as for a marriage, he would never, never, never, never
consent.

"They must run away together, Ma'am," Dobbin said, laughing, "and
follow the example of Captain Rawdon Crawley, and Miss Emmy's friend
the little governess." Was it possible? Well she never!  Mrs. Sedley
was all excitement about this news.  She wished that Blenkinsop were
here to hear it:  Blenkinsop always mistrusted that Miss Sharp.-- What
an escape Jos had had! and she described the already well-known
love-passages between Rebecca and the Collector of Boggley Wollah.

It was not, however, Mr. Sedley's wrath which Dobbin feared, so much as
that of the other parent concerned, and he owned that he had a very
considerable doubt and anxiety respecting the behaviour of the
black-browed old tyrant of a Russia merchant in Russell Square.  He has
forbidden the match peremptorily, Dobbin thought. He knew what a savage
determined man Osborne was, and how he stuck by his word. "The only
chance George has of reconcilement," argued his friend, "is by
distinguishing himself in the coming campaign.  If he dies they both go
together.  If he fails in distinction--what then?  He has some money
from his mother, I have heard enough to purchase his majority--or he
must sell out and go and dig in Canada, or rough it in a cottage in the
country." With such a partner Dobbin thought he would not mind
Siberia--and, strange to say, this absurd and utterly imprudent young
fellow never for a moment considered that the want of means to keep a
nice carriage and horses, and of an income which should enable its
possessors to entertain their friends genteelly, ought to operate as
bars to the union of George and Miss Sedley.

It was these weighty considerations which made him think too that the
marriage should take place as quickly as possible.  Was he anxious
himself, I wonder, to have it over?--as people, when death has
occurred, like to press forward the funeral, or when a parting is
resolved upon, hasten it.  It is certain that Mr. Dobbin, having taken
the matter in hand, was most extraordinarily eager in the conduct of
it.  He urged on George the necessity of immediate action:  he showed
the chances of reconciliation with his father, which a favourable
mention of his name in the Gazette must bring about.  If need were he
would go himself and brave both the fathers in the business.  At all
events, he besought George to go through with it before the orders
came, which everybody expected, for the departure of the regiment from
England on foreign service.

Bent upon these hymeneal projects, and with the applause and consent of
Mrs. Sedley, who did not care to break the matter personally to her
husband, Mr. Dobbin went to seek John Sedley at his house of call in
the City, the Tapioca Coffee-house, where, since his own offices were
shut up, and fate had overtaken him, the poor broken-down old
gentleman used to betake himself daily, and write letters and receive
them, and tie them up into mysterious bundles, several of which he
carried in the flaps of his coat.  I don't know anything more dismal
than that business and bustle and mystery of a ruined man:  those
letters from the wealthy which he shows you:  those worn greasy
documents promising support and offering condolence which he places
wistfully before you, and on which he builds his hopes of restoration
and future fortune. My beloved reader has no doubt in the course of his
experience been waylaid by many such a luckless companion.  He takes
you into the corner; he has his bundle of papers out of his gaping coat
pocket; and the tape off, and the string in his mouth, and the
favourite letters selected and laid before you; and who does not know
the sad eager half-crazy look which he fixes on you with his hopeless
eyes?

Changed into a man of this sort, Dobbin found the once florid, jovial,
and prosperous John Sedley.  His coat, that used to be so glossy and
trim, was white at the seams, and the buttons showed the copper.  His
face had fallen in, and was unshorn; his frill and neckcloth hung limp
under his bagging waistcoat.  When he used to treat the boys in old
days at a coffee-house, he would shout and laugh louder than anybody
there, and have all the waiters skipping round him; it was quite
painful to see how humble and civil he was to John of the Tapioca, a
blear-eyed old attendant in dingy stockings and cracked pumps, whose
business it was to serve glasses of wafers, and bumpers of ink in
pewter, and slices of paper to the frequenters of this dreary house of
entertainment, where nothing else seemed to be consumed.  As for
William Dobbin, whom he had tipped repeatedly in his youth, and who had
been the old gentleman's butt on a thousand occasions, old Sedley gave
his hand to him in a very hesitating humble manner now, and called him
"Sir." A feeling of shame and remorse took possession of William Dobbin
as the broken old man so received and addressed him, as if he himself
had been somehow guilty of the misfortunes which had brought Sedley so
low.

"I am very glad to see you, Captain Dobbin, sir," says he, after a
skulking look or two at his visitor (whose lanky figure and military
appearance caused some excitement likewise to twinkle in the blear eyes
of the waiter in the cracked dancing pumps, and awakened the old lady
in black, who dozed among the mouldy old coffee-cups in the bar).  "How
is the worthy alderman, and my lady, your excellent mother, sir?"  He
looked round at the waiter as he said, "My lady," as much as to say,
"Hark ye, John, I have friends still, and persons of rank and
reputation, too."  "Are you come to do anything in my way, sir?  My
young friends Dale and Spiggot do all my business for me now, until my
new offices are ready; for I'm only here temporarily, you know,
Captain.  What can we do for you, sir?  Will you like to take anything?"

Dobbin, with a great deal of hesitation and stuttering, protested that
he was not in the least hungry or thirsty; that he had no business to
transact; that he only came to ask if Mr. Sedley was well, and to shake
hands with an old friend; and, he added, with a desperate perversion of
truth, "My mother is very well--that is, she's been very unwell, and is
only waiting for the first fine day to go out and call upon Mrs.
Sedley.  How is Mrs. Sedley, sir?  I hope she's quite well."  And here
he paused, reflecting on his own consummate hypocrisy; for the day was
as fine, and the sunshine as bright as it ever is in Coffin Court,
where the Tapioca Coffee-house is situated: and Mr. Dobbin remembered
that he had seen Mrs. Sedley himself only an hour before, having driven
Osborne down to Fulham in his gig, and left him there tete-a-tete with
Miss Amelia.

"My wife will be very happy to see her ladyship," Sedley replied,
pulling out his papers.  "I've a very kind letter here from your
father, sir, and beg my respectful compliments to him.  Lady D. will
find us in rather a smaller house than we were accustomed to receive
our friends in; but it's snug, and the change of air does good to my
daughter, who was suffering in town rather--you remember little Emmy,
sir?--yes, suffering a good deal." The old gentleman's eyes were
wandering as he spoke, and he was thinking of something else, as he
sate thrumming on his papers and fumbling at the worn red tape.

"You're a military man," he went on; "I ask you, Bill Dobbin, could any
man ever have speculated upon the return of that Corsican scoundrel
from Elba?  When the allied sovereigns were here last year, and we gave
'em that dinner in the City, sir, and we saw the Temple of Concord, and
the fireworks, and the Chinese bridge in St. James's Park, could any
sensible man suppose that peace wasn't really concluded, after we'd
actually sung Te Deum for it, sir?  I ask you, William, could I suppose
that the Emperor of Austria was a damned traitor--a traitor, and
nothing more?  I don't mince words--a double-faced infernal traitor and
schemer, who meant to have his son-in-law back all along.  And I say
that the escape of Boney from Elba was a damned imposition and plot,
sir, in which half the powers of Europe were concerned, to bring the
funds down, and to ruin this country.  That's why I'm here, William.
That's why my name's in the Gazette.  Why, sir?--because I trusted the
Emperor of Russia and the Prince Regent.  Look here.  Look at my
papers.  Look what the funds were on the 1st of March--what the French
fives were when I bought for the count.  And what they're at now.
There was collusion, sir, or that villain never would have escaped.
Where was the English Commissioner who allowed him to get away?  He
ought to be shot, sir--brought to a court-martial, and shot, by Jove."

"We're going to hunt Boney out, sir," Dobbin said, rather alarmed at
the fury of the old man, the veins of whose forehead began to swell,
and who sate drumming his papers with his clenched fist.  "We are going
to hunt him out, sir--the Duke's in Belgium already, and we expect
marching orders every day."

"Give him no quarter.  Bring back the villain's head, sir. Shoot the
coward down, sir," Sedley roared.  "I'd enlist myself, by--; but I'm a
broken old man--ruined by that damned scoundrel--and by a parcel of
swindling thieves in this country whom I made, sir, and who are rolling
in their carriages now," he added, with a break in his voice.

Dobbin was not a little affected by the sight of this once kind old
friend, crazed almost with misfortune and raving with senile anger.
Pity the fallen gentleman: you to whom money and fair repute are the
chiefest good; and so, surely, are they in Vanity Fair.

"Yes," he continued, "there are some vipers that you warm, and they
sting you afterwards.  There are some beggars that you put on
horseback, and they're the first to ride you down.  You know whom I
mean, William Dobbin, my boy.  I mean a purse-proud villain in Russell
Square, whom I knew without a shilling, and whom I pray and hope to see
a beggar as he was when I befriended him."

"I have heard something of this, sir, from my friend George," Dobbin
said, anxious to come to his point.  "The quarrel between you and his
father has cut him up a great deal, sir.  Indeed, I'm the bearer of a
message from him."

"O, THAT'S your errand, is it?" cried the old man, jumping up. "What!
perhaps he condoles with me, does he? Very kind of him, the
stiff-backed prig, with his dandified airs and West End swagger. He's
hankering about my house, is he still?  If my son had the courage of a
man, he'd shoot him.  He's as big a villain as his father.  I won't
have his name mentioned in my house.  I curse the day that ever I let
him into it; and I'd rather see my daughter dead at my feet than
married to him."

"His father's harshness is not George's fault, sir.  Your daughter's
love for him is as much your doing as his.  Who are you, that you are
to play with two young people's affections and break their hearts at
your will?"

"Recollect it's not his father that breaks the match off," old Sedley
cried out.  "It's I that forbid it.  That family and mine are separated
for ever.  I'm fallen low, but not so low as that: no, no. And so you
may tell the whole race--son, and father and sisters, and all."

"It's my belief, sir, that you have not the power or the right to
separate those two," Dobbin answered in a low voice; "and that if you
don't give your daughter your consent it will be her duty to marry
without it.  There's no reason she should die or live miserably because
you are wrong-headed.  To my thinking, she's just as much married as if
the banns had been read in all the churches in London.  And what better
answer can there be to Osborne's charges against you, as charges there
are, than that his son claims to enter your family and marry your
daughter?"

A light of something like satisfaction seemed to break over old Sedley
as this point was put to him: but he still persisted that with his
consent the marriage between Amelia and George should never take place.

"We must do it without," Dobbin said, smiling, and told Mr. Sedley, as
he had told Mrs. Sedley in the day, before, the story of Rebecca's
elopement with Captain Crawley.  It evidently amused the old gentleman.
"You're terrible fellows, you Captains," said he, tying up his papers;
and his face wore something like a smile upon it, to the astonishment
of the blear-eyed waiter who now entered, and had never seen such an
expression upon Sedley's countenance since he had used the dismal
coffee-house.

The idea of hitting his enemy Osborne such a blow soothed, perhaps, the
old gentleman: and, their colloquy presently ending, he and Dobbin
parted pretty good friends.

"My sisters say she has diamonds as big as pigeons' eggs," George said,
laughing.  "How they must set off her complexion!  A perfect
illumination it must be when her jewels are on her neck.  Her
jet-black hair is as curly as Sambo's.  I dare say she wore a nose ring
when she went to court; and with a plume of feathers in her top-knot
she would look a perfect Belle Sauvage."

George, in conversation with Amelia, was rallying the appearance of a
young lady of whom his father and sisters had lately made the
acquaintance, and who was an object of vast respect to the Russell
Square family.  She was reported to have I don't know how many
plantations in the West Indies; a deal of money in the funds; and three
stars to her name in the East India stockholders' list.  She had a
mansion in Surrey, and a house in Portland Place. The name of the rich
West India heiress had been mentioned with applause in the Morning
Post.  Mrs. Haggistoun, Colonel Haggistoun's widow, her relative,
"chaperoned" her, and kept her house.  She was just from school, where
she had completed her education, and George and his sisters had met her
at an evening party at old Hulker's house, Devonshire Place (Hulker,
Bullock, and Co. were long the correspondents of her house in the West
Indies), and the girls had made the most cordial advances to her, which
the heiress had received with great good humour. An orphan in her
position--with her money--so interesting! the Misses Osborne said.
They were full of their new friend when they returned from the Hulker
ball to Miss Wirt, their companion; they had made arrangements for
continually meeting, and had the carriage and drove to see her the very
next day.  Mrs. Haggistoun, Colonel Haggistoun's widow, a relation of
Lord Binkie, and always talking of him, struck the dear unsophisticated
girls as rather haughty, and too much inclined to talk about her great
relations: but Rhoda was everything they could wish--the frankest,
kindest, most agreeable creature--wanting a little polish, but so
good-natured.  The girls Christian-named each other at once.

"You should have seen her dress for court, Emmy," Osborne cried,
laughing.  "She came to my sisters to show it off, before she was
presented in state by my Lady Binkie, the Haggistoun's kinswoman. She's
related to every one, that Haggistoun.  Her diamonds blazed out like
Vauxhall on the night we were there.  (Do you remember Vauxhall, Emmy,
and Jos singing to his dearest diddle diddle darling?)  Diamonds and
mahogany, my dear! think what an advantageous contrast--and the white
feathers in her hair--I mean in her wool.  She had earrings like
chandeliers; you might have lighted 'em up, by Jove--and a yellow satin
train that streeled after her like the tail of a comet."

"How old is she?" asked Emmy, to whom George was rattling away
regarding this dark paragon, on the morning of their reunion--rattling
away as no other man in the world surely could.

"Why the Black Princess, though she has only just left school, must be
two or three and twenty.  And you should see the hand she writes! Mrs.
Colonel Haggistoun usually writes her letters, but in a moment of
confidence, she put pen to paper for my sisters; she spelt satin
satting, and Saint James's, Saint Jams."

"Why, surely it must be Miss Swartz, the parlour boarder," Emmy said,
remembering that good-natured young mulatto girl, who had been so
hysterically affected when Amelia left Miss Pinkerton's academy.

"The very name," George said.  "Her father was a German Jew--a
slave-owner they say--connected with the Cannibal Islands in some way
or other.  He died last year, and Miss Pinkerton has finished her
education.  She can play two pieces on the piano; she knows three
songs; she can write when Mrs. Haggistoun is by to spell for her; and
Jane and Maria already have got to love her as a sister."

"I wish they would have loved me," said Emmy, wistfully. "They were
always very cold to me."

"My dear child, they would have loved you if you had had two hundred
thousand pounds," George replied.  "That is the way in which they have
been brought up.  Ours is a ready-money society.  We live among bankers
and City big-wigs, and be hanged to them, and every man, as he talks to
you, is jingling his guineas in his pocket.  There is that jackass Fred
Bullock is going to marry Maria--there's Goldmore, the East India
Director, there's Dipley, in the tallow trade--OUR trade," George said,
with an uneasy laugh and a blush.  "Curse the whole pack of
money-grubbing vulgarians!  I fall asleep at their great heavy dinners.
I feel ashamed in my father's great stupid parties.  I've been
accustomed to live with gentlemen, and men of the world and fashion,
Emmy, not with a parcel of turtle-fed tradesmen.  Dear little woman,
you are the only person of our set who ever looked, or thought, or
spoke like a lady: and you do it because you're an angel and can't help
it.  Don't remonstrate.  You are the only lady. Didn't Miss Crawley
remark it, who has lived in the best company in Europe?  And as for
Crawley, of the Life Guards, hang it, he's a fine fellow: and I like
him for marrying the girl he had chosen."

Amelia admired Mr. Crawley very much, too, for this; and trusted
Rebecca would be happy with him, and hoped (with a laugh) Jos would be
consoled.  And so the pair went on prattling, as in quite early days.
Amelia's confidence being perfectly restored to her, though she
expressed a great deal of pretty jealousy about Miss Swartz, and
professed to be dreadfully frightened--like a hypocrite as she was--lest
George should forget her for the heiress and her money and her
estates in Saint Kitt's.  But the fact is, she was a great deal too
happy to have fears or doubts or misgivings of any sort: and having
George at her side again, was not afraid of any heiress or beauty, or
indeed of any sort of danger.

When Captain Dobbin came back in the afternoon to these people--which
he did with a great deal of sympathy for them--it did his heart good to
see how Amelia had grown young again--how she laughed, and chirped, and
sang familiar old songs at the piano, which were only interrupted by
the bell from without proclaiming Mr. Sedley's return from the City,
before whom George received a signal to retreat.

Beyond the first smile of recognition--and even that was an hypocrisy,
for she thought his arrival rather provoking--Miss Sedley did not once
notice Dobbin during his visit.  But he was content, so that he saw her
happy; and thankful to have been the means of making her so.



A Quarrel About an Heiress

Love may be felt for any young lady endowed with such qualities as Miss
Swartz possessed; and a great dream of ambition entered into old Mr.
Osborne's soul, which she was to realize.  He encouraged, with the
utmost enthusiasm and friendliness, his daughters' amiable attachment
to the young heiress, and protested that it gave him the sincerest
pleasure as a father to see the love of his girls so well disposed.

"You won't find," he would say to Miss Rhoda, "that splendour and rank
to which you are accustomed at the West End, my dear Miss, at our
humble mansion in Russell Square.  My daughters are plain,
disinterested girls, but their hearts are in the right place, and
they've conceived an attachment for you which does them honour--I say,
which does them honour.  I'm a plain, simple, humble British
merchant--an honest one, as my respected friends Hulker and Bullock
will vouch, who were the correspondents of your late lamented father.
You'll find us a united, simple, happy, and I think I may say
respected, family--a plain table, a plain people, but a warm welcome,
my dear Miss Rhoda--Rhoda, let me say, for my heart warms to you, it
does really.  I'm a frank man, and I like you.  A glass of Champagne!
Hicks, Champagne to Miss Swartz."

There is little doubt that old Osborne believed all he said, and that
the girls were quite earnest in their protestations of affection for
Miss Swartz.  People in Vanity Fair fasten on to rich folks quite
naturally.  If the simplest people are disposed to look not a little
kindly on great Prosperity (for I defy any member of the British public
to say that the notion of Wealth has not something awful and pleasing
to him; and you, if you are told that the man next you at dinner has
got half a million, not to look at him with a certain interest)--if the
simple look benevolently on money, how much more do your old worldlings
regard it!  Their affections rush out to meet and welcome money.  Their
kind sentiments awaken spontaneously towards the interesting possessors
of it.  I know some respectable people who don't consider themselves at
liberty to indulge in friendship for any individual who has not a
certain competency, or place in society.  They give a loose to their
feelings on proper occasions.  And the proof is, that the major part of
the Osborne family, who had not, in fifteen years, been able to get up
a hearty regard for Amelia Sedley, became as fond of Miss Swartz in the
course of a single evening as the most romantic advocate of friendship
at first sight could desire.

What a match for George she'd be (the sisters and Miss Wirt agreed),
and how much better than that insignificant little Amelia!  Such a
dashing young fellow as he is, with his good looks, rank, and
accomplishments, would be the very husband for her.  Visions of balls
in Portland Place, presentations at Court, and introductions to half
the peerage, filled the minds of the young ladies; who talked of
nothing but George and his grand acquaintances to their beloved new
friend.

Old Osborne thought she would be a great match, too, for his son. He
should leave the army; he should go into Parliament; he should cut a
figure in the fashion and in the state.  His blood boiled with honest
British exultation, as he saw the name of Osborne ennobled in the
person of his son, and thought that he might be the progenitor of a
glorious line of baronets.  He worked in the City and on 'Change, until
he knew everything relating to the fortune of the heiress, how her
money was placed, and where her estates lay.  Young Fred Bullock, one
of his chief informants, would have liked to make a bid for her himself
(it was so the young banker expressed it), only he was booked to Maria
Osborne.  But not being able to secure her as a wife, the disinterested
Fred quite approved of her as a sister-in-law.  "Let George cut in
directly and win her," was his advice.  "Strike while the iron's hot,
you know--while she's fresh to the town: in a few weeks some d----
fellow from the West End will come in with a title and a rotten
rent-roll and cut all us City men out, as Lord Fitzrufus did last year
with Miss Grogram, who was actually engaged to Podder, of Podder &
Brown's.  The sooner it is done the better, Mr. Osborne; them's my
sentiments," the wag said; though, when Osborne had left the bank
parlour, Mr. Bullock remembered Amelia, and what a pretty girl she was,
and how attached to George Osborne; and he gave up at least ten seconds
of his valuable time to regretting the misfortune which had befallen
that unlucky young woman.

While thus George Osborne's good feelings, and his good friend and
genius, Dobbin, were carrying back the truant to Amelia's feet,
George's parent and sisters were arranging this splendid match for him,
which they never dreamed he would resist.

When the elder Osborne gave what he called "a hint," there was no
possibility for the most obtuse to mistake his meaning.  He called
kicking a footman downstairs a hint to the latter to leave his service.
With his usual frankness and delicacy he told Mrs. Haggistoun that he
would give her a cheque for five thousand pounds on the day his son was
married to her ward; and called that proposal a hint, and considered it
a very dexterous piece of diplomacy.  He gave George finally such
another hint regarding the heiress; and ordered him to marry her out of
hand, as he would have ordered his butler to draw a cork, or his clerk
to write a letter.

This imperative hint disturbed George a good deal.  He was in the very
first enthusiasm and delight of his second courtship of Amelia, which
was inexpressibly sweet to him.  The contrast of her manners and
appearance with those of the heiress, made the idea of a union with the
latter appear doubly ludicrous and odious.  Carriages and opera-boxes,
thought he; fancy being seen in them by the side of such a mahogany
charmer as that!  Add to all that the junior Osborne was quite as
obstinate as the senior: when he wanted a thing, quite as firm in his
resolution to get it; and quite as violent when angered, as his father
in his most stern moments.

On the first day when his father formally gave him the hint that he was
to place his affections at Miss Swartz's feet, George temporised with
the old gentleman.  "You should have thought of the matter sooner,
sir," he said. "It can't be done now, when we're expecting every day to
go on foreign service.  Wait till my return, if I do return"; and then
he represented, that the time when the regiment was daily expecting to
quit England, was exceedingly ill-chosen: that the few days or weeks
during which they were still to remain at home, must be devoted to
business and not to love-making: time enough for that when he came home
with his majority; "for, I promise you," said he, with a satisfied air,
"that one way or other you shall read the name of George Osborne in the
Gazette."

The father's reply to this was founded upon the information which he
had got in the City: that the West End chaps would infallibly catch
hold of the heiress if any delay took place: that if he didn't marry
Miss S., he might at least have an engagement in writing, to come into
effect when he returned to England; and that a man who could get ten
thousand a year by staying at home, was a fool to risk his life abroad.

"So that you would have me shown up as a coward, sir, and our name
dishonoured for the sake of Miss Swartz's money," George interposed.

This remark staggered the old gentleman; but as he had to reply to it,
and as his mind was nevertheless made up, he said, "You will dine here
to-morrow, sir, and every day Miss Swartz comes, you will be here to
pay your respects to her.  If you want for money, call upon Mr.
Chopper." Thus a new obstacle was in George's way, to interfere with
his plans regarding Amelia; and about which he and Dobbin had more than
one confidential consultation.  His friend's opinion respecting the
line of conduct which he ought to pursue, we know already.  And as for
Osborne, when he was once bent on a thing, a fresh obstacle or two only
rendered him the more resolute.

The dark object of the conspiracy into which the chiefs of the Osborne
family had entered, was quite ignorant of all their plans regarding her
(which, strange to say, her friend and chaperon did not divulge), and,
taking all the young ladies' flattery for genuine sentiment, and being,
as we have before had occasion to show, of a very warm and impetuous
nature, responded to their affection with quite a tropical ardour.  And
if the truth may be told, I dare say that she too had some selfish
attraction in the Russell Square house; and in a word, thought George
Osborne a very nice young man. His whiskers had made an impression upon
her, on the very first night she beheld them at the ball at Messrs.
Hulkers; and, as we know, she was not the first woman who had been
charmed by them. George had an air at once swaggering and melancholy,
languid and fierce.  He looked like a man who had passions, secrets,
and private harrowing griefs and adventures.  His voice was rich and
deep.  He would say it was a warm evening, or ask his partner to take
an ice, with a tone as sad and confidential as if he were breaking her
mother's death to her, or preluding a declaration of love.  He trampled
over all the young bucks of his father's circle, and was the hero among
those third-rate men.  Some few sneered at him and hated him. Some,
like Dobbin, fanatically admired him.  And his whiskers had begun to do
their work, and to curl themselves round the affections of Miss Swartz.

Whenever there was a chance of meeting him in Russell Square, that
simple and good-natured young woman was quite in a flurry to see her
dear Misses Osborne.  She went to great expenses in new gowns, and
bracelets, and bonnets, and in prodigious feathers.  She adorned her
person with her utmost skill to please the Conqueror, and exhibited all
her simple accomplishments to win his favour.  The girls would ask her,
with the greatest gravity, for a little music, and she would sing her
three songs and play her two little pieces as often as ever they asked,
and with an always increasing pleasure to herself.  During these
delectable entertainments, Miss Wirt and the chaperon sate by, and
conned over the peerage, and talked about the nobility.

The day after George had his hint from his father, and a short time
before the hour of dinner, he was lolling upon a sofa in the
drawing-room in a very becoming and perfectly natural attitude of
melancholy.  He had been, at his father's request, to Mr. Chopper in
the City (the old gentleman, though he gave great sums to his son,
would never specify any fixed allowance for him, and rewarded him only
as he was in the humour).  He had then been to pass three hours with
Amelia, his dear little Amelia, at Fulham; and he came home to find his
sisters spread in starched muslin in the drawing-room, the dowagers
cackling in the background, and honest Swartz in her favourite
amber-coloured satin, with turquoise bracelets, countless rings,
flowers, feathers, and all sorts of tags and gimcracks, about as
elegantly decorated as a she chimney-sweep on May-day.

The girls, after vain attempts to engage him in conversation, talked
about fashions and the last drawing-room until he was perfectly sick of
their chatter.  He contrasted their behaviour with little Emmy's--their
shrill voices with her tender ringing tones; their attitudes and their
elbows and their starch, with her humble soft movements and modest
graces.  Poor Swartz was seated in a place where Emmy had been
accustomed to sit. Her bejewelled hands lay sprawling in her amber
satin lap.  Her tags and ear-rings twinkled, and her big eyes rolled
about.  She was doing nothing with perfect contentment, and thinking
herself charming.  Anything so becoming as the satin the sisters had
never seen.

"Dammy," George said to a confidential friend, "she looked like a China
doll, which has nothing to do all day but to grin and wag its head.  By
Jove, Will, it was all I I could do to prevent myself from throwing the
sofa-cushion at her." He restrained that exhibition of sentiment,
however.

The sisters began to play the Battle of Prague.  "Stop that d----
thing," George howled out in a fury from the sofa.  "It makes me mad.
You play us something, Miss Swartz, do.  Sing something, anything but
the Battle of Prague."

"Shall I sing 'Blue Eyed Mary' or the air from the Cabinet?" Miss
Swartz asked.

"That sweet thing from the Cabinet," the sisters said.

"We've had that," replied the misanthrope on the sofa.

"I can sing 'Fluvy du Tajy,'" Swartz said, in a meek voice, "if I had
the words." It was the last of the worthy young woman's collection.

"O, 'Fleuve du Tage,'" Miss Maria cried; "we have the song," and went
off to fetch the book in which it was.

Now it happened that this song, then in the height of the fashion, had
been given to the young ladies by a young friend of theirs, whose name
was on the title, and Miss Swartz, having concluded the ditty with
George's applause (for he remembered that it was a favourite of
Amelia's), was hoping for an encore perhaps, and fiddling with the
leaves of the music, when her eye fell upon the title, and she saw
"Amelia Sedley" written in the comer.

"Lor!" cried Miss Swartz, spinning swiftly round on the music-stool,
"is it my Amelia?  Amelia that was at Miss P.'s at Hammersmith?  I know
it is.  It's her, and--  Tell me about her--where is she?"

"Don't mention her," Miss Maria Osborne said hastily.  "Her family has
disgraced itself.  Her father cheated Papa, and as for her, she is
never to be mentioned HERE." This was Miss Maria's return for George's
rudeness about the Battle of Prague.

"Are you a friend of Amelia's?" George said, bouncing up.  "God bless
you for it, Miss Swartz.  Don't believe what the girls say. SHE'S not
to blame at any rate. She's the best--"

"You know you're not to speak about her, George," cried Jane.  "Papa
forbids it."

"Who's to prevent me?" George cried out.  "I will speak of her.  I say
she's the best, the kindest, the gentlest, the sweetest girl in
England; and that, bankrupt or no, my sisters are not fit to hold
candles to her.  If you like her, go and see her, Miss Swartz; she
wants friends now; and I say, God bless everybody who befriends her.
Anybody who speaks kindly of her is my friend; anybody who speaks
against her is my enemy.  Thank you, Miss Swartz"; and he went up and
wrung her hand.

"George! George!" one of the sisters cried imploringly.

"I say," George said fiercely, "I thank everybody who loves Amelia
Sed--" He stopped.  Old Osborne was in the room with a face livid with
rage, and eyes like hot coals.

Though George had stopped in his sentence, yet, his blood being up, he
was not to be cowed by all the generations of Osborne; rallying
instantly, he replied to the bullying look of his father, with another
so indicative of resolution and defiance that the elder man quailed in
his turn, and looked away.  He felt that the tussle was coming.  "Mrs.
Haggistoun, let me take you down to dinner," he said. "Give your arm to
Miss Swartz, George," and they marched.

"Miss Swartz, I love Amelia, and we've been engaged almost all our
lives," Osborne said to his partner; and during all the dinner, George
rattled on with a volubility which surprised himself, and made his
father doubly nervous for the fight which was to take place as soon as
the ladies were gone.

The difference between the pair was, that while the father was violent
and a bully, the son had thrice the nerve and courage of the parent,
and could not merely make an attack, but resist it; and finding that
the moment was now come when the contest between him and his father was
to be decided, he took his dinner with perfect coolness and appetite
before the engagement began.  Old Osborne, on the contrary, was
nervous, and drank much.  He floundered in his conversation with the
ladies, his neighbours: George's coolness only rendering him more
angry.  It made him half mad to see the calm way in which George,
flapping his napkin, and with a swaggering bow, opened the door for the
ladies to leave the room; and filling himself a glass of wine, smacked
it, and looked his father full in the face, as if to say, "Gentlemen of
the Guard, fire first." The old man also took a supply of ammunition,
but his decanter clinked against the glass as he tried to fill it.

After giving a great heave, and with a purple choking face, he then
began.  "How dare you, sir, mention that person's name before Miss
Swartz to-day, in my drawing-room? I ask you, sir, how dare you do it?"

"Stop, sir," says George, "don't say dare, sir.  Dare isn't a word to
be used to a Captain in the British Army."

"I shall say what I like to my son, sir.  I can cut him off with a
shilling if I like.  I can make him a beggar if I like. I WILL say what
I like," the elder said.

"I'm a gentleman though I AM your son, sir," George answered haughtily.
"Any communications which you have to make to me, or any orders which
you may please to give, I beg may be couched in that kind of language
which I am accustomed to hear."

Whenever the lad assumed his haughty manner, it always created either
great awe or great irritation in the parent.  Old Osborne stood in
secret terror of his son as a better gentleman than himself; and
perhaps my readers may have remarked in their experience of this Vanity
Fair of ours, that there is no character which a low-minded man so much
mistrusts as that of a gentleman.

"My father didn't give me the education you have had, nor the
advantages you have had, nor the money you have had.  If I had kept the
company SOME FOLKS have had through MY MEANS, perhaps my son wouldn't
have any reason to brag, sir, of his SUPERIORITY and WEST END AIRS
(these words were uttered in the elder Osborne's most sarcastic tones).
But it wasn't considered the part of a gentleman, in MY time, for a man
to insult his father. If I'd done any such thing, mine would have
kicked me downstairs, sir."

"I never insulted you, sir.  I said I begged you to remember your son
was a gentleman as well as yourself. I know very well that you give me
plenty of money," said George (fingering a bundle of notes which he had
got in the morning from Mr. Chopper).  "You tell it me often enough,
sir.  There's no fear of my forgetting it."

"I wish you'd remember other things as well, sir," the sire answered.
"I wish you'd remember that in this house--so long as you choose to
HONOUR it with your COMPANY, Captain--I'm the master, and that name,
and that that--that you--that I say--"

"That what, sir?" George asked, with scarcely a sneer, filling another
glass of claret.

"----!" burst out his father with a screaming oath--"that the name of
those Sedleys never be mentioned here, sir--not one of the whole damned
lot of 'em, sir."

"It wasn't I, sir, that introduced Miss Sedley's name.  It was my
sisters who spoke ill of her to Miss Swartz; and by Jove I'll defend
her wherever I go.  Nobody shall speak lightly of that name in my
presence.  Our family has done her quite enough injury already, I
think, and may leave off reviling her now she's down.  I'll shoot any
man but you who says a word against her."

"Go on, sir, go on," the old gentleman said, his eyes starting out of
his head.

"Go on about what, sir? about the way in which we've treated that angel
of a girl?  Who told me to love her?  It was your doing.  I might have
chosen elsewhere, and looked higher, perhaps, than your society: but I
obeyed you.  And now that her heart's mine you give me orders to fling
it away, and punish her, kill her perhaps--for the faults of other
people.  It's a shame, by Heavens," said George, working himself up
into passion and enthusiasm as he proceeded, "to play at fast and loose
with a young girl's affections--and with such an angel as that--one so
superior to the people amongst whom she lived, that she might have
excited envy, only she was so good and gentle, that it's a wonder
anybody dared to hate her. If I desert her, sir, do you suppose she
forgets me?"

"I ain't going to have any of this dam sentimental nonsense and humbug
here, sir," the father cried out.  "There shall be no beggar-marriages
in my family.  If you choose to fling away eight thousand a year, which
you may have for the asking, you may do it: but by Jove you take your
pack and walk out of this house, sir.  Will you do as I tell you, once
for all, sir, or will you not?"

"Marry that mulatto woman?" George said, pulling up his shirt-collars.
"I don't like the colour, sir.  Ask the black that sweeps opposite
Fleet Market, sir.  I'm not going to marry a Hottentot Venus."

Mr. Osborne pulled frantically at the cord by which he was accustomed
to summon the butler when he wanted wine--and almost black in the face,
ordered that functionary to call a coach for Captain Osborne.

"I've done it," said George, coming into the Slaughters' an hour
afterwards, looking very pale.

"What, my boy?" says Dobbin.

George told what had passed between his father and himself.

"I'll marry her to-morrow," he said with an oath.  "I love her more
every day, Dobbin."



A Marriage and Part of a Honeymoon

Enemies the most obstinate and courageous can't hold out against
starvation; so the elder Osborne felt himself pretty easy about his
adversary in the encounter we have just described; and as soon as
George's supplies fell short, confidently expected his unconditional
submission. It was unlucky, to be sure, that the lad should have
secured a stock of provisions on the very day when the first encounter
took place; but this relief was only temporary, old Osborne thought,
and would but delay George's surrender.  No communication passed
between father and son for some days.  The former was sulky at this
silence, but not disquieted; for, as he said, he knew where he could
put the screw upon George, and only waited the result of that
operation.  He told the sisters the upshot of the dispute between them,
but ordered them to take no notice of the matter, and welcome George on
his return as if nothing had happened.  His cover was laid as usual
every day, and perhaps the old gentleman rather anxiously expected him;
but he never came. Some one inquired at the Slaughters' regarding him,
where it was said that he and his friend Captain Dobbin had left town.

One gusty, raw day at the end of April--the rain whipping the pavement
of that ancient street where the old Slaughters' Coffee-house was once
situated--George Osborne came into the coffee-room, looking very
haggard and pale; although dressed rather smartly in a blue coat and
brass buttons, and a neat buff waistcoat of the fashion of those days.
Here was his friend Captain Dobbin, in blue and brass too, having
abandoned the military frock and French-grey trousers, which were the
usual coverings of his lanky person.

Dobbin had been in the coffee-room for an hour or more.  He had tried
all the papers, but could not read them.  He had looked at the clock
many scores of times; and at the street, where the rain was pattering
down, and the people as they clinked by in pattens, left long
reflections on the shining stone: he tattooed at the table: he bit his
nails most completely, and nearly to the quick (he was accustomed to
ornament his great big hands in this way): he balanced the tea-spoon
dexterously on the milk jug: upset it, &c., &c.; and in fact showed
those signs of disquietude, and practised those desperate attempts at
amusement, which men are accustomed to employ when very anxious, and
expectant, and perturbed in mind.

Some of his comrades, gentlemen who used the room, joked him about the
splendour of his costume and his agitation of manner.  One asked him if
he was going to be married?  Dobbin laughed, and said he would send his
acquaintance (Major Wagstaff of the Engineers) a piece of cake when
that event took place.  At length Captain Osborne made his appearance,
very smartly dressed, but very pale and agitated as we have said.  He
wiped his pale face with a large yellow bandanna pocket-handkerchief
that was prodigiously scented. He shook hands with Dobbin, looked at
the clock, and told John, the waiter, to bring him some curacao.  Of
this cordial he swallowed off a couple of glasses with nervous
eagerness. His friend asked with some interest about his health.

"Couldn't get a wink of sleep till daylight, Dob," said he. "Infernal
headache and fever.  Got up at nine, and went down to the Hummums for a
bath.  I say, Dob, I feel just as I did on the morning I went out with
Rocket at Quebec."

"So do I," William responded.  "I was a deuced deal more nervous than
you were that morning.  You made a famous breakfast, I remember.  Eat
something now."

"You're a good old fellow, Will.  I'll drink your health, old boy, and
farewell to--"

"No, no; two glasses are enough," Dobbin interrupted him.  "Here, take
away the liqueurs, John.  Have some cayenne-pepper with your fowl.
Make haste though, for it is time we were there."

It was about half an hour from twelve when this brief meeting and
colloquy took place between the two captains.  A coach, into which
Captain Osborne's servant put his master's desk and dressing-case, had
been in waiting for some time; and into this the two gentlemen hurried
under an umbrella, and the valet mounted on the box, cursing the rain
and the dampness of the coachman who was steaming beside him.  "We
shall find a better trap than this at the church-door," says he;
"that's a comfort." And the carriage drove on, taking the road down
Piccadilly, where Apsley House and St. George's Hospital wore red
jackets still; where there were oil-lamps; where Achilles was not yet
born; nor the Pimlico arch raised; nor the hideous equestrian monster
which pervades it and the neighbourhood; and so they drove down by
Brompton to a certain chapel near the Fulham Road there.

A chariot was in waiting with four horses; likewise a coach of the kind
called glass coaches.  Only a very few idlers were collected on account
of the dismal rain.

"Hang it!" said George, "I said only a pair."

"My master would have four," said Mr. Joseph Sedley's servant, who was
in waiting; and he and Mr. Osborne's man agreed as they followed George
and William into the church, that it was a "reg'lar shabby turn hout;
and with scarce so much as a breakfast or a wedding faviour."

"Here you are," said our old friend, Jos Sedley, coming forward.
"You're five minutes late, George, my boy. What a day, eh? Demmy, it's
like the commencement of the rainy season in Bengal.  But you'll find
my carriage is watertight.  Come along, my mother and Emmy are in the
vestry."

Jos Sedley was splendid.  He was fatter than ever.  His shirt collars
were higher; his face was redder; his shirt-frill flaunted gorgeously
out of his variegated waistcoat. Varnished boots were not invented as
yet; but the Hessians on his beautiful legs shone so, that they must
have been the identical pair in which the gentleman in the old picture
used to shave himself; and on his light green coat there bloomed a fine
wedding favour, like a great white spreading magnolia.

In a word, George had thrown the great cast.  He was going to be
married.  Hence his pallor and nervousness--his sleepless night and
agitation in the morning.  I have heard people who have gone through
the same thing own to the same emotion.  After three or four
ceremonies, you get accustomed to it, no doubt; but the first dip,
everybody allows, is awful.

The bride was dressed in a brown silk pelisse (as Captain Dobbin has
since informed me), and wore a straw bonnet with a pink ribbon; over
the bonnet she had a veil of white Chantilly lace, a gift from Mr.
Joseph Sedley, her brother.  Captain Dobbin himself had asked leave to
present her with a gold chain and watch, which she sported on this
occasion; and her mother gave her her diamond brooch--almost the only
trinket which was left to the old lady.  As the service went on, Mrs.
Sedley sat and whimpered a great deal in a pew, consoled by the Irish
maid-servant and Mrs. Clapp from the lodgings. Old Sedley would not be
present.  Jos acted for his father, giving away the bride, whilst
Captain Dobbin stepped up as groomsman to his friend George.

There was nobody in the church besides the officiating persons and the
small marriage party and their attendants. The two valets sat aloof
superciliously.  The rain came rattling down on the windows. In the
intervals of the service you heard it, and the sobbing of old Mrs.
Sedley in the pew.  The parson's tones echoed sadly through the empty
walls.  Osborne's "I will" was sounded in very deep bass. Emmy's
response came fluttering up to her lips from her heart, but was
scarcely heard by anybody except Captain Dobbin.

When the service was completed, Jos Sedley came forward and kissed his
sister, the bride, for the first time for many months--George's look of
gloom had gone, and he seemed quite proud and radiant. "It's your turn,
William," says he, putting his hand fondly upon Dobbin's shoulder; and
Dobbin went up and touched Amelia on the cheek.

Then they went into the vestry and signed the register. "God bless you,
Old Dobbin," George said, grasping him by the hand, with something very
like moisture glistening in his eyes.  William replied only by nodding
his head. His heart was too full to say much.

"Write directly, and come down as soon as you can, you know," Osborne
said.  After Mrs. Sedley had taken an hysterical adieu of her daughter,
the pair went off to the carriage.  "Get out of the way, you little
devils," George cried to a small crowd of damp urchins, that were
hanging about the chapel-door.  The rain drove into the bride and
bridegroom's faces as they passed to the chariot. The postilions'
favours draggled on their dripping jackets. The few children made a
dismal cheer, as the carriage, splashing mud, drove away.

William Dobbin stood in the church-porch, looking at it, a queer
figure.  The small crew of spectators jeered him. He was not thinking
about them or their laughter.

"Come home and have some tiffin, Dobbin," a voice cried behind him; as
a pudgy hand was laid on his shoulder, and the honest fellow's reverie
was interrupted.  But the Captain had no heart to go a-feasting with
Jos Sedley. He put the weeping old lady and her attendants into the
carriage along with Jos, and left them without any farther words
passing.  This carriage, too, drove away, and the urchins gave another
sarcastical cheer.

"Here, you little beggars," Dobbin said, giving some sixpences amongst
them, and then went off by himself through the rain.  It was all over.
They were married, and happy, he prayed God.  Never since he was a boy
had he felt so miserable and so lonely.  He longed with a heart-sick
yearning for the first few days to be over, that he might see her again.

Some ten days after the above ceremony, three young men of our
acquaintance were enjoying that beautiful prospect of bow windows on
the one side and blue sea on the other, which Brighton affords to the
traveller. Sometimes it is towards the ocean--smiling with countless
dimples, speckled with white sails, with a hundred bathing-machines
kissing the skirt of his blue garment--that the Londoner looks
enraptured: sometimes, on the contrary, a lover of human nature rather
than of prospects of any kind, it is towards the bow windows that he
turns, and that swarm of human life which they exhibit.  From one issue
the notes of a piano, which a young lady in ringlets practises six
hours daily, to the delight of the fellow-lodgers: at another, lovely
Polly, the nurse-maid, may be seen dandling Master Omnium in her arms:
whilst Jacob, his papa, is beheld eating prawns, and devouring the
Times for breakfast, at the window below. Yonder are the Misses Leery,
who are looking out for the young officers of the Heavies, who are
pretty sure to be pacing the cliff; or again it is a City man, with a
nautical turn, and a telescope, the size of a six-pounder, who has his
instrument pointed seawards, so as to command every pleasure-boat,
herring-boat, or bathing-machine that comes to, or quits, the shore,
&c., &c.  But have we any leisure for a description of Brighton?--for
Brighton, a clean Naples with genteel lazzaroni--for Brighton, that
always looks brisk, gay, and gaudy, like a harlequin's jacket--for
Brighton, which used to be seven hours distant from London at the time
of our story; which is now only a hundred minutes off; and which may
approach who knows how much nearer, unless Joinville comes and untimely
bombards it?

"What a monstrous fine girl that is in the lodgings over the
milliner's," one of these three promenaders remarked to the other;
"Gad, Crawley, did you see what a wink she gave me as I passed?"

"Don't break her heart, Jos, you rascal," said another. "Don't trifle
with her affections, you Don Juan!"

"Get away," said Jos Sedley, quite pleased, and leering up at the
maid-servant in question with a most killing ogle.  Jos was even more
splendid at Brighton than he had been at his sister's marriage. He had
brilliant under-waistcoats, any one of which would have set up a
moderate buck. He sported a military frock-coat, ornamented with frogs,
knobs, black buttons, and meandering embroidery. He had affected a
military appearance and habits of late; and he walked with his two
friends, who were of that profession, clinking his boot-spurs,
swaggering prodigiously, and shooting death-glances at all the servant
girls who were worthy to be slain.

"What shall we do, boys, till the ladies return?" the buck asked. The
ladies were out to Rottingdean in his carriage on a drive.

"Let's have a game at billiards," one of his friends said--the tall
one, with lacquered mustachios.

"No, dammy; no, Captain," Jos replied, rather alarmed.  "No billiards
to-day, Crawley, my boy; yesterday was enough."

"You play very well," said Crawley, laughing.  "Don't he, Osborne? How
well he made that five stroke, eh?"

"Famous," Osborne said.  "Jos is a devil of a fellow at billiards, and
at everything else, too.  I wish there were any tiger-hunting about
here! we might go and kill a few before dinner.  (There goes a fine
girl! what an ankle, eh, Jos?) Tell us that story about the tiger-hunt,
and the way you did for him in the jungle--it's a wonderful story that,
Crawley." Here George Osborne gave a yawn. "It's rather slow work,"
said he, "down here; what shall we do?"

"Shall we go and look at some horses that Snaffler's just brought from
Lewes fair?" Crawley said.

"Suppose we go and have some jellies at Dutton's," and the rogue Jos,
willing to kill two birds with one stone.  "Devilish fine gal at
Dutton's."

"Suppose we go and see the Lightning come in, it's just about time?"
George said.  This advice prevailing over the stables and the jelly,
they turned towards the coach-office to witness the Lightning's arrival.

As they passed, they met the carriage--Jos Sedley's open carriage, with
its magnificent armorial bearings--that splendid conveyance in which he
used to drive, about at Cheltenham, majestic and solitary, with his
arms folded, and his hat cocked; or, more happy, with ladies by his
side.

Two were in the carriage now: one a little person, with light hair, and
dressed in the height of the fashion; the other in a brown silk
pelisse, and a straw bonnet with pink ribbons, with a rosy, round,
happy face, that did you good to behold.  She checked the carriage as
it neared the three gentlemen, after which exercise of authority she
looked rather nervous, and then began to blush most absurdly. "We have
had a delightful drive, George," she said, "and--and we're so glad to
come back; and, Joseph, don't let him be late."

"Don't be leading our husbands into mischief, Mr. Sedley, you wicked,
wicked man you," Rebecca said, shaking at Jos a pretty little finger
covered with the neatest French kid glove.  "No billiards, no smoking,
no naughtiness!"

"My dear Mrs. Crawley--Ah now! upon my honour!" was all Jos could
ejaculate by way of reply; but he managed to fall into a tolerable
attitude, with his head lying on his shoulder, grinning upwards at his
victim, with one hand at his back, which he supported on his cane, and
the other hand (the one with the diamond ring) fumbling in his
shirt-frill and among his under-waistcoats.  As the carriage drove off
he kissed the diamond hand to the fair ladies within.  He wished all
Cheltenham, all Chowringhee, all Calcutta, could see him in that
position, waving his hand to such a beauty, and in company with such a
famous buck as Rawdon Crawley of the Guards.

Our young bride and bridegroom had chosen Brighton as the place where
they would pass the first few days after their marriage; and having
engaged apartments at the Ship Inn, enjoyed themselves there in great
comfort and quietude, until Jos presently joined them.  Nor was he the
only companion they found there.  As they were coming into the hotel
from a sea-side walk one afternoon, on whom should they light but
Rebecca and her husband.  The recognition was immediate.  Rebecca flew
into the arms of her dearest friend. Crawley and Osborne shook hands
together cordially enough: and Becky, in the course of a very few
hours, found means to make the latter forget that little unpleasant
passage of words which had happened between them.  "Do you remember the
last time we met at Miss Crawley's, when I was so rude to you, dear
Captain Osborne? I thought you seemed careless about dear Amelia.  It
was that made me angry: and so pert: and so unkind: and so ungrateful.
Do forgive me!" Rebecca said, and she held out her hand with so frank
and winning a grace, that Osborne could not but take it.  By humbly and
frankly acknowledging yourself to be in the wrong, there is no knowing,
my son, what good you may do.  I knew once a gentleman and very worthy
practitioner in Vanity Fair, who used to do little wrongs to his
neighbours on purpose, and in order to apologise for them in an open
and manly way afterwards--and what ensued?  My friend Crocky Doyle was
liked everywhere, and deemed to be rather impetuous--but the honestest
fellow.  Becky's humility passed for sincerity with George Osborne.

These two young couples had plenty of tales to relate to each other.
The marriages of either were discussed; and their prospects in life
canvassed with the greatest frankness and interest on both sides.
George's marriage was to be made known to his father by his friend
Captain Dobbin; and young Osborne trembled rather for the result of
that communication.  Miss Crawley, on whom all Rawdon's hopes depended,
still held out.  Unable to make an entry into her house in Park Lane,
her affectionate nephew and niece had followed her to Brighton, where
they had emissaries continually planted at her door.

"I wish you could see some of Rawdon's friends who are always about our
door," Rebecca said, laughing.  "Did you ever see a dun, my dear; or a
bailiff and his man? Two of the abominable wretches watched all last
week at the greengrocer's opposite, and we could not get away until
Sunday.  If Aunty does not relent, what shall we do?"

Rawdon, with roars of laughter, related a dozen amusing anecdotes of
his duns, and Rebecca's adroit treatment of them.  He vowed with a
great oath that there was no woman in Europe who could talk a creditor
over as she could.  Almost immediately after their marriage, her
practice had begun, and her husband found the immense value of such a
wife.  They had credit in plenty, but they had bills also in abundance,
and laboured under a scarcity of ready money. Did these
debt-difficulties affect Rawdon's good spirits?  No. Everybody in
Vanity Fair must have remarked how well those live who are comfortably
and thoroughly in debt: how they deny themselves nothing; how jolly and
easy they are in their minds.  Rawdon and his wife had the very best
apartments at the inn at Brighton; the landlord, as he brought in the
first dish, bowed before them as to his greatest customers: and Rawdon
abused the dinners and wine with an audacity which no grandee in the
land could surpass.  Long custom, a manly appearance, faultless boots
and clothes, and a happy fierceness of manner, will often help a man as
much as a great balance at the banker's.

The two wedding parties met constantly in each other's apartments.
After two or three nights the gentlemen of an evening had a little
piquet, as their wives sate and chatted apart.  This pastime, and the
arrival of Jos Sedley, who made his appearance in his grand open
carriage, and who played a few games at billiards with Captain Crawley,
replenished Rawdon's purse somewhat, and gave him the benefit of that
ready money for which the greatest spirits are sometimes at a
stand-still.

So the three gentlemen walked down to see the Lightning coach come in.
Punctual to the minute, the coach crowded inside and out, the guard
blowing his accustomed tune on the horn--the Lightning came tearing
down the street, and pulled up at the coach-office.

"Hullo! there's old Dobbin," George cried, quite delighted to see his
old friend perched on the roof; and whose promised visit to Brighton
had been delayed until now.  "How are you, old fellow? Glad you're come
down. Emmy'll be delighted to see you," Osborne said, shaking his
comrade warmly by the hand as soon as his descent from the vehicle was
effected--and then he added, in a lower and agitated voice, "What's the
news?  Have you been in Russell Square? What does the governor say?
Tell me everything."

Dobbin looked very pale and grave.  "I've seen your father," said he.
"How's Amelia--Mrs. George?  I'll tell you all the news presently: but
I've brought the great news of all: and that is--"

"Out with it, old fellow," George said.

"We're ordered to Belgium.  All the army goes--guards and all.
Heavytop's got the gout, and is mad at not being able to move. O'Dowd
goes in command, and we embark from Chatham next week." This news of
war could not but come with a shock upon our lovers, and caused all
these gentlemen to look very serious.

 Thackeray contrasts Mrs. Bute Crawley's flattery of the servants with Rawdon's blunt treatment, and concludes that soft words take a person further than unkind ones. Mrs. Bute Crawley establishes herself in Miss Crawley's house, makes friends of Firkin and Briggs, and digs in for battle, suspecting that Rawdon will try for reconciliation. Mrs. Bute wants to protect Miss Crawley "from the arts of those unprincipled people." Mrs. Bute makes such a fuss over Miss Crawley's illness that she frightens the poor woman. Thackeray observes that the tinsel of Vanity Fair does not persist in the lonely hours of illness and sorrow. Mrs. Bute would like to convert Miss Crawley and starts out by making her hate all of Rawdon's sins. Thackeray observes that one's relatives can abuse one's reputation worse than anyone else. By making Rawdon and Rebecca as disreputable as possible, Mrs. Bute hopes to prevent Miss Crawley's ever seeing Rawdon again. But Mrs. Bute is over-jealous and over-zealous. The doctor insists that Miss Crawley have some fresh air. Her guardian is afraid Miss Crawley will see Rawdon and forgive him, although what Mrs. Bute says is that the sight of him will kill the invalid. Dr. Squill and Mr. Clump see through Mrs. Bute's machinations. As for the patient, she hates Mrs. Bute and would like to be free of her. One day Mrs. Bute and Miss Crawley meet Rawdon, but Miss Crawley doesn't speak; triumphant for the moment, Mrs. Bute sees danger in future meetings. Meanwhile Dobbin helps Amelia and George marry. George, touched by Amelia's sorrow and devotion, is willing to marry her in spite of her loss of fortune and feels himself quite generous. Both fathers oppose the marriage, but Mr. Sedley becomes reconciled when he thinks that the match will make Osborne furious. Old Osborne wants George to marry Miss Swartz, the rich "Black Princess." He thinks he can starve George into the marriage by withholding money, but if George marries Amelia, his father will disinherit him. Miss Swartz doesn't know what old Osborne has in mind, but she thinks George attractive. George is praising Amelia when his father comes in, eyes afire, but George outglares him, goes back to Dobbin and tells him that he has broken with his father and that he will marry Amelia the next day, which he does. The scene shifts to Brighton where Joseph, Rawdon, and George watch the crowd and the sea. Rawdon makes a little cash by gambling with Jos. Dobbin, coming in on the coach, is welcomed by everyone. He says he has seen old Osborne but does not reveal what the old man has said. He asks about Amelia, then shocks them all by saying they're ordered to Belgium.

