Chapter: In Which Jos Sedley Takes Care of His Sister

Thus all the superior officers being summoned on duty elsewhere, Jos
Sedley was left in command of the little colony at Brussels, with
Amelia invalided, Isidor, his Belgian servant, and the bonne, who was
maid-of-all-work for the establishment, as a garrison under him. Though
he was disturbed in spirit, and his rest destroyed by Dobbin's
interruption and the occurrences of the morning, Jos nevertheless
remained for many hours in bed, wakeful and rolling about there until
his usual hour of rising had arrived.  The sun was high in the heavens,
and our gallant friends of the --th miles on their march, before the
civilian appeared in his flowered dressing-gown at breakfast.

About George's absence, his brother-in-law was very easy in mind.
Perhaps Jos was rather pleased in his heart that Osborne was gone, for
during George's presence, the other had played but a very secondary
part in the household, and Osborne did not scruple to show his contempt
for the stout civilian.  But Emmy had always been good and attentive to
him.  It was she who ministered to his comforts, who superintended the
dishes that he liked, who walked or rode with him (as she had many, too
many, opportunities of doing, for where was George?) and who interposed
her sweet face between his anger and her husband's scorn.  Many timid
remonstrances had she uttered to George in behalf of her brother, but
the former in his trenchant way cut these entreaties short. "I'm an
honest man," he said, "and if I have a feeling I show it, as an honest
man will.  How the deuce, my dear, would you have me behave
respectfully to such a fool as your brother?"  So Jos was pleased with
George's absence.  His plain hat, and gloves on a sideboard, and the
idea that the owner was away, caused Jos I don't know what secret
thrill of pleasure.  "HE won't be troubling me this morning," Jos
thought, "with his dandified airs and his impudence."

"Put the Captain's hat into the ante-room," he said to Isidor, the
servant.

"Perhaps he won't want it again," replied the lackey, looking knowingly
at his master.  He hated George too, whose insolence towards him was
quite of the English sort.

"And ask if Madame is coming to breakfast," Mr. Sedley said with great
majesty, ashamed to enter with a servant upon the subject of his
dislike for George.  The truth is, he had abused his brother to the
valet a score of times before.

Alas!  Madame could not come to breakfast, and cut the tartines that
Mr. Jos liked.  Madame was a great deal too ill, and had been in a
frightful state ever since her husband's departure, so her bonne said.
Jos showed his sympathy by pouring her out a large cup of tea It was
his way of exhibiting kindness:  and he improved on this; he not only
sent her breakfast, but he bethought him what delicacies she would most
like for dinner.

Isidor, the valet, had looked on very sulkily, while Osborne's servant
was disposing of his master's baggage previous to the Captain's
departure:  for in the first place he hated Mr. Osborne, whose conduct
to him, and to all inferiors, was generally overbearing (nor does the
continental domestic like to be treated with insolence as our own
better-tempered servants do), and secondly, he was angry that so many
valuables should be removed from under his hands, to fall into other
people's possession when the English discomfiture should arrive.  Of
this defeat he and a vast number of other persons in Brussels and
Belgium did not make the slightest doubt.  The almost universal belief
was, that the Emperor would divide the Prussian and English armies,
annihilate one after the other, and march into Brussels before three
days were over: when all the movables of his present masters, who would
be killed, or fugitives, or prisoners, would lawfully become the
property of Monsieur Isidor.

As he helped Jos through his toilsome and complicated daily toilette,
this faithful servant would calculate what he should do with the very
articles with which he was decorating his master's person.  He would
make a present of the silver essence-bottles and toilet knicknacks to a
young lady of whom he was fond; and keep the English cutlery and the
large ruby pin for himself.  It would look very smart upon one of the
fine frilled shirts, which, with the gold-laced cap and the frogged
frock coat, that might easily be cut down to suit his shape, and the
Captain's gold-headed cane, and the great double ring with the rubies,
which he would have made into a pair of beautiful earrings, he
calculated would make a perfect Adonis of himself, and render
Mademoiselle Reine an easy prey.  "How those sleeve-buttons will suit
me!" thought he, as he fixed a pair on the fat pudgy wrists of Mr.
Sedley.  "I long for sleeve-buttons; and the Captain's boots with brass
spurs, in the next room, corbleu! what an effect they will make in the
Allee Verte!" So while Monsieur Isidor with bodily fingers was holding
on to his master's nose, and shaving the lower part of Jos's face, his
imagination was rambling along the Green Avenue, dressed out in a
frogged coat and lace, and in company with Mademoiselle Reine; he was
loitering in spirit on the banks, and examining the barges sailing
slowly under the cool shadows of the trees by the canal, or refreshing
himself with a mug of Faro at the bench of a beer-house on the road to
Laeken.

But Mr. Joseph Sedley, luckily for his own peace, no more knew what was
passing in his domestic's mind than the respected reader, and I suspect
what John or Mary, whose wages we pay, think of ourselves. What our
servants think of us!--Did we know what our intimates and dear
relations thought of us, we should live in a world that we should be
glad to quit, and in a frame of mind and a constant terror, that would
be perfectly unbearable. So Jos's man was marking his victim down, as
you see one of Mr. Paynter's assistants in Leadenhall Street ornament
an unconscious turtle with a placard on which is written, "Soup
to-morrow."

Amelia's attendant was much less selfishly disposed. Few dependents
could come near that kind and gentle creature without paying their
usual tribute of loyalty and affection to her sweet and affectionate
nature.  And it is a fact that Pauline, the cook, consoled her mistress
more than anybody whom she saw on this wretched morning; for when she
found how Amelia remained for hours, silent, motionless, and haggard,
by the windows in which she had placed herself to watch the last
bayonets of the column as it marched away, the honest girl took the
lady's hand, and said, Tenez, Madame, est-ce qu'il n'est pas aussi a
l'armee, mon homme a moi?  with which she burst into tears, and Amelia
falling into her arms, did likewise, and so each pitied and soothed the
other.

Several times during the forenoon Mr. Jos's Isidor went from his
lodgings into the town, and to the gates of the hotels and lodging-houses
round about the Parc, where the English were congregated, and
there mingled with other valets, couriers, and lackeys, gathered such
news as was abroad, and brought back bulletins for his master's
information.  Almost all these gentlemen were in heart partisans of the
Emperor, and had their opinions about the speedy end of the campaign.
The Emperor's proclamation from Avesnes had been distributed everywhere
plentifully in Brussels.  "Soldiers!"  it said, "this is the
anniversary of Marengo and Friedland, by which the destinies of Europe
were twice decided.  Then, as after Austerlitz, as after Wagram, we
were too generous.  We believed in the oaths and promises of princes
whom we suffered to remain upon their thrones.  Let us march once more
to meet them.  We and they, are we not still the same men?  Soldiers!
these same Prussians who are so arrogant to-day, were three to one
against you at Jena, and six to one at Montmirail.  Those among you who
were prisoners in England can tell their comrades what frightful
torments they suffered on board the English hulks.  Madmen!  a moment
of prosperity has blinded them, and if they enter into France it will
be to find a grave there!"  But the partisans of the French prophesied
a more speedy extermination of the Emperor's enemies than this; and it
was agreed on all hands that Prussians and British would never return
except as prisoners in the rear of the conquering army.

These opinions in the course of the day were brought to operate upon
Mr. Sedley.  He was told that the Duke of Wellington had gone to try
and rally his army, the advance of which had been utterly crushed the
night before.

"Crushed, psha!" said Jos, whose heart was pretty stout at
breakfast-time.  "The Duke has gone to beat the Emperor as he has
beaten all his generals before."

"His papers are burned, his effects are removed, and his quarters are
being got ready for the Duke of Dalmatia," Jos's informant replied.  "I
had it from his own maitre d'hotel.  Milor Duc de Richemont's people
are packing up everything.  His Grace has fled already, and the Duchess
is only waiting to see the plate packed to join the King of France at
Ostend."

"The King of France is at Ghent, fellow," replied Jos, affecting
incredulity.

"He fled last night to Bruges, and embarks today from Ostend.  The Duc
de Berri is taken prisoner.  Those who wish to be safe had better go
soon, for the dykes will be opened to-morrow, and who can fly when the
whole country is under water?"

"Nonsense, sir, we are three to one, sir, against any force Boney can
bring into the field," Mr. Sedley objected; "the Austrians and the
Russians are on their march.  He must, he shall be crushed," Jos said,
slapping his hand on the table.

"The Prussians were three to one at Jena, and he took their army and
kingdom in a week.  They were six to one at Montmirail, and he
scattered them like sheep. The Austrian army is coming, but with the
Empress and the King of Rome at its head; and the Russians, bah! the
Russians will withdraw.  No quarter is to be given to the English, on
account of their cruelty to our braves on board the infamous pontoons.
Look here, here it is in black and white.  Here's the proclamation of
his Majesty the Emperor and King," said the now declared partisan of
Napoleon, and taking the document from his pocket, Isidor sternly
thrust it into his master's face, and already looked upon the frogged
coat and valuables as his own spoil.

Jos was, if not seriously alarmed as yet, at least considerably
disturbed in mind.  "Give me my coat and cap, sir," said he, "and follow
me.  I will go myself and learn the truth of these reports." Isidor was
furious as Jos put on the braided frock.  "Milor had better not wear
that military coat," said he; "the Frenchmen have sworn not to give
quarter to a single British soldier."

"Silence, sirrah!" said Jos, with a resolute countenance still, and
thrust his arm into the sleeve with indomitable resolution, in the
performance of which heroic act he was found by Mrs. Rawdon Crawley,
who at this juncture came up to visit Amelia, and entered without
ringing at the antechamber door.

Rebecca was dressed very neatly and smartly, as usual: her quiet sleep
after Rawdon's departure had refreshed her, and her pink smiling cheeks
were quite pleasant to look at, in a town and on a day when everybody
else's countenance wore the appearance of the deepest anxiety and
gloom.  She laughed at the attitude in which Jos was discovered, and
the struggles and convulsions with which the stout gentleman thrust
himself into the braided coat.

"Are you preparing to join the army, Mr. Joseph?" she said.  "Is there
to be nobody left in Brussels to protect us poor women?"  Jos succeeded
in plunging into the coat, and came forward blushing and stuttering out
excuses to his fair visitor.  "How was she after the events of the
morning--after the fatigues of the ball the night before?"  Monsieur
Isidor disappeared into his master's adjacent bedroom, bearing off the
flowered dressing-gown.

"How good of you to ask," said she, pressing one of his hands in both
her own.  "How cool and collected you look when everybody else is
frightened!  How is our dear little Emmy?  It must have been an awful,
awful parting."

"Tremendous," Jos said.

"You men can bear anything," replied the lady.  "Parting or danger are
nothing to you.  Own now that you were going to join the army and leave
us to our fate. I know you were--something tells me you were.  I was so
frightened, when the thought came into my head (for I do sometimes
think of you when I am alone, Mr. Joseph), that I ran off immediately
to beg and entreat you not to fly from us."

This speech might be interpreted, "My dear sir, should an accident
befall the army, and a retreat be necessary, you have a very
comfortable carriage, in which I propose to take a seat." I don't know
whether Jos understood the words in this sense.  But he was profoundly
mortified by the lady's inattention to him during their stay at
Brussels.  He had never been presented to any of Rawdon Crawley's great
acquaintances:  he had scarcely been invited to Rebecca's parties; for
he was too timid to play much, and his presence bored George and Rawdon
equally, who neither of them, perhaps, liked to have a witness of the
amusements in which the pair chose to indulge.  "Ah!" thought Jos, "now
she wants me she comes to me.  When there is nobody else in the way she
can think about old Joseph Sedley!"  But besides these doubts he felt
flattered at the idea Rebecca expressed of his courage.

He blushed a good deal, and put on an air of importance. "I should like
to see the action," he said.  "Every man of any spirit would, you know.
I've seen a little service in India, but nothing on this grand scale."

"You men would sacrifice anything for a pleasure," Rebecca answered.
"Captain Crawley left me this morning as gay as if he were going to a
hunting party.  What does he care?  What do any of you care for the
agonies and tortures of a poor forsaken woman?  (I wonder whether he
could really have been going to the troops, this great lazy gourmand?)
Oh!  dear Mr. Sedley, I have come to you for comfort--for consolation.
I have been on my knees all the morning. I tremble at the frightful
danger into which our husbands, our friends, our brave troops and
allies, are rushing.  And I come here for shelter, and find another of
my friends--the last remaining to me--bent upon plunging into the
dreadful scene!"

"My dear madam," Jos replied, now beginning to be quite soothed, "don't
be alarmed.  I only said I should like to go--what Briton would not?
But my duty keeps me here:  I can't leave that poor creature in the
next room." And he pointed with his finger to the door of the chamber
in which Amelia was.

"Good noble brother!" Rebecca said, putting her handkerchief to her
eyes, and smelling the eau-de-cologne with which it was scented.  "I
have done you injustice: you have got a heart.  I thought you had not."

"O, upon my honour!" Jos said, making a motion as if he would lay his
hand upon the spot in question.  "You do me injustice, indeed you
do--my dear Mrs. Crawley."

"I do, now your heart is true to your sister.  But I remember two years
ago--when it was false to me!" Rebecca said, fixing her eyes upon him
for an instant, and then turning away into the window.

Jos blushed violently.  That organ which he was accused by Rebecca of
not possessing began to thump tumultuously.  He recalled the days when
he had fled from her, and the passion which had once inflamed him--the
days when he had driven her in his curricle:  when she had knit the
green purse for him:  when he had sate enraptured gazing at her white
arms and bright eyes.

"I know you think me ungrateful," Rebecca continued, coming out of the
window, and once more looking at him and addressing him in a low
tremulous voice.  "Your coldness, your averted looks, your manner when
we have met of late--when I came in just now, all proved it to me.  But
were there no reasons why I should avoid you? Let your own heart answer
that question.  Do you think my husband was too much inclined to
welcome you? The only unkind words I have ever had from him (I will do
Captain Crawley that justice) have been about you--and most cruel,
cruel words they were."

"Good gracious! what have I done?" asked Jos in a flurry of pleasure
and perplexity; "what have I done--to--to--?"

"Is jealousy nothing?" said Rebecca.  "He makes me miserable about you.
And whatever it might have been once--my heart is all his.  I am
innocent now.  Am I not, Mr. Sedley?"

All Jos's blood tingled with delight, as he surveyed this victim to his
attractions.  A few adroit words, one or two knowing tender glances of
the eyes, and his heart was inflamed again and his doubts and
suspicions forgotten.  From Solomon downwards, have not wiser men than
he been cajoled and befooled by women?  "If the worst comes to the
worst," Becky thought, "my retreat is secure; and I have a right-hand
seat in the barouche."

There is no knowing into what declarations of love and ardour the
tumultuous passions of Mr. Joseph might have led him, if Isidor the
valet had not made his reappearance at this minute, and begun to busy
himself about the domestic affairs.  Jos, who was just going to gasp
out an avowal, choked almost with the emotion that he was obliged to
restrain.  Rebecca too bethought her that it was time she should go in
and comfort her dearest Amelia.  "Au revoir," she said, kissing her
hand to Mr. Joseph, and tapped gently at the door of his sister's
apartment.  As she entered and closed the door on herself, he sank down
in a chair, and gazed and sighed and puffed portentously.  "That coat
is very tight for Milor," Isidor said, still having his eye on the
frogs; but his master heard him not: his thoughts were elsewhere:  now
glowing, maddening, upon the contemplation of the enchanting Rebecca:
anon shrinking guiltily before the vision of the jealous Rawdon
Crawley, with his curling, fierce mustachios, and his terrible duelling
pistols loaded and cocked.

Rebecca's appearance struck Amelia with terror, and made her shrink
back.  It recalled her to the world and the remembrance of yesterday.
In the overpowering fears about to-morrow she had forgotten
Rebecca--jealousy--everything except that her husband was gone and was
in danger.  Until this dauntless worldling came in and broke the spell,
and lifted the latch, we too have forborne to enter into that sad
chamber.  How long had that poor girl been on her knees!  what hours of
speechless prayer and bitter prostration had she passed there!  The
war-chroniclers who write brilliant stories of fight and triumph
scarcely tell us of these.  These are too mean parts of the pageant:
and you don't hear widows' cries or mothers' sobs in the midst of the
shouts and jubilation in the great Chorus of Victory.  And yet when was
the time that such have not cried out: heart-broken, humble
protestants, unheard in the uproar of the triumph!

After the first movement of terror in Amelia's mind--when Rebecca's
green eyes lighted upon her, and rustling in her fresh silks and
brilliant ornaments, the latter tripped up with extended arms to
embrace her--a feeling of anger succeeded, and from being deadly pale
before, her face flushed up red, and she returned Rebecca's look after
a moment with a steadiness which surprised and somewhat abashed her
rival.

"Dearest Amelia, you are very unwell," the visitor said, putting forth
her hand to take Amelia's.  "What is it? I could not rest until I knew
how you were."

Amelia drew back her hand--never since her life began had that gentle
soul refused to believe or to answer any demonstration of good-will or
affection.  But she drew back her hand, and trembled all over.  "Why
are you here, Rebecca?" she said, still looking at her solemnly with
her large eyes.  These glances troubled her visitor.

"She must have seen him give me the letter at the ball," Rebecca
thought.  "Don't be agitated, dear Amelia," she said, looking down. "I
came but to see if I could--if you were well."

"Are you well?" said Amelia.  "I dare say you are. You don't love your
husband.  You would not be here if you did.  Tell me, Rebecca, did I
ever do you anything but kindness?"

"Indeed, Amelia, no," the other said, still hanging down her head.

"When you were quite poor, who was it that befriended you?  Was I not a
sister to you?  You saw us all in happier days before he married me.  I
was all in all then to him; or would he have given up his fortune, his
family, as he nobly did to make me happy?  Why did you come between my
love and me?  Who sent you to separate those whom God joined, and take
my darling's heart from me--my own husband? Do you think you could
love him as I did?  His love was everything to me. You knew it, and
wanted to rob me of it.  For shame, Rebecca; bad and wicked
woman--false friend and false wife."

"Amelia, I protest before God, I have done my husband no wrong,"
Rebecca said, turning from her.

"Have you done me no wrong, Rebecca?  You did not succeed, but you
tried.  Ask your heart if you did not."

She knows nothing, Rebecca thought.

"He came back to me.  I knew he would.  I knew that no falsehood, no
flattery, could keep him from me long. I knew he would come.  I prayed
so that he should."

The poor girl spoke these words with a spirit and volubility which
Rebecca had never before seen in her, and before which the latter was
quite dumb.  "But what have I done to you," she continued in a more
pitiful tone, "that you should try and take him from me?  I had him but
for six weeks.  You might have spared me those, Rebecca. And yet, from
the very first day of our wedding, you came and blighted it.  Now he is
gone, are you come to see how unhappy I am?" she continued.  "You made
me wretched enough for the past fortnight: you might have spared me
to-day."

"I--I never came here," interposed Rebecca, with unlucky truth.

"No.  You didn't come.  You took him away.  Are you come to fetch him
from me?" she continued in a wilder tone.  "He was here, but he is gone
now.  There on that very sofa he sate.  Don't touch it.  We sate and
talked there.  I was on his knee, and my arms were round his neck, and
we said 'Our Father.' Yes, he was here:  and they came and took him
away, but he promised me to come back."

"He will come back, my dear," said Rebecca, touched in spite of herself.

"Look," said Amelia, "this is his sash--isn't it a pretty colour?" and
she took up the fringe and kissed it.  She had tied it round her waist
at some part of the day.  She had forgotten her anger, her jealousy,
the very presence of her rival seemingly.  For she walked silently and
almost with a smile on her face, towards the bed, and began to smooth
down George's pillow.

Rebecca walked, too, silently away.  "How is Amelia?" asked Jos, who
still held his position in the chair.

"There should be somebody with her," said Rebecca. "I think she is very
unwell":  and she went away with a very grave face, refusing Mr.
Sedley's entreaties that she would stay and partake of the early dinner
which he had ordered.

Rebecca was of a good-natured and obliging disposition; and she liked
Amelia rather than otherwise.  Even her hard words, reproachful as they
were, were complimentary--the groans of a person stinging under defeat.
Meeting Mrs. O'Dowd, whom the Dean's sermons had by no means comforted,
and who was walking very disconsolately in the Parc, Rebecca accosted
the latter, rather to the surprise of the Major's wife, who was not
accustomed to such marks of politeness from Mrs. Rawdon Crawley, and
informing her that poor little Mrs. Osborne was in a desperate
condition, and almost mad with grief, sent off the good-natured
Irishwoman straight to see if she could console her young favourite.

"I've cares of my own enough," Mrs. O'Dowd said, gravely, "and I
thought poor Amelia would be little wanting for company this day. But
if she's so bad as you say, and you can't attend to her, who used to be
so fond of her, faith I'll see if I can be of service. And so good
marning to ye, Madam"; with which speech and a toss of her head, the
lady of the repayther took a farewell of Mrs. Crawley, whose company
she by no means courted.

Becky watched her marching off, with a smile on her lip.  She had the
keenest sense of humour, and the Parthian look which the retreating
Mrs. O'Dowd flung over her shoulder almost upset Mrs. Crawley's
gravity. "My service to ye, me fine Madam, and I'm glad to see ye so
cheerful," thought Peggy.  "It's not YOU that will cry your eyes out
with grief, anyway." And with this she passed on, and speedily found
her way to Mrs. Osborne's lodgings.

The poor soul was still at the bedside, where Rebecca had left her, and
stood almost crazy with grief.  The Major's wife, a stronger-minded
woman, endeavoured her best to comfort her young friend. "You must bear
up, Amelia, dear," she said kindly, "for he mustn't find you ill when
he sends for you after the victory.  It's not you are the only woman
that are in the hands of God this day."

"I know that.  I am very wicked, very weak," Amelia said.  She knew her
own weakness well enough.  The presence of the more resolute friend
checked it, however; and she was the better of this control and
company.  They went on till two o'clock; their hearts were with the
column as it marched farther and farther away.  Dreadful doubt and
anguish--prayers and fears and griefs unspeakable--followed the
regiment.  It was the women's tribute to the war.  It taxes both alike,
and takes the blood of the men, and the tears of the women.

At half-past two, an event occurred of daily importance to Mr. Joseph:
the dinner-hour arrived.  Warriors may fight and perish, but he must
dine.  He came into Amelia's room to see if he could coax her to share
that meal.  "Try," said he; "the soup is very good.  Do try, Emmy," and
he kissed her hand.  Except when she was married, he had not done so
much for years before.  "You are very good and kind, Joseph," she said.
"Everybody is, but, if you please, I will stay in my room to-day."

The savour of the soup, however, was agreeable to Mrs. O'Dowd's
nostrils: and she thought she would bear Mr. Jos company.  So the two
sate down to their meal. "God bless the meat," said the Major's wife,
solemnly: she was thinking of her honest Mick, riding at the head of
his regiment:  "'Tis but a bad dinner those poor boys will get to-day,"
she said, with a sigh, and then, like a philosopher, fell to.

Jos's spirits rose with his meal.  He would drink the regiment's
health; or, indeed, take any other excuse to indulge in a glass of
champagne.  "We'll drink to O'Dowd and the brave --th," said he, bowing
gallantly to his guest.  "Hey, Mrs. O'Dowd?  Fill Mrs. O'Dowd's glass,
Isidor."

But all of a sudden, Isidor started, and the Major's wife laid down her
knife and fork.  The windows of the room were open, and looked
southward, and a dull distant sound came over the sun-lighted roofs
from that direction.  "What is it?" said Jos.  "Why don't you pour, you
rascal?"

"Cest le feu!" said Isidor, running to the balcony.

"God defend us; it's cannon!" Mrs. O'Dowd cried, starting up, and
followed too to the window.  A thousand pale and anxious faces might
have been seen looking from other casements.  And presently it seemed
as if the whole population of the city rushed into the streets.



In Which Jos Takes Flight, and the War Is Brought to a Close

We of peaceful London City have never beheld--and please God never
shall witness--such a scene of hurry and alarm, as that which Brussels
presented.  Crowds rushed to the Namur gate, from which direction the
noise proceeded, and many rode along the level chaussee, to be in
advance of any intelligence from the army.  Each man asked his
neighbour for news; and even great English lords and ladies
condescended to speak to persons whom they did not know.  The friends
of the French went abroad, wild with excitement, and prophesying the
triumph of their Emperor.  The merchants closed their shops, and came
out to swell the general chorus of alarm and clamour.  Women rushed to
the churches, and crowded the chapels, and knelt and prayed on the
flags and steps.  The dull sound of the cannon went on rolling,
rolling.  Presently carriages with travellers began to leave the town,
galloping away by the Ghent barrier.  The prophecies of the French
partisans began to pass for facts.  "He has cut the armies in two," it
was said.  "He is marching straight on Brussels.  He will overpower the
English, and be here to-night." "He will overpower the English,"
shrieked Isidor to his master, "and will be here to-night." The man
bounded in and out from the lodgings to the street, always returning
with some fresh particulars of disaster.  Jos's face grew paler and
paler. Alarm began to take entire possession of the stout civilian.
All the champagne he drank brought no courage to him.  Before sunset he
was worked up to such a pitch of nervousness as gratified his friend
Isidor to behold, who now counted surely upon the spoils of the owner
of the laced coat.

The women were away all this time.  After hearing the firing for a
moment, the stout Major's wife bethought her of her friend in the next
chamber, and ran in to watch, and if possible to console, Amelia.  The
idea that she had that helpless and gentle creature to protect, gave
additional strength to the natural courage of the honest Irishwoman.
She passed five hours by her friend's side, sometimes in remonstrance,
sometimes talking cheerfully, oftener in silence and terrified mental
supplication.  "I never let go her hand once," said the stout lady
afterwards, "until after sunset, when the firing was over." Pauline,
the bonne, was on her knees at church hard by, praying for son homme a
elle.

When the noise of the cannonading was over, Mrs. O'Dowd issued out of
Amelia's room into the parlour adjoining, where Jos sate with two
emptied flasks, and courage entirely gone.  Once or twice he had
ventured into his sister's bedroom, looking very much alarmed, and as
if he would say something.  But the Major's wife kept her place, and he
went away without disburthening himself of his speech.  He was ashamed
to tell her that he wanted to fly.

But when she made her appearance in the dining-room, where he sate in
the twilight in the cheerless company of his empty champagne bottles,
he began to open his mind to her.

"Mrs. O'Dowd," he said, "hadn't you better get Amelia ready?"

"Are you going to take her out for a walk?" said the Major's lady;
"sure she's too weak to stir."

"I--I've ordered the carriage," he said, "and--and post-horses; Isidor
is gone for them," Jos continued.

"What do you want with driving to-night?" answered the lady.  "Isn't
she better on her bed?  I've just got her to lie down."

"Get her up," said Jos; "she must get up, I say":  and he stamped his
foot energetically.  "I say the horses are ordered--yes, the horses are
ordered.  It's all over, and--"

"And what?" asked Mrs. O'Dowd.

"I'm off for Ghent," Jos answered.  "Everybody is going; there's a
place for you!  We shall start in half-an-hour."

The Major's wife looked at him with infinite scorn.  "I don't move till
O'Dowd gives me the route," said she. "You may go if you like, Mr.
Sedley; but, faith, Amelia and I stop here."

"She SHALL go," said Jos, with another stamp of his foot.  Mrs. O'Dowd
put herself with arms akimbo before the bedroom door.

"Is it her mother you're going to take her to?" she said; "or do you
want to go to Mamma yourself, Mr. Sedley?  Good marning--a pleasant
journey to ye, sir. Bon voyage, as they say, and take my counsel, and
shave off them mustachios, or they'll bring you into mischief."

"D--n!" yelled out Jos, wild with fear, rage, and mortification; and
Isidor came in at this juncture, swearing in his turn.  "Pas de
chevaux, sacre bleu!" hissed out the furious domestic.  All the horses
were gone.  Jos was not the only man in Brussels seized with panic that
day.

But Jos's fears, great and cruel as they were already, were destined to
increase to an almost frantic pitch before the night was over. It has
been mentioned how Pauline, the bonne, had son homme a elle also in the
ranks of the army that had gone out to meet the Emperor Napoleon.  This
lover was a native of Brussels, and a Belgian hussar.  The troops of
his nation signalised themselves in this war for anything but courage,
and young Van Cutsum, Pauline's admirer, was too good a soldier to
disobey his Colonel's orders to run away. Whilst in garrison at
Brussels young Regulus (he had been born in the revolutionary times)
found his great comfort, and passed almost all his leisure moments, in
Pauline's kitchen; and it was with pockets and holsters crammed full of
good things from her larder, that he had take leave of his weeping
sweetheart, to proceed upon the campaign a few days before.

As far as his regiment was concerned, this campaign was over now. They
had formed a part of the division under the command of his Sovereign
apparent, the Prince of Orange, and as respected length of swords and
mustachios, and the richness of uniform and equipments, Regulus and his
comrades looked to be as gallant a body of men as ever trumpet sounded
for.

When Ney dashed upon the advance of the allied troops, carrying one
position after the other, until the arrival of the great body of the
British army from Brussels changed the aspect of the combat of Quatre
Bras, the squadrons among which Regulus rode showed the greatest
activity in retreating before the French, and were dislodged from one
post and another which they occupied with perfect alacrity on their
part.  Their movements were only checked by the advance of the British
in their rear.  Thus forced to halt, the enemy's cavalry (whose
bloodthirsty obstinacy cannot be too severely reprehended) had at
length an opportunity of coming to close quarters with the brave
Belgians before them; who preferred to encounter the British rather
than the French, and at once turning tail rode through the English
regiments that were behind them, and scattered in all directions.  The
regiment in fact did not exist any more.  It was nowhere.  It had no
head-quarters.  Regulus found himself galloping many miles from the
field of action, entirely alone; and whither should he fly for refuge
so naturally as to that kitchen and those faithful arms in which
Pauline had so often welcomed him?

At some ten o'clock the clinking of a sabre might have been heard up
the stair of the house where the Osbornes occupied a story in the
continental fashion.  A knock might have been heard at the kitchen
door; and poor Pauline, come back from church, fainted almost with
terror as she opened it and saw before her her haggard hussar.  He
looked as pale as the midnight dragoon who came to disturb Leonora.
Pauline would have screamed, but that her cry would have called her
masters, and discovered her friend.  She stifled her scream, then, and
leading her hero into the kitchen, gave him beer, and the choice bits
from the dinner, which Jos had not had the heart to taste.  The hussar
showed he was no ghost by the prodigious quantity of flesh and beer
which he devoured--and during the mouthfuls he told his tale of
disaster.

His regiment had performed prodigies of courage, and had withstood for
a while the onset of the whole French army.  But they were overwhelmed
at last, as was the whole British army by this time. Ney destroyed each
regiment as it came up.  The Belgians in vain interposed to prevent the
butchery of the English.  The Brunswickers were routed and had
fled--their Duke was killed.  It was a general debacle.  He sought to
drown his sorrow for the defeat in floods of beer.

Isidor, who had come into the kitchen, heard the conversation and
rushed out to inform his master.  "It is all over," he shrieked to Jos.
"Milor Duke is a prisoner; the Duke of Brunswick is killed; the British
army is in full flight; there is only one man escaped, and he is in the
kitchen now--come and hear him." So Jos tottered into that apartment
where Regulus still sate on the kitchen table, and clung fast to his
flagon of beer.  In the best French which he could muster, and which
was in sooth of a very ungrammatical sort, Jos besought the hussar to
tell his tale.  The disasters deepened as Regulus spoke.  He was the
only man of his regiment not slain on the field. He had seen the Duke
of Brunswick fall, the black hussars fly, the Ecossais pounded down by
the cannon. "And the --th?" gasped Jos.

"Cut in pieces," said the hussar--upon which Pauline cried out, "O my
mistress, ma bonne petite dame," went off fairly into hysterics, and
filled the house with her screams.

Wild with terror, Mr. Sedley knew not how or where to seek for safety.
He rushed from the kitchen back to the sitting-room, and cast an
appealing look at Amelia's door, which Mrs. O'Dowd had closed and
locked in his face; but he remembered how scornfully the latter had
received him, and after pausing and listening for a brief space at the
door, he left it, and resolved to go into the street, for the first
time that day.  So, seizing a candle, he looked about for his
gold-laced cap, and found it lying in its usual place, on a
console-table, in the anteroom, placed before a mirror at which Jos
used to coquet, always giving his side-locks a twirl, and his cap the
proper cock over his eye, before he went forth to make appearance in
public.  Such is the force of habit, that even in the midst of his
terror he began mechanically to twiddle with his hair, and arrange the
cock of his hat.  Then he looked amazed at the pale face in the glass
before him, and especially at his mustachios, which had attained a rich
growth in the course of near seven weeks, since they had come into the
world.  They WILL mistake me for a military man, thought he,
remembering Isidor's warning as to the massacre with which all the
defeated British army was threatened; and staggering back to his
bedchamber, he began wildly pulling the bell which summoned his valet.

Isidor answered that summons.  Jos had sunk in a chair--he had torn off
his neckcloths, and turned down his collars, and was sitting with both
his hands lifted to his throat.

"Coupez-moi, Isidor," shouted he; "vite!  Coupez-moi!"

Isidor thought for a moment he had gone mad, and that he wished his
valet to cut his throat.

"Les moustaches," gasped Joe; "les moustaches--coupy, rasy, vite!"--his
French was of this sort--voluble, as we have said, but not
remarkable for grammar.

Isidor swept off the mustachios in no time with the razor, and heard
with inexpressible delight his master's orders that he should fetch a
hat and a plain coat.  "Ne porty ploo--habit militair--bonn--bonny a
voo, prenny dehors"--were Jos's words--the coat and cap were at last
his property.

This gift being made, Jos selected a plain black coat and waistcoat
from his stock, and put on a large white neckcloth, and a plain beaver.
If he could have got a shovel hat he would have worn it. As it was, you
would have fancied he was a flourishing, large parson of the Church of
England.

"Venny maintenong," he continued, "sweevy--ally--party--dong la roo."
And so having said, he plunged swiftly down the stairs of the house,
and passed into the street.

Although Regulus had vowed that he was the only man of his regiment or
of the allied army, almost, who had escaped being cut to pieces by Ney,
it appeared that his statement was incorrect, and that a good number
more of the supposed victims had survived the massacre. Many scores of
Regulus's comrades had found their way back to Brussels, and all
agreeing that they had run away--filled the whole town with an idea of
the defeat of the allies.  The arrival of the French was expected
hourly; the panic continued, and preparations for flight went on
everywhere.  No horses!  thought Jos, in terror. He made Isidor inquire
of scores of persons, whether they had any to lend or sell, and his
heart sank within him, at the negative answers returned everywhere.
Should he take the journey on foot?  Even fear could not render that
ponderous body so active.

Almost all the hotels occupied by the English in Brussels face the
Parc, and Jos wandered irresolutely about in this quarter, with crowds
of other people, oppressed as he was by fear and curiosity. Some
families he saw more happy than himself, having discovered a team of
horses, and rattling through the streets in retreat; others again there
were whose case was like his own, and who could not for any bribes or
entreaties procure the necessary means of flight. Amongst these
would-be fugitives, Jos remarked the Lady Bareacres and her daughter,
who sate in their carriage in the porte-cochere of their hotel, all
their imperials packed, and the only drawback to whose flight was the
same want of motive power which kept Jos stationary.

Rebecca Crawley occupied apartments in this hotel; and had before this
period had sundry hostile meetings with the ladies of the Bareacres
family.  My Lady Bareacres cut Mrs. Crawley on the stairs when they met
by chance; and in all places where the latter's name was mentioned,
spoke perseveringly ill of her neighbour.  The Countess was shocked at
the familiarity of General Tufto with the aide-de-camp's wife.  The
Lady Blanche avoided her as if she had been an infectious disease.
Only the Earl himself kept up a sly occasional acquaintance with her,
when out of the jurisdiction of his ladies.

Rebecca had her revenge now upon these insolent enemies.  If became
known in the hotel that Captain Crawley's horses had been left behind,
and when the panic began, Lady Bareacres condescended to send her maid
to the Captain's wife with her Ladyship's compliments, and a desire to
know the price of Mrs. Crawley's horses.  Mrs. Crawley returned a note
with her compliments, and an intimation that it was not her custom to
transact bargains with ladies' maids.

This curt reply brought the Earl in person to Becky's apartment; but he
could get no more success than the first ambassador.  "Send a lady's
maid to ME!" Mrs. Crawley cried in great anger; "why didn't my Lady
Bareacres tell me to go and saddle the horses!  Is it her Ladyship that
wants to escape, or her Ladyship's femme de chambre?" And this was all
the answer that the Earl bore back to his Countess.

What will not necessity do?  The Countess herself actually came to wait
upon Mrs. Crawley on the failure of her second envoy.  She entreated
her to name her own price; she even offered to invite Becky to
Bareacres House, if the latter would but give her the means of
returning to that residence.  Mrs. Crawley sneered at her.

"I don't want to be waited on by bailiffs in livery," she said; "you
will never get back though most probably--at least not you and your
diamonds together.  The French will have those. They will be here in two
hours, and I shall be half way to Ghent by that time.  I would not sell
you my horses, no, not for the two largest diamonds that your Ladyship
wore at the ball."  Lady Bareacres trembled with rage and terror.  The
diamonds were sewed into her habit, and secreted in my Lord's padding
and boots. "Woman, the diamonds are at the banker's, and I WILL have
the horses," she said.  Rebecca laughed in her face. The infuriate
Countess went below, and sate in her carriage; her maid, her courier,
and her husband were sent once more through the town, each to look for
cattle; and woe betide those who came last!  Her Ladyship was resolved
on departing the very instant the horses arrived from any quarter--with
her husband or without him.

Rebecca had the pleasure of seeing her Ladyship in the horseless
carriage, and keeping her eyes fixed upon her, and bewailing, in the
loudest tone of voice, the Countess's perplexities.  "Not to be able to
get horses!" she said, "and to have all those diamonds sewed into the
carriage cushions!  What a prize it will be for the French when they
come!--the carriage and the diamonds, I mean; not the lady!" She gave
this information to the landlord, to the servants, to the guests, and
the innumerable stragglers about the courtyard.  Lady Bareacres could
have shot her from the carriage window.

It was while enjoying the humiliation of her enemy that Rebecca caught
sight of Jos, who made towards her directly he perceived her.

That altered, frightened, fat face, told his secret well enough.  He
too wanted to fly, and was on the look-out for the means of escape. "HE
shall buy my horses," thought Rebecca, "and I'll ride the mare."

Jos walked up to his friend, and put the question for the hundredth
time during the past hour, "Did she know where horses were to be had?"

"What, YOU fly?" said Rebecca, with a laugh.  "I thought you were the
champion of all the ladies, Mr. Sedley."

"I--I'm not a military man," gasped he.

"And Amelia?--Who is to protect that poor little sister of yours?"
asked Rebecca.  "You surely would not desert her?"

"What good can I do her, suppose--suppose the enemy arrive?" Jos
answered.  "They'll spare the women; but my man tells me that they have
taken an oath to give no quarter to the men--the dastardly cowards."

"Horrid!" cried Rebecca, enjoying his perplexity.

"Besides, I don't want to desert her," cried the brother. "She SHAN'T
be deserted.  There is a seat for her in my carriage, and one for you,
dear Mrs. Crawley, if you will come; and if we can get horses--" sighed
he--

"I have two to sell," the lady said.  Jos could have flung himself into
her arms at the news.  "Get the carriage, Isidor," he cried; "we've
found them--we have found them."

"My horses never were in harness," added the lady. "Bullfinch would kick
the carriage to pieces, if you put him in the traces."

"But he is quiet to ride?" asked the civilian.

"As quiet as a lamb, and as fast as a hare," answered Rebecca.

"Do you think he is up to my weight?" Jos said.  He was already on his
back, in imagination, without ever so much as a thought for poor
Amelia.  What person who loved a horse-speculation could resist such a
temptation?

In reply, Rebecca asked him to come into her room, whither he followed
her quite breathless to conclude the bargain.  Jos seldom spent a
half-hour in his life which cost him so much money. Rebecca, measuring
the value of the goods which she had for sale by Jos's eagerness to
purchase, as well as by the scarcity of the article, put upon her
horses a price so prodigious as to make even the civilian draw back.
"She would sell both or neither," she said, resolutely.  Rawdon had
ordered her not to part with them for a price less than that which she
specified. Lord Bareacres below would give her the same money--and with
all her love and regard for the Sedley family, her dear Mr. Joseph must
conceive that poor people must live--nobody, in a word, could be more
affectionate, but more firm about the matter of business.

Jos ended by agreeing, as might be supposed of him. The sum he had to
give her was so large that he was obliged to ask for time; so large as
to be a little fortune to Rebecca, who rapidly calculated that with
this sum, and the sale of the residue of Rawdon's effects, and her
pension as a widow should he fall, she would now be absolutely
independent of the world, and might look her weeds steadily in the face.

Once or twice in the day she certainly had herself thought about
flying.  But her reason gave her better counsel.  "Suppose the French
do come," thought Becky, "what can they do to a poor officer's widow?
Bah!  the times of sacks and sieges are over.  We shall be let to go
home quietly, or I may live pleasantly abroad with a snug little
income."

Meanwhile Jos and Isidor went off to the stables to inspect the newly
purchased cattle.  Jos bade his man saddle the horses at once. He would
ride away that very night, that very hour.  And he left the valet busy
in getting the horses ready, and went homewards himself to prepare for
his departure.  It must be secret.  He would go to his chamber by the
back entrance.  He did not care to face Mrs. O'Dowd and Amelia, and own
to them that he was about to run.

By the time Jos's bargain with Rebecca was completed, and his horses
had been visited and examined, it was almost morning once more.  But
though midnight was long passed, there was no rest for the city; the
people were up, the lights in the houses flamed, crowds were still
about the doors, and the streets were busy.  Rumours of various natures
went still from mouth to mouth:  one report averred that the Prussians
had been utterly defeated; another that it was the English who had been
attacked and conquered:  a third that the latter had held their ground.
This last rumour gradually got strength.  No Frenchmen had made their
appearance.  Stragglers had come in from the army bringing reports more
and more favourable:  at last an aide-de-camp actually reached Brussels
with despatches for the Commandant of the place, who placarded
presently through the town an official announcement of the success of
the allies at Quatre Bras, and the entire repulse of the French under
Ney after a six hours' battle.  The aide-de-camp must have arrived
sometime while Jos and Rebecca were making their bargain together, or
the latter was inspecting his purchase.  When he reached his own hotel,
he found a score of its numerous inhabitants on the threshold
discoursing of the news; there was no doubt as to its truth.  And he
went up to communicate it to the ladies under his charge. He did not
think it was necessary to tell them how he had intended to take leave
of them, how he had bought horses, and what a price he had paid for
them.

But success or defeat was a minor matter to them, who had only thought
for the safety of those they loved. Amelia, at the news of the victory,
became still more agitated even than before.  She was for going that
moment to the army.  She besought her brother with tears to conduct her
thither.  Her doubts and terrors reached their paroxysm; and the poor
girl, who for many hours had been plunged into stupor, raved and ran
hither and thither in hysteric insanity--a piteous sight.  No man
writhing in pain on the hard-fought field fifteen miles off, where lay,
after their struggles, so many of the brave--no man suffered more
keenly than this poor harmless victim of the war.  Jos could not bear
the sight of her pain.  He left his sister in the charge of her stouter
female companion, and descended once more to the threshold of the
hotel, where everybody still lingered, and talked, and waited for more
news.

It grew to be broad daylight as they stood here, and fresh news began
to arrive from the war, brought by men who had been actors in the
scene.  Wagons and long country carts laden with wounded came rolling
into the town; ghastly groans came from within them, and haggard faces
looked up sadly from out of the straw.  Jos Sedley was looking at one
of these carriages with a painful curiosity--the moans of the people
within were frightful--the wearied horses could hardly pull the cart.
"Stop!  stop!" a feeble voice cried from the straw, and the carriage
stopped opposite Mr. Sedley's hotel.

"It is George, I know it is!" cried Amelia, rushing in a moment to the
balcony, with a pallid face and loose flowing hair.  It was not George,
however, but it was the next best thing:  it was news of him.

It was poor Tom Stubble, who had marched out of Brussels so gallantly
twenty-four hours before, bearing the colours of the regiment, which he
had defended very gallantly upon the field.  A French lancer had
speared the young ensign in the leg, who fell, still bravely holding to
his flag.  At the conclusion of the engagement, a place had been found
for the poor boy in a cart, and he had been brought back to Brussels.

"Mr. Sedley, Mr. Sedley!" cried the boy, faintly, and Jos came up
almost frightened at the appeal.  He had not at first distinguished who
it was that called him.

Little Tom Stubble held out his hot and feeble hand. "I'm to be taken
in here," he said.  "Osborne--and--and Dobbin said I was; and you are
to give the man two napoleons: my mother will pay you." This young
fellow's thoughts, during the long feverish hours passed in the cart,
had been wandering to his father's parsonage which he had quitted only
a few months before, and he had sometimes forgotten his pain in that
delirium.

The hotel was large, and the people kind, and all the inmates of the
cart were taken in and placed on various couches.  The young ensign was
conveyed upstairs to Osborne's quarters.  Amelia and the Major's wife
had rushed down to him, when the latter had recognised him from the
balcony.  You may fancy the feelings of these women when they were told
that the day was over, and both their husbands were safe; in what mute
rapture Amelia fell on her good friend's neck, and embraced her; in
what a grateful passion of prayer she fell on her knees, and thanked
the Power which had saved her husband.

Our young lady, in her fevered and nervous condition, could have had no
more salutary medicine prescribed for her by any physician than that
which chance put in her way.  She and Mrs. O'Dowd watched incessantly
by the wounded lad, whose pains were very severe, and in the duty thus
forced upon her, Amelia had not time to brood over her personal
anxieties, or to give herself up to her own fears and forebodings after
her wont.  The young patient told in his simple fashion the events of
the day, and the actions of our friends of the gallant --th.  They had
suffered severely.  They had lost very many officers and men.  The
Major's horse had been shot under him as the regiment charged, and they
all thought that O'Dowd was gone, and that Dobbin had got his majority,
until on their return from the charge to their old ground, the Major
was discovered seated on Pyramus's carcase, refreshing him-self from a
case-bottle.  It was Captain Osborne that cut down the French lancer
who had speared the ensign. Amelia turned so pale at the notion, that
Mrs. O'Dowd stopped the young ensign in this story.  And it was Captain
Dobbin who at the end of the day, though wounded himself, took up the
lad in his arms and carried him to the surgeon, and thence to the cart
which was to bring him back to Brussels.  And it was he who promised
the driver two louis if he would make his way to Mr. Sedley's hotel in
the city; and tell Mrs. Captain Osborne that the action was over, and
that her husband was unhurt and well.

"Indeed, but he has a good heart that William Dobbin," Mrs. O'Dowd
said, "though he is always laughing at me."

Young Stubble vowed there was not such another officer in the army, and
never ceased his praises of the senior captain, his modesty, his
kindness, and his admirable coolness in the field.  To these parts of
the conversation, Amelia lent a very distracted attention:  it was only
when George was spoken of that she listened, and when he was not
mentioned, she thought about him.

In tending her patient, and in thinking of the wonderful escapes of the
day before, her second day passed away not too slowly with Amelia.
There was only one man in the army for her:  and as long as he was
well, it must be owned that its movements interested her little. All
the reports which Jos brought from the streets fell very vaguely on her
ears; though they were sufficient to give that timorous gentleman, and
many other people then in Brussels, every disquiet.  The French had
been repulsed certainly, but it was after a severe and doubtful
struggle, and with only a division of the French army. The Emperor,
with the main body, was away at Ligny, where he had utterly annihilated
the Prussians, and was now free to bring his whole force to bear upon
the allies. The Duke of Wellington was retreating upon the capital, and
a great battle must be fought under its walls probably, of which the
chances were more than doubtful. The Duke of Wellington had but twenty
thousand British troops on whom he could rely, for the Germans were raw
militia, the Belgians disaffected, and with this handful his Grace had
to resist a hundred and fifty thousand men that had broken into Belgium
under Napoleon.  Under Napoleon!  What warrior was there, however
famous and skilful, that could fight at odds with him?

Jos thought of all these things, and trembled.  So did all the rest of
Brussels--where people felt that the fight of the day before was but
the prelude to the greater combat which was imminent.  One of the
armies opposed to the Emperor was scattered to the winds already.  The
few English that could be brought to resist him would perish at their
posts, and the conqueror would pass over their bodies into the city.
Woe be to those whom he found there! Addresses were prepared, public
functionaries assembled and debated secretly, apartments were got
ready, and tricoloured banners and triumphal emblems manufactured, to
welcome the arrival of His Majesty the Emperor and King.

The emigration still continued, and wherever families could find means
of departure, they fled.  When Jos, on the afternoon of the 17th of
June, went to Rebecca's hotel, he found that the great Bareacres'
carriage had at length rolled away from the porte-cochere.  The Earl
had procured a pair of horses somehow, in spite of Mrs. Crawley, and
was rolling on the road to Ghent.  Louis the Desired was getting ready
his portmanteau in that city, too.  It seemed as if Misfortune was
never tired of worrying into motion that unwieldy exile.

Jos felt that the delay of yesterday had been only a respite, and that
his dearly bought horses must of a surety be put into requisition.  His
agonies were very severe all this day.  As long as there was an English
army between Brussels and Napoleon, there was no need of immediate
flight; but he had his horses brought from their distant stables, to
the stables in the court-yard of the hotel where he lived; so that they
might be under his own eyes, and beyond the risk of violent abduction.
Isidor watched the stable-door constantly, and had the horses saddled,
to be ready for the start. He longed intensely for that event.

After the reception of the previous day, Rebecca did not care to come
near her dear Amelia.  She clipped the bouquet which George had brought
her, and gave fresh water to the flowers, and read over the letter
which he had sent her.  "Poor wretch," she said, twirling round the
little bit of paper in her fingers, "how I could crush her with
this!--and it is for a thing like this that she must break her heart,
forsooth--for a man who is stupid--a coxcomb--and who does not care for
her.  My poor good Rawdon is worth ten of this creature." And then she
fell to thinking what she should do if--if anything happened to poor
good Rawdon, and what a great piece of luck it was that he had left his
horses behind.

In the course of this day too, Mrs. Crawley, who saw not without anger
the Bareacres party drive off, bethought her of the precaution which
the Countess had taken, and did a little needlework for her own
advantage; she stitched away the major part of her trinkets, bills, and
bank-notes about her person, and so prepared, was ready for any
event--to fly if she thought fit, or to stay and welcome the conqueror,
were he Englishman or Frenchman.  And I am not sure that she did not
dream that night of becoming a duchess and Madame la Marechale, while
Rawdon wrapped in his cloak, and making his bivouac under the rain at
Mount Saint John, was thinking, with all the force of his heart, about
the little wife whom he had left behind him.

The next day was a Sunday.  And Mrs. Major O'Dowd had the satisfaction
of seeing both her patients refreshed in health and spirits by some
rest which they had taken during the night.  She herself had slept on a
great chair in Amelia's room, ready to wait upon her poor friend or the
ensign, should either need her nursing. When morning came, this robust
woman went back to the house where she and her Major had their billet;
and here performed an elaborate and splendid toilette, befitting the
day.  And it is very possible that whilst alone in that chamber, which
her husband had inhabited, and where his cap still lay on the pillow,
and his cane stood in the corner, one prayer at least was sent up to
Heaven for the welfare of the brave soldier, Michael O'Dowd.

When she returned she brought her prayer-book with her, and her uncle
the Dean's famous book of sermons, out of which she never failed to
read every Sabbath; not understanding all, haply, not pronouncing many
of the words aright, which were long and abstruse--for the Dean was a
learned man, and loved long Latin words--but with great gravity, vast
emphasis, and with tolerable correctness in the main.  How often has my
Mick listened to these sermons, she thought, and me reading in the
cabin of a calm!  She proposed to resume this exercise on the present
day, with Amelia and the wounded ensign for a congregation.  The same
service was read on that day in twenty thousand churches at the same
hour; and millions of British men and women, on their knees, implored
protection of the Father of all.

They did not hear the noise which disturbed our little congregation at
Brussels.  Much louder than that which had interrupted them two days
previously, as Mrs. O'Dowd was reading the service in her best voice,
the cannon of Waterloo began to roar.

When Jos heard that dreadful sound, he made up his mind that he would
bear this perpetual recurrence of terrors no longer, and would fly at
once.  He rushed into the sick man's room, where our three friends had
paused in their prayers, and further interrupted them by a passionate
appeal to Amelia.

"I can't stand it any more, Emmy," he said; "I won't stand it; and you
must come with me.  I have bought a horse for you--never mind at what
price--and you must dress and come with me, and ride behind Isidor."

"God forgive me, Mr. Sedley, but you are no better than a coward," Mrs.
O'Dowd said, laying down the book.

"I say come, Amelia," the civilian went on; "never mind what she says;
why are we to stop here and be butchered by the Frenchmen?"

"You forget the --th, my boy," said the little Stubble, the wounded
hero, from his bed--"and and you won't leave me, will you, Mrs. O'Dowd?"

"No, my dear fellow," said she, going up and kissing the boy.  "No harm
shall come to you while I stand by. I don't budge till I get the word
from Mick.  A pretty figure I'd be, wouldn't I, stuck behind that chap
on a pillion?"

This image caused the young patient to burst out laughing in his bed,
and even made Amelia smile.  "I don't ask her," Jos shouted out--"I
don't ask that--that Irishwoman, but you Amelia; once for all, will you
come?"

"Without my husband, Joseph?" Amelia said, with a look of wonder, and
gave her hand to the Major's wife. Jos's patience was exhausted.

"Good-bye, then," he said, shaking his fist in a rage, and slamming the
door by which he retreated.  And this time he really gave his order for
march:  and mounted in the court-yard.  Mrs. O'Dowd heard the
clattering hoofs of the horses as they issued from the gate; and
looking on, made many scornful remarks on poor Joseph as he rode down
the street with Isidor after him in the laced cap.  The horses, which
had not been exercised for some days, were lively, and sprang about the
street.  Jos, a clumsy and timid horseman, did not look to advantage in
the saddle.  "Look at him, Amelia dear, driving into the parlour
window.  Such a bull in a china-shop I never saw." And presently the
pair of riders disappeared at a canter down the street leading in the
direction of the Ghent road, Mrs. O'Dowd pursuing them with a fire of
sarcasm so long as they were in sight.

All that day from morning until past sunset, the cannon never ceased to
roar.  It was dark when the cannonading stopped all of a sudden.

All of us have read of what occurred during that interval.  The tale is
in every Englishman's mouth; and you and I, who were children when the
great battle was won and lost, are never tired of hearing and
recounting the history of that famous action.  Its remembrance rankles
still in the bosoms of millions of the countrymen of those brave men
who lost the day.  They pant for an opportunity of revenging that
humiliation; and if a contest, ending in a victory on their part,
should ensue, elating them in their turn, and leaving its cursed legacy
of hatred and rage behind to us, there is no end to the so-called glory
and shame, and to the alternations of successful and unsuccessful
murder, in which two high-spirited nations might engage.  Centuries
hence, we Frenchmen and Englishmen might be boasting and killing each
other still, carrying out bravely the Devil's code of honour.

All our friends took their share and fought like men in the great
field.  All day long, whilst the women were praying ten miles away, the
lines of the dauntless English infantry were receiving and repelling
the furious charges of the French horsemen.  Guns which were heard at
Brussels were ploughing up their ranks, and comrades falling, and the
resolute survivors closing in.  Towards evening, the attack of the
French, repeated and resisted so bravely, slackened in its fury.  They
had other foes besides the British to engage, or were preparing for a
final onset.  It came at last:  the columns of the Imperial Guard
marched up the hill of Saint Jean, at length and at once to sweep the
English from the height which they had maintained all day, and spite of
all:  unscared by the thunder of the artillery, which hurled death from
the English line--the dark rolling column pressed on and up the hill.
It seemed almost to crest the eminence, when it began to wave and
falter.  Then it stopped, still facing the shot.  Then at last the
English troops rushed from the post from which no enemy had been able
to dislodge them, and the Guard turned and fled.

No more firing was heard at Brussels--the pursuit rolled miles away.
Darkness came down on the field and city:  and Amelia was praying for
George, who was lying on his face, dead, with a bullet through his
heart.



In Which Miss Crawley's Relations Are Very Anxious About Her

The kind reader must please to remember--while the army is marching
from Flanders, and, after its heroic actions there, is advancing to
take the fortifications on the frontiers of France, previous to an
occupation of that country--that there are a number of persons living
peaceably in England who have to do with the history at present in
hand, and must come in for their share of the chronicle. During the
time of these battles and dangers, old Miss Crawley was living at
Brighton, very moderately moved by the great events that were going on.
The great events rendered the newspapers rather interesting, to be
sure, and Briggs read out the Gazette, in which Rawdon Crawley's
gallantry was mentioned with honour, and his promotion was presently
recorded.

"What a pity that young man has taken such an irretrievable step in the
world!" his aunt said; "with his rank and distinction he might have
married a brewer's daughter with a quarter of a million--like Miss
Grains; or have looked to ally himself with the best families in
England. He would have had my money some day or other; or his children
would--for I'm not in a hurry to go, Miss Briggs, although you may be
in a hurry to be rid of me; and instead of that, he is a doomed pauper,
with a dancing-girl for a wife."

"Will my dear Miss Crawley not cast an eye of compassion upon the
heroic soldier, whose name is inscribed in the annals of his country's
glory?" said Miss Briggs, who was greatly excited by the Waterloo
proceedings, and loved speaking romantically when there was an
occasion.  "Has not the Captain--or the Colonel as I may now style
him--done deeds which make the name of Crawley illustrious?"

"Briggs, you are a fool," said Miss Crawley: "Colonel Crawley has
dragged the name of Crawley through the mud, Miss Briggs.  Marry a
drawing-master's daughter, indeed!--marry a dame de compagnie--for she
was no better, Briggs; no, she was just what you are--only younger, and
a great deal prettier and cleverer.  Were you an accomplice of that
abandoned wretch, I wonder, of whose vile arts he became a victim, and
of whom you used to be such an admirer?  Yes, I daresay you were an
accomplice. But you will find yourself disappointed in my will, I can
tell you:  and you will have the goodness to write to Mr. Waxy, and say
that I desire to see him immediately." Miss Crawley was now in the
habit of writing to Mr. Waxy her solicitor almost every day in the
week, for her arrangements respecting her property were all revoked,
and her perplexity was great as to the future disposition of her money.

The spinster had, however, rallied considerably; as was proved by the
increased vigour and frequency of her sarcasms upon Miss Briggs, all
which attacks the poor companion bore with meekness, with cowardice,
with a resignation that was half generous and half hypocritical--with
the slavish submission, in a word, that women of her disposition and
station are compelled to show.  Who has not seen how women bully women?
What tortures have men to endure, comparable to those daily repeated
shafts of scorn and cruelty with which poor women are riddled by the
tyrants of their sex?  Poor victims!  But we are starting from our
proposition, which is, that Miss Crawley was always particularly
annoying and savage when she was rallying from illness--as they say
wounds tingle most when they are about to heal.

While thus approaching, as all hoped, to convalescence, Miss Briggs was
the only victim admitted into the presence of the invalid; yet Miss
Crawley's relatives afar off did not forget their beloved kinswoman,
and by a number of tokens, presents, and kind affectionate messages,
strove to keep themselves alive in her recollection.

In the first place, let us mention her nephew, Rawdon Crawley.  A few
weeks after the famous fight of Waterloo, and after the Gazette had
made known to her the promotion and gallantry of that distinguished
officer, the Dieppe packet brought over to Miss Crawley at Brighton, a
box containing presents, and a dutiful letter, from the Colonel her
nephew.  In the box were a pair of French epaulets, a Cross of the
Legion of Honour, and the hilt of a sword--relics from the field of
battle:  and the letter described with a good deal of humour how the
latter belonged to a commanding officer of the Guard, who having sworn
that "the Guard died, but never surrendered," was taken prisoner the
next minute by a private soldier, who broke the Frenchman's sword with
the butt of his musket, when Rawdon made himself master of the
shattered weapon.  As for the cross and epaulets, they came from a
Colonel of French cavalry, who had fallen under the aide-de-camp's arm
in the battle: and Rawdon Crawley did not know what better to do with
the spoils than to send them to his kindest and most affectionate old
friend. Should he continue to write to her from Paris, whither the army
was marching?  He might be able to give her interesting news from that
capital, and of some of Miss Crawley's old friends of the emigration,
to whom she had shown so much kindness during their distress.

The spinster caused Briggs to write back to the Colonel a gracious and
complimentary letter, encouraging him to continue his correspondence.
His first letter was so excessively lively and amusing that she should
look with pleasure for its successors.--"Of course, I know," she
explained to Miss Briggs, "that Rawdon could not write such a good
letter any more than you could, my poor Briggs, and that it is that
clever little wretch of a Rebecca, who dictates every word to him; but
that is no reason why my nephew should not amuse me; and so I wish to
let him understand that I am in high good humour."

I wonder whether she knew that it was not only Becky who wrote the
letters, but that Mrs. Rawdon actually took and sent home the trophies
which she bought for a few francs, from one of the innumerable pedlars
who immediately began to deal in relics of the war.  The novelist, who
knows everything, knows this also.  Be this, however, as it may, Miss
Crawley's gracious reply greatly encouraged our young friends, Rawdon
and his lady, who hoped for the best from their aunt's evidently
pacified humour:  and they took care to entertain her with many
delightful letters from Paris, whither, as Rawdon said, they had the
good luck to go in the track of the conquering army.

To the rector's lady, who went off to tend her husband's broken
collar-bone at the Rectory at Queen's Crawley, the spinster's
communications were by no means so gracious.  Mrs. Bute, that brisk,
managing, lively, imperious woman, had committed the most fatal of all
errors with regard to her sister-in-law.  She had not merely oppressed
her and her household--she had bored Miss Crawley; and if poor Miss
Briggs had been a woman of any spirit, she might have been made happy
by the commission which her principal gave her to write a letter to
Mrs. Bute Crawley, saying that Miss Crawley's health was greatly
improved since Mrs. Bute had left her, and begging the latter on no
account to put herself to trouble, or quit her family for Miss
Crawley's sake.  This triumph over a lady who had been very haughty and
cruel in her behaviour to Miss Briggs, would have rejoiced most women;
but the truth is, Briggs was a woman of no spirit at all, and the
moment her enemy was discomfited, she began to feel compassion in her
favour.

"How silly I was," Mrs. Bute thought, and with reason, "ever to hint
that I was coming, as I did, in that foolish letter when we sent Miss
Crawley the guinea-fowls. I ought to have gone without a word to the
poor dear doting old creature, and taken her out of the hands of that
ninny Briggs, and that harpy of a femme de chambre.  Oh! Bute, Bute,
why did you break your collar-bone?"

Why, indeed?  We have seen how Mrs. Bute, having the game in her hands,
had really played her cards too well. She had ruled over Miss Crawley's
household utterly and completely, to be utterly and completely routed
when a favourable opportunity for rebellion came. She and her
household, however, considered that she had been the victim of horrible
selfishness and treason, and that her sacrifices in Miss Crawley's
behalf had met with the most savage ingratitude. Rawdon's promotion,
and the honourable mention made of his name in the Gazette, filled this
good Christian lady also with alarm.  Would his aunt relent towards him
now that he was a Lieutenant-Colonel and a C.B.? and would that odious
Rebecca once more get into favour? The Rector's wife wrote a sermon for
her husband about the vanity of military glory and the prosperity of
the wicked, which the worthy parson read in his best voice and without
understanding one syllable of it.  He had Pitt Crawley for one of his
auditors--Pitt, who had come with his two half-sisters to church, which
the old Baronet could now by no means be brought to frequent.

Since the departure of Becky Sharp, that old wretch had given himself
up entirely to his bad courses, to the great scandal of the county and
the mute horror of his son.  The ribbons in Miss Horrocks's cap became
more splendid than ever.  The polite families fled the hall and its
owner in terror.  Sir Pitt went about tippling at his tenants' houses;
and drank rum-and-water with the farmers at Mudbury and the
neighbouring places on market-days.  He drove the family coach-and-four
to Southampton with Miss Horrocks inside:  and the county people
expected, every week, as his son did in speechless agony, that his
marriage with her would be announced in the provincial paper.  It was
indeed a rude burthen for Mr. Crawley to bear.  His eloquence was
palsied at the missionary meetings, and other religious assemblies in
the neighbourhood, where he had been in the habit of presiding, and of
speaking for hours; for he felt, when he rose, that the audience said,
"That is the son of the old reprobate Sir Pitt, who is very likely
drinking at the public house at this very moment." And once when he was
speaking of the benighted condition of the king of Timbuctoo, and the
number of his wives who were likewise in darkness, some gipsy miscreant
from the crowd asked, "How many is there at Queen's Crawley, Young
Squaretoes?" to the surprise of the platform, and the ruin of Mr.
Pitt's speech. And the two daughters of the house of Queen's Crawley
would have been allowed to run utterly wild (for Sir Pitt swore that no
governess should ever enter into his doors again), had not Mr. Crawley,
by threatening the old gentleman, forced the latter to send them to
school.

Meanwhile, as we have said, whatever individual differences there might
be between them all, Miss Crawley's dear nephews and nieces were
unanimous in loving her and sending her tokens of affection. Thus Mrs.
Bute sent guinea-fowls, and some remarkably fine cauliflowers, and a
pretty purse or pincushion worked by her darling girls, who begged to
keep a LITTLE place in the recollection of their dear aunt, while Mr.
Pitt sent peaches and grapes and venison from the Hall.  The
Southampton coach used to carry these tokens of affection to Miss
Crawley at Brighton:  it used sometimes to convey Mr. Pitt thither too:
for his differences with Sir Pitt caused Mr. Crawley to absent himself
a good deal from home now:  and besides, he had an attraction at
Brighton in the person of the Lady Jane Sheepshanks, whose engagement
to Mr. Crawley has been formerly mentioned in this history. Her
Ladyship and her sisters lived at Brighton with their mamma, the
Countess Southdown, that strong-minded woman so favourably known in
the serious world.

A few words ought to be said regarding her Ladyship and her noble
family, who are bound by ties of present and future relationship to the
house of Crawley. Respecting the chief of the Southdown family, Clement
William, fourth Earl of Southdown, little need be told, except that his
Lordship came into Parliament (as Lord Wolsey) under the auspices of
Mr. Wilberforce, and for a time was a credit to his political sponsor,
and decidedly a serious young man.  But words cannot describe the
feelings of his admirable mother, when she learned, very shortly after
her noble husband's demise, that her son was a member of several
worldly clubs, had lost largely at play at Wattier's and the Cocoa
Tree; that he had raised money on post-obits, and encumbered the
family estate; that he drove four-in-hand, and patronised the ring; and
that he actually had an opera-box, where he entertained the most
dangerous bachelor company.  His name was only mentioned with groans in
the dowager's circle.

The Lady Emily was her brother's senior by many years; and took
considerable rank in the serious world as author of some of the
delightful tracts before mentioned, and of many hymns and spiritual
pieces.  A mature spinster, and having but faint ideas of marriage, her
love for the blacks occupied almost all her feelings.  It is to her, I
believe, we owe that beautiful poem.

  Lead us to some sunny isle,
  Yonder in the western deep;
  Where the skies for ever smile,
  And the blacks for ever weep, &c.

She had correspondences with clerical gentlemen in most of our East and
West India possessions; and was secretly attached to the Reverend Silas
Hornblower, who was tattooed in the South Sea Islands.

As for the Lady Jane, on whom, as it has been said, Mr. Pitt Crawley's
affection had been placed, she was gentle, blushing, silent, and timid.
In spite of his falling away, she wept for her brother, and was quite
ashamed of loving him still.  Even yet she used to send him little
hurried smuggled notes, and pop them into the post in private. The one
dreadful secret which weighed upon her life was, that she and the old
housekeeper had been to pay Southdown a furtive visit at his chambers
in the Albany; and found him--O the naughty dear abandoned
wretch!--smoking a cigar with a bottle of Curacao before him.  She
admired her sister, she adored her mother, she thought Mr. Crawley the
most delightful and accomplished of men, after Southdown, that fallen
angel:  and her mamma and sister, who were ladies of the most superior
sort, managed everything for her, and regarded her with that amiable
pity, of which your really superior woman always has such a share to
give away.  Her mamma ordered her dresses, her books, her bonnets, and
her ideas for her. She was made to take pony-riding, or piano-exercise,
or any other sort of bodily medicament, according as my Lady Southdown
saw meet; and her ladyship would have kept her daughter in pinafores up
to her present age of six-and-twenty, but that they were thrown off
when Lady Jane was presented to Queen Charlotte.

When these ladies first came to their house at Brighton, it was to them
alone that Mr. Crawley paid his personal visits, contenting himself by
leaving a card at his aunt's house, and making a modest inquiry of Mr.
Bowls or his assistant footman, with respect to the health of the
invalid.  When he met Miss Briggs coming home from the library with a
cargo of novels under her arm, Mr. Crawley blushed in a manner quite
unusual to him, as he stepped forward and shook Miss Crawley's
companion by the hand.  He introduced Miss Briggs to the lady with whom
he happened to be walking, the Lady Jane Sheepshanks, saying, "Lady
Jane, permit me to introduce to you my aunt's kindest friend and most
affectionate companion, Miss Briggs, whom you know under another title,
as authoress of the delightful 'Lyrics of the Heart,' of which you are
so fond."  Lady Jane blushed too as she held out a kind little hand to
Miss Briggs, and said something very civil and incoherent about mamma,
and proposing to call on Miss Crawley, and being glad to be made known
to the friends and relatives of Mr. Crawley; and with soft dove-like
eyes saluted Miss Briggs as they separated, while Pitt Crawley treated
her to a profound courtly bow, such as he had used to H.H. the Duchess
of Pumpernickel, when he was attache at that court.

The artful diplomatist and disciple of the Machiavellian Binkie!  It
was he who had given Lady Jane that copy of poor Briggs's early poems,
which he remembered to have seen at Queen's Crawley, with a dedication
from the poetess to his father's late wife; and he brought the volume
with him to Brighton, reading it in the Southampton coach and marking
it with his own pencil, before he presented it to the gentle Lady Jane.

It was he, too, who laid before Lady Southdown the great advantages
which might occur from an intimacy between her family and Miss
Crawley--advantages both worldly and spiritual, he said:  for Miss
Crawley was now quite alone; the monstrous dissipation and alliance of
his brother Rawdon had estranged her affections from that reprobate
young man; the greedy tyranny and avarice of Mrs. Bute Crawley had
caused the old lady to revolt against the exorbitant pretensions of
that part of the family; and though he himself had held off all his
life from cultivating Miss Crawley's friendship, with perhaps an
improper pride, he thought now that every becoming means should be
taken, both to save her soul from perdition, and to secure her fortune
to himself as the head of the house of Crawley.

The strong-minded Lady Southdown quite agreed in both proposals of her
son-in-law, and was for converting Miss Crawley off-hand.  At her own
home, both at Southdown and at Trottermore Castle, this tall and awful
missionary of the truth rode about the country in her barouche with
outriders, launched packets of tracts among the cottagers and tenants,
and would order Gaffer Jones to be converted, as she would order Goody
Hicks to take a James's powder, without appeal, resistance, or benefit
of clergy.  My Lord Southdown, her late husband, an epileptic and
simple-minded nobleman, was in the habit of approving of everything
which his Matilda did and thought. So that whatever changes her own
belief might undergo (and it accommodated itself to a prodigious
variety of opinion, taken from all sorts of doctors among the
Dissenters) she had not the least scruple in ordering all her tenants
and inferiors to follow and believe after her.  Thus whether she
received the Reverend Saunders McNitre, the Scotch divine; or the
Reverend Luke Waters, the mild Wesleyan; or the Reverend Giles Jowls,
the illuminated Cobbler, who dubbed himself Reverend as Napoleon
crowned himself Emperor--the household, children, tenantry of my Lady
Southdown were expected to go down on their knees with her Ladyship,
and say Amen to the prayers of either Doctor.  During these exercises
old Southdown, on account of his invalid condition, was allowed to sit
in his own room, and have negus and the paper read to him.  Lady Jane
was the old Earl's favourite daughter, and tended him and loved him
sincerely:  as for Lady Emily, the authoress of the "Washerwoman of
Finchley Common," her denunciations of future punishment (at this
period, for her opinions modified afterwards) were so awful that they
used to frighten the timid old gentleman her father, and the physicians
declared his fits always occurred after one of her Ladyship's sermons.

"I will certainly call," said Lady Southdown then, in reply to the
exhortation of her daughter's pretendu, Mr. Pitt Crawley--"Who is Miss
Crawley's medical man?"

Mr. Crawley mentioned the name of Mr. Creamer.

"A most dangerous and ignorant practitioner, my dear Pitt.  I have
providentially been the means of removing him from several houses:
though in one or two instances I did not arrive in time.  I could not
save poor dear General Glanders, who was dying under the hands of that
ignorant man--dying.  He rallied a little under the Podgers' pills
which I administered to him; but alas!  it was too late.  His death was
delightful, however; and his change was only for the better; Creamer,
my dear Pitt, must leave your aunt."

Pitt expressed his perfect acquiescence.  He, too, had been carried
along by the energy of his noble kinswoman, and future mother-in-law.
He had been made to accept Saunders McNitre, Luke Waters, Giles Jowls,
Podgers' Pills, Rodgers' Pills, Pokey's Elixir, every one of her
Ladyship's remedies spiritual or temporal.  He never left her house
without carrying respectfully away with him piles of her quack theology
and medicine.  O, my dear brethren and fellow-sojourners in Vanity
Fair, which among you does not know and suffer under such benevolent
despots?  It is in vain you say to them, "Dear Madam, I took Podgers'
specific at your orders last year, and believe in it.  Why, why am I to
recant and accept the Rodgers' articles now?"  There is no help for it;
the faithful proselytizer, if she cannot convince by argument, bursts
into tears, and the refusant finds himself, at the end of the contest,
taking down the bolus, and saying, "Well, well, Rodgers' be it."

"And as for her spiritual state," continued the Lady, "that of course
must be looked to immediately:  with Creamer about her, she may go off
any day:  and in what a condition, my dear Pitt, in what a dreadful
condition! I will send the Reverend Mr. Irons to her instantly.  Jane,
write a line to the Reverend Bartholomew Irons, in the third person,
and say that I desire the pleasure of his company this evening at tea
at half-past six.  He is an awakening man; he ought to see Miss Crawley
before she rests this night.  And Emily, my love, get ready a packet of
books for Miss Crawley.  Put up 'A Voice from the Flames,' 'A
Trumpet-warning to Jericho,' and the 'Fleshpots Broken; or, the
Converted Cannibal.'"

"And the 'Washerwoman of Finchley Common,' Mamma," said Lady Emily. "It
is as well to begin soothingly at first."

"Stop, my dear ladies," said Pitt, the diplomatist. "With every
deference to the opinion of my beloved and respected Lady Southdown, I
think it would be quite unadvisable to commence so early upon serious
topics with Miss Crawley.  Remember her delicate condition, and how
little, how very little accustomed she has hitherto been to
considerations connected with her immortal welfare."

"Can we then begin too early, Pitt?" said Lady Emily, rising with six
little books already in her hand.

"If you begin abruptly, you will frighten her altogether. I know my
aunt's worldly nature so well as to be sure that any abrupt attempt at
conversion will be the very worst means that can be employed for the
welfare of that unfortunate lady.  You will only frighten and annoy
her. She will very likely fling the books away, and refuse all
acquaintance with the givers."

"You are as worldly as Miss Crawley, Pitt," said Lady Emily, tossing
out of the room, her books in her hand.

"And I need not tell you, my dear Lady Southdown," Pitt continued, in a
low voice, and without heeding the interruption, "how fatal a little
want of gentleness and caution may be to any hopes which we may
entertain with regard to the worldly possessions of my aunt. Remember
she has seventy thousand pounds; think of her age, and her highly
nervous and delicate condition; I know that she has destroyed the will
which was made in my brother's (Colonel Crawley's) favour: it is by
soothing that wounded spirit that we must lead it into the right path,
and not by frightening it; and so I think you will agree with me
that--that--'

"Of course, of course," Lady Southdown remarked. "Jane, my love, you
need not send that note to Mr. Irons. If her health is such that
discussions fatigue her, we will wait her amendment.  I will call upon
Miss Crawley tomorrow."

"And if I might suggest, my sweet lady," Pitt said in a bland tone, "it
would be as well not to take our precious Emily, who is too
enthusiastic; but rather that you should be accompanied by our sweet
and dear Lady Jane."

"Most certainly, Emily would ruin everything," Lady Southdown said; and
this time agreed to forego her usual practice, which was, as we have
said, before she bore down personally upon any individual whom she
proposed to subjugate, to fire in a quantity of tracts upon the menaced
party (as a charge of the French was always preceded by a furious
cannonade).  Lady Southdown, we say, for the sake of the invalid's
health, or for the sake of her soul's ultimate welfare, or for the sake
of her money, agreed to temporise.

The next day, the great Southdown female family carriage, with the
Earl's coronet and the lozenge (upon which the three lambs trottant
argent upon the field vert of the Southdowns, were quartered with sable
on a bend or, three snuff-mulls gules, the cognizance of the house of
Binkie), drove up in state to Miss Crawley's door, and the tall serious
footman handed in to Mr. Bowls her Ladyship's cards for Miss Crawley,
and one likewise for Miss Briggs.  By way of compromise, Lady Emily
sent in a packet in the evening for the latter lady, containing copies
of the "Washerwoman," and other mild and favourite tracts for Miss B.'s
own perusal; and a few for the servants' hall, viz.:  "Crumbs from the
Pantry," "The Frying Pan and the Fire," and "The Livery of Sin," of a
much stronger kind.



James Crawley's Pipe Is Put Out

The amiable behaviour of Mr. Crawley, and Lady Jane's kind reception of
her, highly flattered Miss Briggs, who was enabled to speak a good word
for the latter, after the cards of the Southdown family had been
presented to Miss Crawley.  A Countess's card left personally too for
her, Briggs, was not a little pleasing to the poor friendless
companion.  "What could Lady Southdown mean by leaving a card upon you,
I wonder, Miss Briggs?" said the republican Miss Crawley; upon which
the companion meekly said "that she hoped there could be no harm in a
lady of rank taking notice of a poor gentlewoman," and she put away
this card in her work-box amongst her most cherished personal
treasures.  Furthermore, Miss Briggs explained how she had met Mr.
Crawley walking with his cousin and long affianced bride the day
before:  and she told how kind and gentle-looking the lady was, and
what a plain, not to say common, dress she had, all the articles of
which, from the bonnet down to the boots, she described and estimated
with female accuracy.

Miss Crawley allowed Briggs to prattle on without interrupting her too
much.  As she got well, she was pining for society.  Mr. Creamer, her
medical man, would not hear of her returning to her old haunts and
dissipation in London.  The old spinster was too glad to find any
companionship at Brighton, and not only were the cards acknowledged the
very next day, but Pitt Crawley was graciously invited to come and see
his aunt.  He came, bringing with him Lady Southdown and her daughter.
The dowager did not say a word about the state of Miss Crawley's soul;
but talked with much discretion about the weather:  about the war and
the downfall of the monster Bonaparte:  and above all, about doctors,
quacks, and the particular merits of Dr. Podgers, whom she then
patronised.

During their interview Pitt Crawley made a great stroke, and one which
showed that, had his diplomatic career not been blighted by early
neglect, he might have risen to a high rank in his profession. When the
Countess Dowager of Southdown fell foul of the Corsican upstart, as the
fashion was in those days, and showed that he was a monster stained
with every conceivable crime, a coward and a tyrant not fit to live,
one whose fall was predicted, &c., Pitt Crawley suddenly took up the
cudgels in favour of the man of Destiny.  He described the First Consul
as he saw him at Paris at the peace of Amiens; when he, Pitt Crawley,
had the gratification of making the acquaintance of the great and good
Mr. Fox, a statesman whom, however much he might differ with him, it
was impossible not to admire fervently--a statesman who had always had
the highest opinion of the Emperor Napoleon.  And he spoke in terms of
the strongest indignation of the faithless conduct of the allies
towards this dethroned monarch, who, after giving himself generously up
to their mercy, was consigned to an ignoble and cruel banishment, while
a bigoted Popish rabble was tyrannising over France in his stead.

This orthodox horror of Romish superstition saved Pitt Crawley in Lady
Southdown's opinion, whilst his admiration for Fox and Napoleon raised
him immeasurably in Miss Crawley's eyes.  Her friendship with that
defunct British statesman was mentioned when we first introduced her in
this history.  A true Whig, Miss Crawley had been in opposition all
through the war, and though, to be sure, the downfall of the Emperor
did not very much agitate the old lady, or his ill-treatment tend to
shorten her life or natural rest, yet Pitt spoke to her heart when he
lauded both her idols; and by that single speech made immense progress
in her favour.

"And what do you think, my dear?" Miss Crawley said to the young lady,
for whom she had taken a liking at first sight, as she always did for
pretty and modest young people; though it must be owned her affections
cooled as rapidly as they rose.

Lady Jane blushed very much, and said "that she did not understand
politics, which she left to wiser heads than hers; but though Mamma
was, no doubt, correct, Mr. Crawley had spoken beautifully." And when
the ladies were retiring at the conclusion of their visit, Miss Crawley
hoped "Lady Southdown would be so kind as to send her Lady Jane
sometimes, if she could be spared to come down and console a poor sick
lonely old woman." This promise was graciously accorded, and they
separated upon great terms of amity.

"Don't let Lady Southdown come again, Pitt," said the old lady. "She is
stupid and pompous, like all your mother's family, whom I never could
endure.  But bring that nice good-natured little Jane as often as ever
you please." Pitt promised that he would do so.  He did not tell the
Countess of Southdown what opinion his aunt had formed of her Ladyship,
who, on the contrary, thought that she had made a most delightful and
majestic impression on Miss Crawley.

And so, nothing loth to comfort a sick lady, and perhaps not sorry in
her heart to be freed now and again from the dreary spouting of the
Reverend Bartholomew Irons, and the serious toadies who gathered round
the footstool of the pompous Countess, her mamma, Lady Jane became a
pretty constant visitor to Miss Crawley, accompanied her in her drives,
and solaced many of her evenings.  She was so naturally good and soft,
that even Firkin was not jealous of her; and the gentle Briggs thought
her friend was less cruel to her when kind Lady Jane was by.  Towards
her Ladyship Miss Crawley's manners were charming.  The old spinster
told her a thousand anecdotes about her youth, talking to her in a very
different strain from that in which she had been accustomed to converse
with the godless little Rebecca; for there was that in Lady Jane's
innocence which rendered light talking impertinence before her, and
Miss Crawley was too much of a gentlewoman to offend such purity.  The
young lady herself had never received kindness except from this old
spinster, and her brother and father:  and she repaid Miss Crawley's
engoument by artless sweetness and friendship.

In the autumn evenings (when Rebecca was flaunting at Paris, the gayest
among the gay conquerors there, and our Amelia, our dear wounded
Amelia, ah! where was she?) Lady Jane would be sitting in Miss
Crawley's drawing-room singing sweetly to her, in the twilight, her
little simple songs and hymns, while the sun was setting and the sea
was roaring on the beach.  The old spinster used to wake up when these
ditties ceased, and ask for more.  As for Briggs, and the quantity of
tears of happiness which she now shed as she pretended to knit, and
looked out at the splendid ocean darkling before the windows, and the
lamps of heaven beginning more brightly to shine--who, I say can
measure the happiness and sensibility of Briggs?

Pitt meanwhile in the dining-room, with a pamphlet on the Corn Laws or
a Missionary Register by his side, took that kind of recreation which
suits romantic and unromantic men after dinner.  He sipped Madeira:
built castles in the air:  thought himself a fine fellow: felt himself
much more in love with Jane than he had been any time these seven
years, during which their liaison had lasted without the slightest
impatience on Pitt's part--and slept a good deal.  When the time for
coffee came, Mr. Bowls used to enter in a noisy manner, and summon
Squire Pitt, who would be found in the dark very busy with his pamphlet.

"I wish, my love, I could get somebody to play piquet with me," Miss
Crawley said one night when this functionary made his appearance with
the candles and the coffee. "Poor Briggs can no more play than an owl,
she is so stupid" (the spinster always took an opportunity of abusing
Briggs before the servants); "and I think I should sleep better if I
had my game."

At this Lady Jane blushed to the tips of her little ears, and down to
the ends of her pretty fingers; and when Mr. Bowls had quitted the
room, and the door was quite shut, she said:

"Miss Crawley, I can play a little.  I used to--to play a little with
poor dear papa."

"Come and kiss me.  Come and kiss me this instant, you dear good little
soul," cried Miss Crawley in an ecstasy: and in this picturesque and
friendly occupation Mr. Pitt found the old lady and the young one, when
he came upstairs with him pamphlet in his hand. How she did blush all
the evening, that poor Lady Jane!

It must not be imagined that Mr. Pitt Crawley's artifices escaped the
attention of his dear relations at the Rectory at Queen's Crawley.
Hampshire and Sussex lie very close together, and Mrs. Bute had friends
in the latter county who took care to inform her of all, and a great
deal more than all, that passed at Miss Crawley's house at Brighton.
Pitt was there more and more.  He did not come for months together to
the Hall, where his abominable old father abandoned himself completely
to rum-and-water, and the odious society of the Horrocks family. Pitt's
success rendered the Rector's family furious, and Mrs. Bute regretted
more (though she confessed less) than ever her monstrous fault in so
insulting Miss Briggs, and in being so haughty and parsimonious to
Bowls and Firkin, that she had not a single person left in Miss
Crawley's household to give her information of what took place there.
"It was all Bute's collar-bone," she persisted in saying; "if that had
not broke, I never would have left her.  I am a martyr to duty and to
your odious unclerical habit of hunting, Bute."

"Hunting; nonsense!  It was you that frightened her, Barbara," the
divine interposed.  "You're a clever woman, but you've got a devil of a
temper; and you're a screw with your money, Barbara."

"You'd have been screwed in gaol, Bute, if I had not kept your money."

"I know I would, my dear," said the Rector, good-naturedly. "You ARE a
clever woman, but you manage too well, you know":  and the pious man
consoled himself with a big glass of port.

"What the deuce can she find in that spooney of a Pitt Crawley?" he
continued.  "The fellow has not pluck enough to say Bo to a goose. I
remember when Rawdon, who is a man, and be hanged to him, used to flog
him round the stables as if he was a whipping-top:  and Pitt would go
howling home to his ma--ha, ha!  Why, either of my boys would whop him
with one hand.  Jim says he's remembered at Oxford as Miss Crawley
still--the spooney.

"I say, Barbara," his reverence continued, after a pause.

"What?" said Barbara, who was biting her nails, and drumming the table.

"I say, why not send Jim over to Brighton to see if he can do anything
with the old lady.  He's very near getting his degree, you know.  He's
only been plucked twice--so was I--but he's had the advantages of
Oxford and a university education.  He knows some of the best chaps
there. He pulls stroke in the Boniface boat.  He's a handsome feller.
D---- it, ma'am, let's put him on the old woman, hey, and tell him to
thrash Pitt if he says anything. Ha, ha, ha!

"Jim might go down and see her, certainly," the housewife said; adding
with a sigh, "If we could but get one of the girls into the house; but
she could never endure them, because they are not pretty!"  Those
unfortunate and well-educated women made themselves heard from the
neighbouring drawing-room, where they were thrumming away, with hard
fingers, an elaborate music-piece on the piano-forte, as their mother
spoke; and indeed, they were at music, or at backboard, or at
geography, or at history, the whole day long.  But what avail all these
accomplishments, in Vanity Fair, to girls who are short, poor, plain,
and have a bad complexion?  Mrs. Bute could think of nobody but the
Curate to take one of them off her hands; and Jim coming in from the
stable at this minute, through the parlour window, with a short pipe
stuck in his oilskin cap, he and his father fell to talking about odds
on the St. Leger, and the colloquy between the Rector and his wife
ended.

Mrs. Bute did not augur much good to the cause from the sending of her
son James as an ambassador, and saw him depart in rather a despairing
mood.  Nor did the young fellow himself, when told what his mission was
to be, expect much pleasure or benefit from it; but he was consoled by
the thought that possibly the old lady would give him some handsome
remembrance of her, which would pay a few of his most pressing bills at
the commencement of the ensuing Oxford term, and so took his place by
the coach from Southampton, and was safely landed at Brighton on the
same evening with his portmanteau, his favourite bull-dog Towzer, and
an immense basket of farm and garden produce, from the dear Rectory
folks to the dear Miss Crawley. Considering it was too late to disturb
the invalid lady on the first night of his arrival, he put up at an
inn, and did not wait upon Miss Crawley until a late hour in the noon
of next day.

James Crawley, when his aunt had last beheld him, was a gawky lad, at
that uncomfortable age when the voice varies between an unearthly
treble and a preternatural bass; when the face not uncommonly blooms
out with appearances for which Rowland's Kalydor is said to act as a
cure; when boys are seen to shave furtively with their sister's
scissors, and the sight of other young women produces intolerable
sensations of terror in them; when the great hands and ankles protrude
a long way from garments which have grown too tight for them; when
their presence after dinner is at once frightful to the ladies, who are
whispering in the twilight in the drawing-room, and inexpressibly
odious to the gentlemen over the mahogany, who are restrained from
freedom of intercourse and delightful interchange of wit by the
presence of that gawky innocence; when, at the conclusion of the second
glass, papa says, "Jack, my boy, go out and see if the evening holds
up," and the youth, willing to be free, yet hurt at not being yet a
man, quits the incomplete banquet.  James, then a hobbadehoy, was now
become a young man, having had the benefits of a university education,
and acquired the inestimable polish which is gained by living in a fast
set at a small college, and contracting debts, and being rusticated,
and being plucked.

He was a handsome lad, however, when he came to present himself to his
aunt at Brighton, and good looks were always a title to the fickle old
lady's favour.  Nor did his blushes and awkwardness take away from it:
she was pleased with these healthy tokens of the young gentleman's
ingenuousness.

He said "he had come down for a couple of days to see a man of his
college, and--and to pay my respects to you, Ma'am, and my father's and
mother's, who hope you are well."

Pitt was in the room with Miss Crawley when the lad was announced, and
looked very blank when his name was mentioned.  The old lady had plenty
of humour, and enjoyed her correct nephew's perplexity.  She asked
after all the people at the Rectory with great interest; and said she
was thinking of paying them a visit.  She praised the lad to his face,
and said he was well-grown and very much improved, and that it was a
pity his sisters had not some of his good looks; and finding, on
inquiry, that he had taken up his quarters at an hotel, would not hear
of his stopping there, but bade Mr. Bowls send for Mr. James Crawley's
things instantly; "and hark ye, Bowls," she added, with great
graciousness, "you will have the goodness to pay Mr. James's bill."

She flung Pitt a look of arch triumph, which caused that diplomatist
almost to choke with envy.  Much as he had ingratiated himself with his
aunt, she had never yet invited him to stay under her roof, and here
was a young whipper-snapper, who at first sight was made welcome there.

"I beg your pardon, sir," says Bowls, advancing with a profound bow;
"what 'otel, sir, shall Thomas fetch the luggage from?"

"O, dam," said young James, starting up, as if in some alarm, "I'll go."

"What!" said Miss Crawley.

"The Tom Cribb's Arms," said James, blushing deeply.

Miss Crawley burst out laughing at this title.  Mr. Bowls gave one
abrupt guffaw, as a confidential servant of the family, but choked the
rest of the volley; the diplomatist only smiled.

"I--I didn't know any better," said James, looking down. "I've never
been here before; it was the coachman told me." The young story-teller!
The fact is, that on the Southampton coach, the day previous,
James Crawley had met the Tutbury Pet, who was coming to Brighton to
make a match with the Rottingdean Fibber; and enchanted by the Pet's
conversation, had passed the evening in company with that scientific
man and his friends, at the inn in question.

"I--I'd best go and settle the score," James continued. "Couldn't think
of asking you, Ma'am," he added, generously.

This delicacy made his aunt laugh the more.

"Go and settle the bill, Bowls," she said, with a wave of her hand,
"and bring it to me."

Poor lady, she did not know what she had done!  "There--there's a
little dawg," said James, looking frightfully guilty.  "I'd best go for
him.  He bites footmen's calves."

All the party cried out with laughing at this description; even Briggs
and Lady Jane, who was sitting mute during the interview between Miss
Crawley and her nephew:  and Bowls, without a word, quitted the room.

Still, by way of punishing her elder nephew, Miss Crawley persisted in
being gracious to the young Oxonian. There were no limits to her
kindness or her compliments when they once began.  She told Pitt he
might come to dinner, and insisted that James should accompany her in
her drive, and paraded him solemnly up and down the cliff, on the back
seat of the barouche.  During all this excursion, she condescended to
say civil things to him: she quoted Italian and French poetry to the
poor bewildered lad, and persisted that he was a fine scholar, and was
perfectly sure he would gain a gold medal, and be a Senior Wrangler.

"Haw, haw," laughed James, encouraged by these compliments; "Senior
Wrangler, indeed; that's at the other shop."

"What is the other shop, my dear child?" said the lady.

"Senior Wranglers at Cambridge, not Oxford," said the scholar, with a
knowing air; and would probably have been more confidential, but that
suddenly there appeared on the cliff in a tax-cart, drawn by a bang-up
pony, dressed in white flannel coats, with mother-of-pearl buttons, his
friends the Tutbury Pet and the Rottingdean Fibber, with three other
gentlemen of their acquaintance, who all saluted poor James there in
the carriage as he sate.  This incident damped the ingenuous youth's
spirits, and no word of yea or nay could he be induced to utter during
the rest of the drive.

On his return he found his room prepared, and his portmanteau ready,
and might have remarked that Mr. Bowls's countenance, when the latter
conducted him to his apartments, wore a look of gravity, wonder, and
compassion.  But the thought of Mr. Bowls did not enter his head.  He
was deploring the dreadful predicament in which he found himself, in a
house full of old women, jabbering French and Italian, and talking
poetry to him. "Reglarly up a tree, by jingo!" exclaimed the modest
boy, who could not face the gentlest of her sex--not even Briggs--when
she began to talk to him; whereas, put him at Iffley Lock, and he could
out-slang the boldest bargeman.

At dinner, James appeared choking in a white neckcloth, and had the
honour of handing my Lady Jane downstairs, while Briggs and Mr. Crawley
followed afterwards, conducting the old lady, with her apparatus of
bundles, and shawls, and cushions.  Half of Briggs's time at dinner was
spent in superintending the invalid's comfort, and in cutting up
chicken for her fat spaniel.  James did not talk much, but he made a
point of asking all the ladies to drink wine, and accepted Mr.
Crawley's challenge, and consumed the greater part of a bottle of
champagne which Mr. Bowls was ordered to produce in his honour.  The
ladies having withdrawn, and the two cousins being left together, Pitt,
the ex-diplomatist, he came very communicative and friendly.  He asked
after James's career at college--what his prospects in life were--hoped
heartily he would get on; and, in a word, was frank and amiable.
James's tongue unloosed with the port, and he told his cousin his life,
his prospects, his debts, his troubles at the little-go, and his rows
with the proctors, filling rapidly from the bottles before him, and
flying from Port to Madeira with joyous activity.

"The chief pleasure which my aunt has," said Mr. Crawley, filling his
glass, "is that people should do as they like in her house. This is
Liberty Hall, James, and you can't do Miss Crawley a greater kindness
than to do as you please, and ask for what you will.  I know you have
all sneered at me in the country for being a Tory. Miss Crawley is
liberal enough to suit any fancy.  She is a Republican in principle,
and despises everything like rank or title."

"Why are you going to marry an Earl's daughter?" said James.

"My dear friend, remember it is not poor Lady Jane's fault that she is
well born," Pitt replied, with a courtly air.  "She cannot help being a
lady.  Besides, I am a Tory, you know."

"Oh, as for that," said Jim, "there's nothing like old blood; no,
dammy, nothing like it.  I'm none of your radicals.  I know what it is
to be a gentleman, dammy. See the chaps in a boat-race; look at the
fellers in a fight; aye, look at a dawg killing rats--which is it wins?
the good-blooded ones.  Get some more port, Bowls, old boy, whilst I
buzz this bottle here.  What was I asaying?"

"I think you were speaking of dogs killing rats," Pitt remarked mildly,
handing his cousin the decanter to "buzz."

"Killing rats was I? Well, Pitt, are you a sporting man? Do you want to
see a dawg as CAN kill a rat? If you do, come down with me to Tom
Corduroy's, in Castle Street Mews, and I'll show you such a bull-terrier
as--Pooh! gammon," cried James, bursting out laughing at his
own absurdity--"YOU don't care about a dawg or rat; it's all nonsense.
I'm blest if I think you know the difference between a dog and a duck."

"No; by the way," Pitt continued with increased blandness, "it was
about blood you were talking, and the personal advantages which people
derive from patrician birth.  Here's the fresh bottle."

"Blood's the word," said James, gulping the ruby fluid down. "Nothing
like blood, sir, in hosses, dawgs, AND men.  Why, only last term, just
before I was rusticated, that is, I mean just before I had the measles,
ha, ha--there was me and Ringwood of Christchurch, Bob Ringwood, Lord
Cinqbars' son, having our beer at the Bell at Blenheim, when the
Banbury bargeman offered to fight either of us for a bowl of punch.  I
couldn't.  My arm was in a sling; couldn't even take the drag down--a
brute of a mare of mine had fell with me only two days before, out with
the Abingdon, and I thought my arm was broke. Well, sir, I couldn't
finish him, but Bob had his coat off at once--he stood up to the
Banbury man for three minutes, and polished him off in four rounds
easy.  Gad, how he did drop, sir, and what was it? Blood, sir, all
blood."

"You don't drink, James," the ex-attache continued. "In my time at
Oxford, the men passed round the bottle a little quicker than you young
fellows seem to do."

"Come, come," said James, putting his hand to his nose and winking at
his cousin with a pair of vinous eyes, "no jokes, old boy; no trying it
on on me.  You want to trot me out, but it's no go.  In vino veritas,
old boy.  Mars, Bacchus, Apollo virorum, hey? I wish my aunt would send
down some of this to the governor; it's a precious good tap."

"You had better ask her," Machiavel continued, "or make the best of
your time now.  What says the bard? 'Nunc vino pellite curas, Cras
ingens iterabimus aequor,'" and the Bacchanalian, quoting the above
with a House of Commons air, tossed off nearly a thimbleful of wine
with an immense flourish of his glass.

At the Rectory, when the bottle of port wine was opened after dinner,
the young ladies had each a glass from a bottle of currant wine.  Mrs.
Bute took one glass of port, honest James had a couple commonly, but as
his father grew very sulky if he made further inroads on the bottle,
the good lad generally refrained from trying for more, and subsided
either into the currant wine, or to some private gin-and-water in the
stables, which he enjoyed in the company of the coachman and his pipe.
At Oxford, the quantity of wine was unlimited, but the quality was
inferior:  but when quantity and quality united as at his aunt's house,
James showed that he could appreciate them indeed; and hardly needed
any of his cousin's encouragement in draining off the second bottle
supplied by Mr. Bowls.

When the time for coffee came, however, and for a return to the ladies,
of whom he stood in awe, the young gentleman's agreeable frankness left
him, and he relapsed into his usual surly timidity; contenting himself
by saying yes and no, by scowling at Lady Jane, and by upsetting one
cup of coffee during the evening.

If he did not speak he yawned in a pitiable manner, and his presence
threw a damp upon the modest proceedings of the evening, for Miss
Crawley and Lady Jane at their piquet, and Miss Briggs at her work,
felt that his eyes were wildly fixed on them, and were uneasy under
that maudlin look.

"He seems a very silent, awkward, bashful lad," said Miss Crawley to
Mr. Pitt.

"He is more communicative in men's society than with ladies," Machiavel
dryly replied:  perhaps rather disappointed that the port wine had not
made Jim speak more.

He had spent the early part of the next morning in writing home to his
mother a most flourishing account of his reception by Miss Crawley.
But ah! he little knew what evils the day was bringing for him, and how
short his reign of favour was destined to be.  A circumstance which Jim
had forgotten--a trivial but fatal circumstance--had taken place at the
Cribb's Arms on the night before he had come to his aunt's house.  It
was no other than this--Jim, who was always of a generous disposition,
and when in his cups especially hospitable, had in the course of the
night treated the Tutbury champion and the Rottingdean man, and their
friends, twice or thrice to the refreshment of gin-and-water--so that
no less than eighteen glasses of that fluid at eightpence per glass
were charged in Mr. James Crawley's bill.  It was not the amount of
eightpences, but the quantity of gin which told fatally against poor
James's character, when his aunt's butler, Mr. Bowls, went down at his
mistress's request to pay the young gentleman's bill.  The landlord,
fearing lest the account should be refused altogether, swore solemnly
that the young gent had consumed personally every farthing's worth of
the liquor:  and Bowls paid the bill finally, and showed it on his
return home to Mrs. Firkin, who was shocked at the frightful
prodigality of gin; and took the bill to Miss Briggs as
accountant-general; who thought it her duty to mention the circumstance
to her principal, Miss Crawley.

Had he drunk a dozen bottles of claret, the old spinster could have
pardoned him.  Mr. Fox and Mr. Sheridan drank claret.  Gentlemen drank
claret.  But eighteen glasses of gin consumed among boxers in an
ignoble pot-house--it was an odious crime and not to be pardoned
readily.  Everything went against the lad:  he came home perfumed from
the stables, whither he had been to pay his dog Towzer a visit--and
whence he was going to take his friend out for an airing, when he met
Miss Crawley and her wheezy Blenheim spaniel, which Towzer would have
eaten up had not the Blenheim fled squealing to the protection of Miss
Briggs, while the atrocious master of the bull-dog stood laughing at
the horrible persecution.

This day too the unlucky boy's modesty had likewise forsaken him. He
was lively and facetious at dinner. During the repast he levelled one
or two jokes against Pitt Crawley:  he drank as much wine as upon the
previous day; and going quite unsuspiciously to the drawing-room, began
to entertain the ladies there with some choice Oxford stories.  He
described the different pugilistic qualities of Molyneux and Dutch Sam,
offered playfully to give Lady Jane the odds upon the Tutbury Pet
against the Rottingdean man, or take them, as her Ladyship chose: and
crowned the pleasantry by proposing to back himself against his cousin
Pitt Crawley, either with or without the gloves.  "And that's a fair
offer, my buck," he said, with a loud laugh, slapping Pitt on the
shoulder, "and my father told me to make it too, and he'll go halves in
the bet, ha, ha!" So saying, the engaging youth nodded knowingly at
poor Miss Briggs, and pointed his thumb over his shoulder at Pitt
Crawley in a jocular and exulting manner.

Pitt was not pleased altogether perhaps, but still not unhappy in the
main.  Poor Jim had his laugh out:  and staggered across the room with
his aunt's candle, when the old lady moved to retire, and offered to
salute her with the blandest tipsy smile:  and he took his own leave
and went upstairs to his bedroom perfectly satisfied with himself, and
with a pleased notion that his aunt's money would be left to him in
preference to his father and all the rest of the family.

Once up in the bedroom, one would have thought he could not make
matters worse; and yet this unlucky boy did.  The moon was shining very
pleasantly out on the sea, and Jim, attracted to the window by the
romantic appearance of the ocean and the heavens, thought he would
further enjoy them while smoking.  Nobody would smell the tobacco, he
thought, if he cunningly opened the window and kept his head and pipe
in the fresh air. This he did:  but being in an excited state, poor Jim
had forgotten that his door was open all this time, so that the breeze
blowing inwards and a fine thorough draught being established, the
clouds of tobacco were carried downstairs, and arrived with quite
undiminished fragrance to Miss Crawley and Miss Briggs.

The pipe of tobacco finished the business:  and the Bute-Crawleys never
knew how many thousand pounds it cost them.  Firkin rushed downstairs
to Bowls who was reading out the "Fire and the Frying Pan" to his
aide-de-camp in a loud and ghostly voice.  The dreadful secret was told
to him by Firkin with so frightened a look, that for the first moment
Mr. Bowls and his young man thought that robbers were in the house, the
legs of whom had probably been discovered by the woman under Miss
Crawley's bed.  When made aware of the fact, however--to rush upstairs
at three steps at a time to enter the unconscious James's apartment,
calling out, "Mr. James," in a voice stifled with alarm, and to cry,
"For Gawd's sake, sir, stop that 'ere pipe," was the work of a minute
with Mr. Bowls.  "O, Mr. James, what 'AVE you done!" he said in a voice
of the deepest pathos, as he threw the implement out of the window.
"What 'ave you done, sir! Missis can't abide 'em."

"Missis needn't smoke," said James with a frantic misplaced laugh, and
thought the whole matter an excellent joke.  But his feelings were very
different in the morning, when Mr. Bowls's young man, who operated upon
Mr. James's boots, and brought him his hot water to shave that beard
which he was so anxiously expecting, handed a note in to Mr. James in
bed, in the handwriting of Miss Briggs.

"Dear sir," it said, "Miss Crawley has passed an exceedingly disturbed
night, owing to the shocking manner in which the house has been
polluted by tobacco; Miss Crawley bids me say she regrets that she is
too unwell to see you before you go--and above all that she ever
induced you to remove from the ale-house, where she is sure you will be
much more comfortable during the rest of your stay at Brighton."

And herewith honest James's career as a candidate for his aunt's favour
ended.  He had in fact, and without knowing it, done what he menaced to
do.  He had fought his cousin Pitt with the gloves.

Where meanwhile was he who had been once first favourite for this race
for money? Becky and Rawdon, as we have seen, were come together after
Waterloo, and were passing the winter of 1815 at Paris in great
splendour and gaiety.  Rebecca was a good economist, and the price poor
Jos Sedley had paid for her two horses was in itself sufficient to keep
their little establishment afloat for a year, at the least; there was
no occasion to turn into money "my pistols, the same which I shot
Captain Marker," or the gold dressing-case, or the cloak lined with
sable.  Becky had it made into a pelisse for herself, in which she rode
in the Bois de Boulogne to the admiration of all:  and you should have
seen the scene between her and her delighted husband, whom she rejoined
after the army had entered Cambray, and when she unsewed herself, and
let out of her dress all those watches, knick-knacks, bank-notes,
cheques, and valuables, which she had secreted in the wadding, previous
to her meditated flight from Brussels!  Tufto was charmed, and Rawdon
roared with delighted laughter, and swore that she was better than any
play he ever saw, by Jove. And the way in which she jockeyed Jos, and
which she described with infinite fun, carried up his delight to a
pitch of quite insane enthusiasm.  He believed in his wife as much as
the French soldiers in Napoleon.

Her success in Paris was remarkable.  All the French ladies voted her
charming.  She spoke their language admirably.  She adopted at once
their grace, their liveliness, their manner.  Her husband was stupid
certainly--all English are stupid--and, besides, a dull husband at
Paris is always a point in a lady's favour.  He was the heir of the
rich and spirituelle Miss Crawley, whose house had been open to so many
of the French noblesse during the emigration.  They received the
colonel's wife in their own hotels--"Why," wrote a great lady to Miss
Crawley, who had bought her lace and trinkets at the Duchess's own
price, and given her many a dinner during the pinching times after the
Revolution--"Why does not our dear Miss come to her nephew and niece,
and her attached friends in Paris? All the world raffoles of the
charming Mistress and her espiegle beauty. Yes, we see in her the
grace, the charm, the wit of our dear friend Miss Crawley! The King
took notice of her yesterday at the Tuileries, and we are all jealous
of the attention which Monsieur pays her.  If you could have seen the
spite of a certain stupid Miladi Bareacres (whose eagle-beak and toque
and feathers may be seen peering over the heads of all assemblies) when
Madame, the Duchess of Angouleme, the august daughter and companion of
kings, desired especially to be presented to Mrs. Crawley, as your dear
daughter and protegee, and thanked her in the name of France, for all
your benevolence towards our unfortunates during their exile! She is of
all the societies, of all the balls--of the balls--yes--of the dances,
no; and yet how interesting and pretty this fair creature looks
surrounded by the homage of the men, and so soon to be a mother!  To
hear her speak of you, her protectress, her mother, would bring tears
to the eyes of ogres.  How she loves you! how we all love our
admirable, our respectable Miss Crawley!"

It is to be feared that this letter of the Parisian great lady did not
by any means advance Mrs. Becky's interest with her admirable, her
respectable, relative.  On the contrary, the fury of the old spinster
was beyond bounds, when she found what was Rebecca's situation, and how
audaciously she had made use of Miss Crawley's name, to get an entree
into Parisian society.  Too much shaken in mind and body to compose a
letter in the French language in reply to that of her correspondent,
she dictated to Briggs a furious answer in her own native tongue,
repudiating Mrs. Rawdon Crawley altogether, and warning the public to
beware of her as a most artful and dangerous person.  But as Madame the
Duchess of X--had only been twenty years in England, she did not
understand a single word of the language, and contented herself by
informing Mrs. Rawdon Crawley at their next meeting, that she had
received a charming letter from that chere Mees, and that it was full
of benevolent things for Mrs. Crawley, who began seriously to have
hopes that the spinster would relent.

Meanwhile, she was the gayest and most admired of Englishwomen:  and
had a little European congress on her reception-night.  Prussians and
Cossacks, Spanish and English--all the world was at Paris during this
famous winter:  to have seen the stars and cordons in Rebecca's humble
saloon would have made all Baker Street pale with envy. Famous warriors
rode by her carriage in the Bois, or crowded her modest little box at
the Opera. Rawdon was in the highest spirits. There were no duns in
Paris as yet:  there were parties every day at Very's or Beauvilliers';
play was plentiful and his luck good. Tufto perhaps was sulky.  Mrs.
Tufto had come over to Paris at her own invitation, and besides this
contretemps, there were a score of generals now round Becky's chair,
and she might take her choice of a dozen bouquets when she went to the
play.  Lady Bareacres and the chiefs of the English society, stupid and
irreproachable females, writhed with anguish at the success of the
little upstart Becky, whose poisoned jokes quivered and rankled in
their chaste breasts. But she had all the men on her side.  She fought
the women with indomitable courage, and they could not talk scandal in
any tongue but their own.

So in fetes, pleasures, and prosperity, the winter of 1815-16 passed
away with Mrs. Rawdon Crawley, who accommodated herself to polite life
as if her ancestors had been people of fashion for centuries past--and
who from her wit, talent, and energy, indeed merited a place of honour
in Vanity Fair.  In the early spring of 1816, Galignani's Journal
contained the following announcement in an interesting corner of the
paper:  "On the 26th of March--the Lady of Lieutenant-Colonel Crawley,
of the Life Guards Green--of a son and heir."

This event was copied into the London papers, out of which Miss Briggs
read the statement to Miss Crawley, at breakfast, at Brighton.  The
intelligence, expected as it might have been, caused a crisis in the
affairs of the Crawley family.  The spinster's rage rose to its height,
and sending instantly for Pitt, her nephew, and for the Lady Southdown,
from Brunswick Square, she requested an immediate celebration of the
marriage which had been so long pending between the two families.  And
she announced that it was her intention to allow the young couple a
thousand a year during her lifetime, at the expiration of which the
bulk of her property would be settled upon her nephew and her dear
niece, Lady Jane Crawley. Waxy came down to ratify the deeds--Lord
Southdown gave away his sister--she was married by a Bishop, and not by
the Rev. Bartholomew Irons--to the disappointment of the irregular
prelate.

When they were married, Pitt would have liked to take a hymeneal tour
with his bride, as became people of their condition.  But the affection
of the old lady towards Lady Jane had grown so strong, that she fairly
owned she could not part with her favourite.  Pitt and his wife came
therefore and lived with Miss Crawley: and (greatly to the annoyance of
poor Pitt, who conceived himself a most injured character--being
subject to the humours of his aunt on one side, and of his
mother-in-law on the other). Lady Southdown, from her neighbouring
house, reigned over the whole family--Pitt, Lady Jane, Miss Crawley,
Briggs, Bowls, Firkin, and all.  She pitilessly dosed them with her
tracts and her medicine, she dismissed Creamer, she installed Rodgers,
and soon stripped Miss Crawley of even the semblance of authority.  The
poor soul grew so timid that she actually left off bullying Briggs any
more, and clung to her niece, more fond and terrified every day.  Peace
to thee, kind and selfish, vain and generous old heathen!--We shall see
thee no more.  Let us hope that Lady Jane supported her kindly, and led
her with gentle hand out of the busy struggle of Vanity Fair.


Widow and Mother

The news of the great fights of Quatre Bras and Waterloo reached
England at the same time.  The Gazette first published the result of
the two battles; at which glorious intelligence all England thrilled
with triumph and fear. Particulars then followed; and after the
announcement of the victories came the list of the wounded and the
slain. Who can tell the dread with which that catalogue was opened and
read!  Fancy, at every village and homestead almost through the three
kingdoms, the great news coming of the battles in Flanders, and the
feelings of exultation and gratitude, bereavement and sickening dismay,
when the lists of the regimental losses were gone through, and it
became known whether the dear friend and relative had escaped or
fallen.  Anybody who will take the trouble of looking back to a file of
the newspapers of the time, must, even now, feel at second-hand this
breathless pause of expectation.  The lists of casualties are carried
on from day to day:  you stop in the midst as in a story which is to be
continued in our next.  Think what the feelings must have been as those
papers followed each other fresh from the press; and if such an
interest could be felt in our country, and about a battle where but
twenty thousand of our people were engaged, think of the condition of
Europe for twenty years before, where people were fighting, not by
thousands, but by millions; each one of whom as he struck his enemy
wounded horribly some other innocent heart far away.

The news which that famous Gazette brought to the Osbornes gave a
dreadful shock to the family and its chief. The girls indulged
unrestrained in their grief.  The gloom-stricken old father was still
more borne down by his fate and sorrow.  He strove to think that a
judgment was on the boy for his disobedience.  He dared not own that
the severity of the sentence frightened him, and that its fulfilment
had come too soon upon his curses.  Sometimes a shuddering terror
struck him, as if he had been the author of the doom which he had
called down on his son.  There was a chance before of reconciliation.
The boy's wife might have died; or he might have come back and said,
Father I have sinned.  But there was no hope now.  He stood on the
other side of the gulf impassable, haunting his parent with sad eyes.
He remembered them once before so in a fever, when every one thought
the lad was dying, and he lay on his bed speechless, and gazing with a
dreadful gloom.  Good God! how the father clung to the doctor then, and
with what a sickening anxiety he followed him:  what a weight of grief
was off his mind when, after the crisis of the fever, the lad
recovered, and looked at his father once more with eyes that recognised
him. But now there was no help or cure, or chance of reconcilement:
above all, there were no humble words to soothe vanity outraged and
furious, or bring to its natural flow the poisoned, angry blood.  And
it is hard to say which pang it was that tore the proud father's heart
most keenly--that his son should have gone out of the reach of his
forgiveness, or that the apology which his own pride expected should
have escaped him.

Whatever his sensations might have been, however, the stern old man
would have no confidant.  He never mentioned his son's name to his
daughters; but ordered the elder to place all the females of the
establishment in mourning; and desired that the male servants should be
similarly attired in deep black.  All parties and entertainments, of
course, were to be put off.  No communications were made to his future
son-in-law, whose marriage-day had been fixed:  but there was enough in
Mr. Osborne's appearance to prevent Mr. Bullock from making any
inquiries, or in any way pressing forward that ceremony. He and the
ladies whispered about it under their voices in the drawing-room
sometimes, whither the father never came.  He remained constantly in
his own study; the whole front part of the house being closed until
some time after the completion of the general mourning.

About three weeks after the 18th of June, Mr. Osborne's acquaintance,
Sir William Dobbin, called at Mr. Osborne's house in Russell Square,
with a very pale and agitated face, and insisted upon seeing that
gentleman. Ushered into his room, and after a few words, which neither
the speaker nor the host understood, the former produced from an
inclosure a letter sealed with a large red seal. "My son, Major
Dobbin," the Alderman said, with some hesitation, "despatched me a
letter by an officer of the --th, who arrived in town to-day.  My son's
letter contains one for you, Osborne." The Alderman placed the letter
on the table, and Osborne stared at him for a moment or two in silence.
His looks frightened the ambassador, who after looking guiltily for a
little time at the grief-stricken man, hurried away without another
word.

The letter was in George's well-known bold handwriting. It was that one
which he had written before daybreak on the 16th of June, and just
before he took leave of Amelia.  The great red seal was emblazoned with
the sham coat of arms which Osborne had assumed from the Peerage, with
"Pax in bello" for a motto; that of the ducal house with which the vain
old man tried to fancy himself connected. The hand that signed it would
never hold pen or sword more.  The very seal that sealed it had been
robbed from George's dead body as it lay on the field of battle.  The
father knew nothing of this, but sat and looked at the letter in
terrified vacancy.  He almost fell when he went to open it.

Have you ever had a difference with a dear friend? How his letters,
written in the period of love and confidence, sicken and rebuke you!
What a dreary mourning it is to dwell upon those vehement protests of
dead affection!  What lying epitaphs they make over the corpse of love!
What dark, cruel comments upon Life and Vanities! Most of us have got
or written drawers full of them. They are closet-skeletons which we
keep and shun. Osborne trembled long before the letter from his dead
son.

The poor boy's letter did not say much.  He had been too proud to
acknowledge the tenderness which his heart felt.  He only said, that on
the eve of a great battle, he wished to bid his father farewell, and
solemnly to implore his good offices for the wife--it might be for the
child--whom he left behind him.  He owned with contrition that his
irregularities and his extravagance had already wasted a large part of
his mother's little fortune.  He thanked his father for his former
generous conduct; and he promised him that if he fell on the field or
survived it, he would act in a manner worthy of the name of George
Osborne.

His English habit, pride, awkwardness perhaps, had prevented him from
saying more.  His father could not see the kiss George had placed on
the superscription of his letter.  Mr. Osborne dropped it with the
bitterest, deadliest pang of balked affection and revenge. His son was
still beloved and unforgiven.

About two months afterwards, however, as the young ladies of the family
went to church with their father, they remarked how he took a different
seat from that which he usually occupied when he chose to attend divine
worship; and that from his cushion opposite, he looked up at the wall
over their heads.  This caused the young women likewise to gaze in the
direction towards which their father's gloomy eyes pointed:  and they
saw an elaborate monument upon the wall, where Britannia was
represented weeping over an urn, and a broken sword and a couchant lion
indicated that the piece of sculpture had been erected in honour of a
deceased warrior.  The sculptors of those days had stocks of such
funereal emblems in hand; as you may see still on the walls of St.
Paul's, which are covered with hundreds of these braggart heathen
allegories.  There was a constant demand for them during the first
fifteen years of the present century.

Under the memorial in question were emblazoned the well-known and
pompous Osborne arms; and the inscription said, that the monument was
"Sacred to the memory of George Osborne, Junior, Esq., late a Captain
in his Majesty's --th regiment of foot, who fell on the 18th of June,
1815, aged 28 years, while fighting for his king and country in the
glorious victory of Waterloo. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori."

The sight of that stone agitated the nerves of the sisters so much,
that Miss Maria was compelled to leave the church.  The congregation
made way respectfully for those sobbing girls clothed in deep black,
and pitied the stern old father seated opposite the memorial of the
dead soldier.  "Will he forgive Mrs. George?" the girls said to
themselves as soon as their ebullition of grief was over. Much
conversation passed too among the acquaintances of the Osborne family,
who knew of the rupture between the son and father caused by the
former's marriage, as to the chance of a reconciliation with the young
widow. There were bets among the gentlemen both about Russell Square
and in the City.

If the sisters had any anxiety regarding the possible recognition of
Amelia as a daughter of the family, it was increased presently, and
towards the end of the autumn, by their father's announcement that he
was going abroad.  He did not say whither, but they knew at once that
his steps would be turned towards Belgium, and were aware that George's
widow was still in Brussels.  They had pretty accurate news indeed of
poor Amelia from Lady Dobbin and her daughters.  Our honest Captain had
been promoted in consequence of the death of the second Major of the
regiment on the field; and the brave O'Dowd, who had distinguished
himself greatly here as upon all occasions where he had a chance to
show his coolness and valour, was a Colonel and Companion of the Bath.

Very many of the brave --th, who had suffered severely upon both days
of action, were still at Brussels in the autumn, recovering of their
wounds.  The city was a vast military hospital for months after the
great battles; and as men and officers began to rally from their hurts,
the gardens and places of public resort swarmed with maimed warriors,
old and young, who, just rescued out of death, fell to gambling, and
gaiety, and love-making, as people of Vanity Fair will do.  Mr. Osborne
found out some of the --th easily.  He knew their uniform quite well,
and had been used to follow all the promotions and exchanges in the
regiment, and loved to talk about it and its officers as if he had been
one of the number.  On the day after his arrival at Brussels, and as he
issued from his hotel, which faced the park, he saw a soldier in the
well-known facings, reposing on a stone bench in the garden, and went
and sate down trembling by the wounded convalescent man.

"Were you in Captain Osborne's company?" he said, and added, after a
pause, "he was my son, sir."

The man was not of the Captain's company, but he lifted up his
unwounded arm and touched his cap sadly and respectfully to the haggard
broken-spirited gentleman who questioned him.  "The whole army didn't
contain a finer or a better officer," the soldier said. "The Sergeant
of the Captain's company (Captain Raymond had it now), was in town,
though, and was just well of a shot in the shoulder. His honour might
see him if he liked, who could tell him anything he wanted to know
about--about the --th's actions.  But his honour had seen Major Dobbin,
no doubt, the brave Captain's great friend; and Mrs. Osborne, who was
here too, and had been very bad, he heard everybody say.  They say she
was out of her mind like for six weeks or more.  But your honour knows
all about that--and asking your pardon"--the man added.

Osborne put a guinea into the soldier's hand, and told him he should
have another if he would bring the Sergeant to the Hotel du Parc; a
promise which very soon brought the desired officer to Mr. Osborne's
presence. And the first soldier went away; and after telling a comrade
or two how Captain Osborne's father was arrived, and what a free-handed
generous gentleman he was, they went and made good cheer with drink and
feasting, as long as the guineas lasted which had come from the proud
purse of the mourning old father.

In the Sergeant's company, who was also just convalescent, Osborne made
the journey of Waterloo and Quatre Bras, a journey which thousands of
his countrymen were then taking.  He took the Sergeant with him in his
carriage, and went through both fields under his guidance.  He saw the
point of the road where the regiment marched into action on the 16th,
and the slope down which they drove the French cavalry who were
pressing on the retreating Belgians.  There was the spot where the
noble Captain cut down the French officer who was grappling with the
young Ensign for the colours, the Colour-Sergeants having been shot
down.  Along this road they retreated on the next day, and here was the
bank at which the regiment bivouacked under the rain of the night of
the seventeenth.  Further on was the position which they took and held
during the day, forming time after time to receive the charge of the
enemy's horsemen and lying down under the shelter of the bank from the
furious French cannonade. And it was at this declivity when at evening
the whole English line received the order to advance, as the enemy fell
back after his last charge, that the Captain, hurraying and rushing
down the hill waving his sword, received a shot and fell dead.  "It was
Major Dobbin who took back the Captain's body to Brussels," the
Sergeant said, in a low voice, "and had him buried, as your honour
knows." The peasants and relic-hunters about the place were screaming
round the pair, as the soldier told his story, offering for sale all
sorts of mementoes of the fight, crosses, and epaulets, and shattered
cuirasses, and eagles.

Osborne gave a sumptuous reward to the Sergeant when he parted with
him, after having visited the scenes of his son's last exploits. His
burial-place he had already seen.  Indeed, he had driven thither
immediately after his arrival at Brussels.  George's body lay in the
pretty burial-ground of Laeken, near the city; in which place, having
once visited it on a party of pleasure, he had lightly expressed a wish
to have his grave made.  And there the young officer was laid by his
friend, in the unconsecrated corner of the garden, separated by a
little hedge from the temples and towers and plantations of flowers and
shrubs, under which the Roman Catholic dead repose.  It seemed a
humiliation to old Osborne to think that his son, an English gentleman,
a captain in the famous British army, should not be found worthy to lie
in ground where mere foreigners were buried.  Which of us is there can
tell how much vanity lurks in our warmest regard for others, and how
selfish our love is? Old Osborne did not speculate much upon the
mingled nature of his feelings, and how his instinct and selfishness
were combating together.  He firmly believed that everything he did was
right, that he ought on all occasions to have his own way--and like the
sting of a wasp or serpent his hatred rushed out armed and poisonous
against anything like opposition.  He was proud of his hatred as of
everything else.  Always to be right, always to trample forward, and
never to doubt, are not these the great qualities with which dullness
takes the lead in the world?

As after the drive to Waterloo, Mr. Osborne's carriage was nearing the
gates of the city at sunset, they met another open barouche, in which
were a couple of ladies and a gentleman, and by the side of which an
officer was riding.  Osborne gave a start back, and the Sergeant,
seated with him, cast a look of surprise at his neighbour, as he
touched his cap to the officer, who mechanically returned his salute.
It was Amelia, with the lame young Ensign by her side, and opposite to
her her faithful friend Mrs. O'Dowd.  It was Amelia, but how changed
from the fresh and comely girl Osborne knew.  Her face was white and
thin.  Her pretty brown hair was parted under a widow's cap--the poor
child.  Her eyes were fixed, and looking nowhere.  They stared blank in
the face of Osborne, as the carriages crossed each other, but she did
not know him; nor did he recognise her, until looking up, he saw Dobbin
riding by her:  and then he knew who it was.  He hated her.  He did not
know how much until he saw her there.  When her carriage had passed on,
he turned and stared at the Sergeant, with a curse and defiance in his
eye cast at his companion, who could not help looking at him--as much
as to say "How dare you look at me? Damn you!  I do hate her.  It is
she who has tumbled my hopes and all my pride down." "Tell the
scoundrel to drive on quick," he shouted with an oath, to the lackey on
the box. A minute afterwards, a horse came clattering over the pavement
behind Osborne's carriage, and Dobbin rode up.  His thoughts had been
elsewhere as the carriages passed each other, and it was not until he
had ridden some paces forward, that he remembered it was Osborne who
had just passed him.  Then he turned to examine if the sight of her
father-in-law had made any impression on Amelia, but the poor girl did
not know who had passed.  Then William, who daily used to accompany her
in his drives, taking out his watch, made some excuse about an
engagement which he suddenly recollected, and so rode off.  She did not
remark that either:  but sate looking before her, over the homely
landscape towards the woods in the distance, by which George marched
away.

"Mr. Osborne, Mr. Osborne!" cried Dobbin, as he rode up and held out
his hand.  Osborne made no motion to take it, but shouted out once more
and with another curse to his servant to drive on.

Dobbin laid his hand on the carriage side.  "I will see you, sir," he
said.  "I have a message for you."

"From that woman?" said Osborne, fiercely.

"No," replied the other, "from your son"; at which Osborne fell back
into the corner of his carriage, and Dobbin allowing it to pass on,
rode close behind it, and so through the town until they reached Mr.
Osborne's hotel, and without a word.  There he followed Osborne up to
his apartments.  George had often been in the rooms; they were the
lodgings which the Crawleys had occupied during their stay in Brussels.

"Pray, have you any commands for me, Captain Dobbin, or, I beg your
pardon, I should say MAJOR Dobbin, since better men than you are dead,
and you step into their SHOES?" said Mr. Osborne, in that sarcastic
tone which he sometimes was pleased to assume.

"Better men ARE dead," Dobbin replied.  "I want to speak to you about
one."

"Make it short, sir," said the other with an oath, scowling at his
visitor.

"I am here as his closest friend," the Major resumed, "and the executor
of his will.  He made it before he went into action.  Are you aware how
small his means are, and of the straitened circumstances of his widow?"

"I don't know his widow, sir," Osborne said.  "Let her go back to her
father." But the gentleman whom he addressed was determined to remain
in good temper, and went on without heeding the interruption.

"Do you know, sir, Mrs. Osborne's condition? Her life and her reason
almost have been shaken by the blow which has fallen on her.  It is
very doubtful whether she will rally.  There is a chance left for her,
however, and it is about this I came to speak to you.  She will be a
mother soon.  Will you visit the parent's offence upon the child's
head? or will you forgive the child for poor George's sake?"

Osborne broke out into a rhapsody of self-praise and imprecations;--by
the first, excusing himself to his own conscience for his conduct; by
the second, exaggerating the undutifulness of George. No father in all
England could have behaved more generously to a son, who had rebelled
against him wickedly.  He had died without even so much as confessing
he was wrong.  Let him take the consequences of his undutifulness and
folly.  As for himself, Mr. Osborne, he was a man of his word.  He had
sworn never to speak to that woman, or to recognize her as his son's
wife.  "And that's what you may tell her," he concluded with an oath;
"and that's what I will stick to to the last day of my life."

There was no hope from that quarter then.  The widow must live on her
slender pittance, or on such aid as Jos could give her.  "I might tell
her, and she would not heed it," thought Dobbin, sadly: for the poor
girl's thoughts were not here at all since her catastrophe, and,
stupefied under the pressure of her sorrow, good and evil were alike
indifferent to her.

So, indeed, were even friendship and kindness.  She received them both
uncomplainingly, and having accepted them, relapsed into her grief.

Suppose some twelve months after the above conversation took place to
have passed in the life of our poor Amelia.  She has spent the first
portion of that time in a sorrow so profound and pitiable, that we who
have been watching and describing some of the emotions of that weak and
tender heart, must draw back in the presence of the cruel grief under
which it is bleeding.  Tread silently round the hapless couch of the
poor prostrate soul. Shut gently the door of the dark chamber wherein
she suffers, as those kind people did who nursed her through the first
months of her pain, and never left her until heaven had sent her
consolation.  A day came--of almost terrified delight and wonder--when
the poor widowed girl pressed a child upon her breast--a child, with
the eyes of George who was gone--a little boy, as beautiful as a
cherub.  What a miracle it was to hear its first cry!  How she laughed
and wept over it--how love, and hope, and prayer woke again in her
bosom as the baby nestled there.  She was safe.  The doctors who
attended her, and had feared for her life or for her brain, had waited
anxiously for this crisis before they could pronounce that either was
secure.  It was worth the long months of doubt and dread which the
persons who had constantly been with her had passed, to see her eyes
once more beaming tenderly upon them.

Our friend Dobbin was one of them.  It was he who brought her back to
England and to her mother's house; when Mrs. O'Dowd, receiving a
peremptory summons from her Colonel, had been forced to quit her
patient. To see Dobbin holding the infant, and to hear Amelia's laugh
of triumph as she watched him, would have done any man good who had a
sense of humour.  William was the godfather of the child, and exerted
his ingenuity in the purchase of cups, spoons, pap-boats, and corals
for this little Christian.

How his mother nursed him, and dressed him, and lived upon him; how she
drove away all nurses, and would scarce allow any hand but her own to
touch him; how she considered that the greatest favour she could confer
upon his godfather, Major Dobbin, was to allow the Major occasionally
to dandle him, need not be told here.  This child was her being.  Her
existence was a maternal caress.  She enveloped the feeble and
unconscious creature with love and worship.  It was her life which the
baby drank in from her bosom.  Of nights, and when alone, she had
stealthy and intense raptures of motherly love, such as God's
marvellous care has awarded to the female instinct--joys how far
higher and lower than reason--blind beautiful devotions which only
women's hearts know.  It was William Dobbin's task to muse upon these
movements of Amelia's, and to watch her heart; and if his love made him
divine almost all the feelings which agitated it, alas! he could see
with a fatal perspicuity that there was no place there for him.  And
so, gently, he bore his fate, knowing it, and content to bear it.

I suppose Amelia's father and mother saw through the intentions of the
Major, and were not ill-disposed to encourage him; for Dobbin visited
their house daily, and stayed for hours with them, or with Amelia, or
with the honest landlord, Mr. Clapp, and his family.  He brought, on
one pretext or another, presents to everybody, and almost every day;
and went, with the landlord's little girl, who was rather a favourite
with Amelia, by the name of Major Sugarplums.  It was this little child
who commonly acted as mistress of the ceremonies to introduce him to
Mrs. Osborne.  She laughed one day when Major Sugarplums' cab drove up
to Fulham, and he descended from it, bringing out a wooden horse, a
drum, a trumpet, and other warlike toys, for little Georgy, who was
scarcely six months old, and for whom the articles in question were
entirely premature.

The child was asleep.  "Hush," said Amelia, annoyed, perhaps, at the
creaking of the Major's boots; and she held out her hand; smiling
because William could not take it until he had rid himself of his cargo
of toys.  "Go downstairs, little Mary," said he presently to the child,
"I want to speak to Mrs. Osborne." She looked up rather astonished, and
laid down the infant on its bed.

"I am come to say good-bye, Amelia," said he, taking her slender little
white hand gently.

"Good-bye? and where are you going?" she said, with a smile.

"Send the letters to the agents," he said; "they will forward them; for
you will write to me, won't you? I shall be away a long time."

"I'll write to you about Georgy," she said.  "Dear William, how good
you have been to him and to me.  Look at him.  Isn't he like an angel?"

The little pink hands of the child closed mechanically round the honest
soldier's finger, and Amelia looked up in his face with bright maternal
pleasure.  The cruellest looks could not have wounded him more than
that glance of hopeless kindness.  He bent over the child and mother.
He could not speak for a moment.  And it was only with all his strength
that he could force himself to say a God bless you.  "God bless you,"
said Amelia, and held up her face and kissed him.

"Hush!  Don't wake Georgy!" she added, as William Dobbin went to the
door with heavy steps.  She did not hear the noise of his cab-wheels as
he drove away:  she was looking at the child, who was laughing in his
sleep.



How to Live Well on Nothing a Year

I suppose there is no man in this Vanity Fair of ours so little
observant as not to think sometimes about the worldly affairs of his
acquaintances, or so extremely charitable as not to wonder how his
neighbour Jones, or his neighbour Smith, can make both ends meet at the
end of the year.  With the utmost regard for the family, for instance
(for I dine with them twice or thrice in the season), I cannot but own
that the appearance of the Jenkinses in the park, in the large barouche
with the grenadier-footmen, will surprise and mystify me to my dying
day:  for though I know the equipage is only jobbed, and all the
Jenkins people are on board wages, yet those three men and the carriage
must represent an expense of six hundred a year at the very least--and
then there are the splendid dinners, the two boys at Eton, the prize
governess and masters for the girls, the trip abroad, or to Eastbourne
or Worthing, in the autumn, the annual ball with a supper from Gunter's
(who, by the way, supplies most of the first-rate dinners which J.
gives, as I know very well, having been invited to one of them to fill
a vacant place, when I saw at once that these repasts are very superior
to the common run of entertainments for which the humbler sort of J.'s
acquaintances get cards)--who, I say, with the most good-natured
feelings in the world, can help wondering how the Jenkinses make out
matters? What is Jenkins? We all know--Commissioner of the Tape and
Sealing Wax Office, with 1200 pounds a year for a salary.  Had his wife
a private fortune? Pooh!--Miss Flint--one of eleven children of a small
squire in Buckinghamshire.  All she ever gets from her family is a
turkey at Christmas, in exchange for which she has to board two or
three of her sisters in the off season, and lodge and feed her brothers
when they come to town.  How does Jenkins balance his income? I say, as
every friend of his must say, How is it that he has not been outlawed
long since, and that he ever came back (as he did to the surprise of
everybody) last year from Boulogne?

"I" is here introduced to personify the world in general--the Mrs.
Grundy of each respected reader's private circle--every one of whom can
point to some families of his acquaintance who live nobody knows how.
Many a glass of wine have we all of us drunk, I have very little doubt,
hob-and-nobbing with the hospitable giver and wondering how the deuce
he paid for it.

Some three or four years after his stay in Paris, when Rawdon Crawley
and his wife were established in a very small comfortable house in
Curzon Street, May Fair, there was scarcely one of the numerous friends
whom they entertained at dinner that did not ask the above question
regarding them.  The novelist, it has been said before, knows
everything, and as I am in a situation to be able to tell the public
how Crawley and his wife lived without any income, may I entreat the
public newspapers which are in the habit of extracting portions of the
various periodical works now published not to reprint the following
exact narrative and calculations--of which I ought, as the discoverer
(and at some expense, too), to have the benefit? My son, I would say,
were I blessed with a child--you may by deep inquiry and constant
intercourse with him learn how a man lives comfortably on nothing a
year.  But it is best not to be intimate with gentlemen of this
profession and to take the calculations at second hand, as you do
logarithms, for to work them yourself, depend upon it, will cost you
something considerable.

On nothing per annum then, and during a course of some two or three
years, of which we can afford to give but a very brief history, Crawley
and his wife lived very happily and comfortably at Paris. It was in
this period that he quitted the Guards and sold out of the army.  When
we find him again, his mustachios and the title of Colonel on his card
are the only relics of his military profession.

It has been mentioned that Rebecca, soon after her arrival in Paris,
took a very smart and leading position in the society of that capital,
and was welcomed at some of the most distinguished houses of the
restored French nobility.  The English men of fashion in Paris courted
her, too, to the disgust of the ladies their wives, who could not bear
the parvenue.  For some months the salons of the Faubourg St.  Germain,
in which her place was secured, and the splendours of the new Court,
where she was received with much distinction, delighted and perhaps a
little intoxicated Mrs. Crawley, who may have been disposed during this
period of elation to slight the people--honest young military men
mostly--who formed her husband's chief society.

But the Colonel yawned sadly among the Duchesses and great ladies of
the Court.  The old women who played ecarte made such a noise about a
five-franc piece that it was not worth Colonel Crawley's while to sit
down at a card-table.  The wit of their conversation he could not
appreciate, being ignorant of their language. And what good could his
wife get, he urged, by making curtsies every night to a whole circle of
Princesses? He left Rebecca presently to frequent these parties alone,
resuming his own simple pursuits and amusements amongst the amiable
friends of his own choice.

The truth is, when we say of a gentleman that he lives elegantly on
nothing a year, we use the word "nothing" to signify something unknown;
meaning, simply, that we don't know how the gentleman in question
defrays the expenses of his establishment.  Now, our friend the Colonel
had a great aptitude for all games of chance: and exercising himself,
as he continually did, with the cards, the dice-box, or the cue, it is
natural to suppose that he attained a much greater skill in the use of
these articles than men can possess who only occasionally handle them.
To use a cue at billiards well is like using a pencil, or a German
flute, or a small-sword--you cannot master any one of these implements
at first, and it is only by repeated study and perseverance, joined to
a natural taste, that a man can excel in the handling of either. Now
Crawley, from being only a brilliant amateur, had grown to be a
consummate master of billiards.  Like a great General, his genius used
to rise with the danger, and when the luck had been unfavourable to him
for a whole game, and the bets were consequently against him, he would,
with consummate skill and boldness, make some prodigious hits which
would restore the battle, and come in a victor at the end, to the
astonishment of everybody--of everybody, that is, who was a stranger to
his play.  Those who were accustomed to see it were cautious how they
staked their money against a man of such sudden resources and brilliant
and overpowering skill.

At games of cards he was equally skilful; for though he would
constantly lose money at the commencement of an evening, playing so
carelessly and making such blunders, that newcomers were often inclined
to think meanly of his talent; yet when roused to action and awakened
to caution by repeated small losses, it was remarked that Crawley's
play became quite different, and that he was pretty sure of beating his
enemy thoroughly before the night was over. Indeed, very few men could
say that they ever had the better of him. His successes were so
repeated that no wonder the envious and the vanquished spoke sometimes
with bitterness regarding them.  And as the French say of the Duke of
Wellington, who never suffered a defeat, that only an astonishing
series of lucky accidents enabled him to be an invariable winner; yet
even they allow that he cheated at Waterloo, and was enabled to win the
last great trick:  so it was hinted at headquarters in England that
some foul play must have taken place in order to account for the
continuous successes of Colonel Crawley.

Though Frascati's and the Salon were open at that time in Paris, the
mania for play was so widely spread that the public gambling-rooms did
not suffice for the general ardour, and gambling went on in private
houses as much as if there had been no public means for gratifying the
passion.  At Crawley's charming little reunions of an evening this
fatal amusement commonly was practised--much to good-natured little
Mrs. Crawley's annoyance. She spoke about her husband's passion for
dice with the deepest grief; she bewailed it to everybody who came to
her house.  She besought the young fellows never, never to touch a box;
and when young Green, of the Rifles, lost a very considerable sum of
money, Rebecca passed a whole night in tears, as the servant told the
unfortunate young gentleman, and actually went on her knees to her
husband to beseech him to remit the debt, and burn the acknowledgement.
How could he? He had lost just as much himself to Blackstone of the
Hussars, and Count Punter of the Hanoverian Cavalry.  Green might have
any decent time; but pay?--of course he must pay; to talk of burning
IOU's was child's play.

Other officers, chiefly young--for the young fellows gathered round
Mrs. Crawley--came from her parties with long faces, having dropped
more or less money at her fatal card-tables.  Her house began to have
an unfortunate reputation.  The old hands warned the less experienced
of their danger.  Colonel O'Dowd, of the --th regiment, one of those
occupying in Paris, warned Lieutenant Spooney of that corps.  A loud
and violent fracas took place between the infantry Colonel and his
lady, who were dining at the Cafe de Paris, and Colonel and Mrs.
Crawley; who were also taking their meal there. The ladies engaged on
both sides.  Mrs. O'Dowd snapped her fingers in Mrs. Crawley's face and
called her husband "no betther than a black-leg." Colonel Crawley
challenged Colonel O'Dowd, C.B.  The Commander-in-Chief hearing of the
dispute sent for Colonel Crawley, who was getting ready the same
pistols "which he shot Captain Marker," and had such a conversation
with him that no duel took place.  If Rebecca had not gone on her knees
to General Tufto, Crawley would have been sent back to England; and he
did not play, except with civilians, for some weeks after.

But, in spite of Rawdon's undoubted skill and constant successes, it
became evident to Rebecca, considering these things, that their
position was but a precarious one, and that, even although they paid
scarcely anybody, their little capital would end one day by dwindling
into zero.  "Gambling," she would say, "dear, is good to help your
income, but not as an income itself.  Some day people may be tired of
play, and then where are we?" Rawdon acquiesced in the justice of her
opinion; and in truth he had remarked that after a few nights of his
little suppers, &c., gentlemen were tired of play with him, and, in
spite of Rebecca's charms, did not present themselves very eagerly.

Easy and pleasant as their life at Paris was, it was after all only an
idle dalliance and amiable trifling; and Rebecca saw that she must push
Rawdon's fortune in their own country.  She must get him a place or
appointment at home or in the colonies, and she determined to make a
move upon England as soon as the way could be cleared for her.  As a
first step she had made Crawley sell out of the Guards and go on
half-pay.  His function as aide-de-camp to General Tufto had ceased
previously. Rebecca laughed in all companies at that officer, at his
toupee (which he mounted on coming to Paris), at his waistband, at his
false teeth, at his pretensions to be a lady-killer above all, and his
absurd vanity in fancying every woman whom he came near was in love
with him.  It was to Mrs. Brent, the beetle-browed wife of Mr.
Commissary Brent, to whom the general transferred his attentions
now--his bouquets, his dinners at the restaurateurs', his opera-boxes,
and his knick-knacks.  Poor Mrs. Tufto was no more happy than before,
and had still to pass long evenings alone with her daughters, knowing
that her General was gone off scented and curled to stand behind Mrs.
Brent's chair at the play.  Becky had a dozen admirers in his place, to
be sure, and could cut her rival to pieces with her wit.  But, as we
have said, she was growing tired of this idle social life:
opera-boxes and restaurateur dinners palled upon her:  nosegays could
not be laid by as a provision for future years:  and she could not live
upon knick-knacks, laced handkerchiefs, and kid gloves.  She felt the
frivolity of pleasure and longed for more substantial benefits.

At this juncture news arrived which was spread among the many creditors
of the Colonel at Paris, and which caused them great satisfaction.
Miss Crawley, the rich aunt from whom he expected his immense
inheritance, was dying; the Colonel must haste to her bedside.  Mrs.
Crawley and her child would remain behind until he came to reclaim
them.  He departed for Calais, and having reached that place in safety,
it might have been supposed that he went to Dover; but instead he took
the diligence to Dunkirk, and thence travelled to Brussels, for which
place he had a former predilection. The fact is, he owed more money at
London than at Paris; and he preferred the quiet little Belgian city to
either of the more noisy capitals.

Her aunt was dead.  Mrs. Crawley ordered the most intense mourning for
herself and little Rawdon.  The Colonel was busy arranging the affairs
of the inheritance.  They could take the premier now, instead of the
little entresol of the hotel which they occupied. Mrs. Crawley and the
landlord had a consultation about the new hangings, an amicable wrangle
about the carpets, and a final adjustment of everything except the
bill.  She went off in one of his carriages; her French bonne with her;
the child by her side; the admirable landlord and landlady smiling
farewell to her from the gate.  General Tufto was furious when he heard
she was gone, and Mrs. Brent furious with him for being furious;
Lieutenant Spooney was cut to the heart; and the landlord got ready his
best apartments previous to the return of the fascinating little woman
and her husband.  He _serred_ the trunks which she left in his charge
with the greatest care.  They had been especially recommended to him by
Madame Crawley.  They were not, however, found to be particularly
valuable when opened some time after.

But before she went to join her husband in the Belgic capital, Mrs.
Crawley made an expedition into England, leaving behind her her little
son upon the continent, under the care of her French maid.

The parting between Rebecca and the little Rawdon did not cause either
party much pain.  She had not, to say truth, seen much of the young
gentleman since his birth. After the amiable fashion of French mothers,
she had placed him out at nurse in a village in the neighbourhood of
Paris, where little Rawdon passed the first months of his life, not
unhappily, with a numerous family of foster-brothers in wooden shoes.
His father would ride over many a time to see him here, and the elder
Rawdon's paternal heart glowed to see him rosy and dirty, shouting
lustily, and happy in the making of mud-pies under the superintendence
of the gardener's wife, his nurse.

Rebecca did not care much to go and see the son and heir.  Once he
spoiled a new dove-coloured pelisse of hers.  He preferred his nurse's
caresses to his mamma's, and when finally he quitted that jolly nurse
and almost parent, he cried loudly for hours.  He was only consoled by
his mother's promise that he should return to his nurse the next day;
indeed the nurse herself, who probably would have been pained at the
parting too, was told that the child would immediately be restored to
her, and for some time awaited quite anxiously his return.

In fact, our friends may be said to have been among the first of that
brood of hardy English adventurers who have subsequently invaded the
Continent and swindled in all the capitals of Europe. The respect in
those happy days of 1817-18 was very great for the wealth and honour of
Britons.  They had not then learned, as I am told, to haggle for
bargains with the pertinacity which now distinguishes them.  The great
cities of Europe had not been as yet open to the enterprise of our
rascals. And whereas there is now hardly a town of France or Italy in
which you shall not see some noble countryman of our own, with that
happy swagger and insolence of demeanour which we carry everywhere,
swindling inn-landlords, passing fictitious cheques upon credulous
bankers, robbing coach-makers of their carriages, goldsmiths of their
trinkets, easy travellers of their money at cards, even public
libraries of their books--thirty years ago you needed but to be a Milor
Anglais, travelling in a private carriage, and credit was at your hand
wherever you chose to seek it, and gentlemen, instead of cheating, were
cheated.  It was not for some weeks after the Crawleys' departure that
the landlord of the hotel which they occupied during their residence at
Paris found out the losses which he had sustained:  not until Madame
Marabou, the milliner, made repeated visits with her little bill for
articles supplied to Madame Crawley; not until Monsieur Didelot from
Boule d'Or in the Palais Royal had asked half a dozen times whether
cette charmante Miladi who had bought watches and bracelets of him was
de retour. It is a fact that even the poor gardener's wife, who had
nursed madame's child, was never paid after the first six months for
that supply of the milk of human kindness with which she had furnished
the lusty and healthy little Rawdon.  No, not even the nurse was
paid--the Crawleys were in too great a hurry to remember their trifling
debt to her.  As for the landlord of the hotel, his curses against the
English nation were violent for the rest of his natural life.  He asked
all travellers whether they knew a certain Colonel Lor Crawley--avec sa
femme une petite dame, tres spirituelle.  "Ah, Monsieur!" he would
add--"ils m'ont affreusement vole." It was melancholy to hear his
accents as he spoke of that catastrophe.

Rebecca's object in her journey to London was to effect a kind of
compromise with her husband's numerous creditors, and by offering them
a dividend of ninepence or a shilling in the pound, to secure a return
for him into his own country.  It does not become us to trace the steps
which she took in the conduct of this most difficult negotiation; but,
having shown them to their satisfaction that the sum which she was
empowered to offer was all her husband's available capital, and having
convinced them that Colonel Crawley would prefer a perpetual retirement
on the Continent to a residence in this country with his debts
unsettled; having proved to them that there was no possibility of money
accruing to him from other quarters, and no earthly chance of their
getting a larger dividend than that which she was empowered to offer,
she brought the Colonel's creditors unanimously to accept her
proposals, and purchased with fifteen hundred pounds of ready money
more than ten times that amount of debts.

Mrs. Crawley employed no lawyer in the transaction. The matter was so
simple, to have or to leave, as she justly observed, that she made the
lawyers of the creditors themselves do the business.  And Mr. Lewis
representing Mr. Davids, of Red Lion Square, and Mr. Moss acting for
Mr. Manasseh of Cursitor Street (chief creditors of the Colonel's),
complimented his lady upon the brilliant way in which she did business,
and declared that there was no professional man who could beat her.

Rebecca received their congratulations with perfect modesty; ordered a
bottle of sherry and a bread cake to the little dingy lodgings where
she dwelt, while conducting the business, to treat the enemy's lawyers:
shook hands with them at parting, in excellent good humour, and
returned straightway to the Continent, to rejoin her husband and son
and acquaint the former with the glad news of his entire liberation.
As for the latter, he had been considerably neglected during his
mother's absence by Mademoiselle Genevieve, her French maid; for that
young woman, contracting an attachment for a soldier in the garrison of
Calais, forgot her charge in the society of this militaire, and little
Rawdon very narrowly escaped drowning on Calais sands at this period,
where the absent Genevieve had left and lost him.

And so, Colonel and Mrs. Crawley came to London: and it is at their
house in Curzon Street, May Fair, that they really showed the skill
which must be possessed by those who would live on the resources above
named.

 Becky flirts with Jos because she believes it might behoove her to be on good terms with him. He, of course, falls for her charms. Becky also looks in on the sick Amelia, who does not leave her room and does not eat because of her grief over George's departure. To Becky's surprise, Amelia lashes out at her for flirting with her husband and being an unfaithful wife. Becky, slightly touched by this display, tries to calm her down, but is forced to call in Mrs. O'Dowd to take care of her. Meanwhile, news is that the Duke of Wellington's army has been defeated. Jos refuses to believe that this is possible. While Jos and Mrs. O'Dowd dine, they hear cannons, which disturbs them. Jos is frightened that the battle will come to them, and he is determined to leave Brussels. He dresses himself in civilian clothing in order to be mistaken as a clergyman and shaves. He gives his military uniform to Isidor to wear. He tries to convince Amelia to go with him, but she refuses, wanting to hear news about George. Rumors in Brussels are that the Belgian troops have suffered great losses and that the Britons behind them are now enduring major casualties. After hearing this, everyone is desperate to leave Brussels. But Becky has most of the horses and is determined to earn herself a hefty profit. Lady Bareacres, one of the nobles she was trying to charm, tries to buy a horse, but Becky refuses her. She finally sells her remaining two horses to Jos for an enormous sum. It is then learned that the rumors are incorrect and that the Britons are successfully driving back the French troops. Amelia desperately seeks information, and she runs into a wounded ensign who reports that Major O'Dowd, George and Dobbin are all fine. Dobbin is the one who rescued the ensign and sent him to Amelia with the message that George is safe. Napoleon, who has been fighting the Prussians, plans on turning the battle to Brussels. While everyone worries, Becky fantasizes about the life she might have if Rawdon dies. Jos continues to entreat Amelia to leave with him; she refuses, wanting to wait for George. Jos leaves with his valet. The Britons manage to hold off and defeat the French at Waterloo. George dies in battle. The novel moves back to Queen's Crawley. Aunt Matilda has just learned that her nephew Rawdon has earned honors in battle and has been promoted, but she can only think of how he married below him. Meanwhile, Sir Pitt has spiraled into a destructive lifestyle since Becky refused his hand in marriage. He embarrasses the rest of the family, spending much time in the company of the peasants who rent from them and cavorting with the butler's daughter, Ms. Horrocks. Young Pitt is left to manage all of the household affairs. Young Pitt has been courting Lady Sheepshanks, the daughter of the scandalous Lady Southdown. He has himself become interested in Aunt Matilda's money, so he suggests enhancing the friendship to Jane and her mother. Lady Jane and Young Pitt visit her, and she encourages them to visit often, for she likes Lady Jane. Mrs. Bute, jealous of the proceedings, sends her handsome son from Oxford to charm Aunt Matilda. James does indeed manage to charm her; in fact, she invites him to stay with her at her home. Young Sir Pitt is jealous of this, since his aunt has never invited him to live with her. He joins James for some wine, and as they get progressively drunk, he encourages him to do all sorts of unsavory things and convinces him that Aunt Matilda will appreciate him for it. So the following day, James speaks his mind, compliments and drinks far too much of her wine, and finally, smokes a pipe inside the house. This incites Matilda to throw him out. Becky and Rawdon have been living the high life in Paris. Becky is a smashing success in Parisian society. She has been dropping Aunt Matilda's name in order to promote herself. She gives birth to a boy in March 1816, and Rawdon names him as his heir. Matilda, nervous about the new baby, encourages Young Pitt and Lady Jane to marry. She promises them a yearly allowance as well as the bulk of her fortune when she dies. The Osbornes receive news of George's death. Old Osborne treats it as judgment being passed for his son's behavior. Dobbin delivers the letter George left for his father, which entreats him to think of Amelia should he die. When John Osborne notices a memorial to George in church, he decides to go to Brussels to visit his son's burial site. Dobbin has chosen the site because George mentioned once that it would be a nice place to be buried. John Osborne is upset that his son is buried in a common cemetery. While on his tour of the battlegrounds, John notices Amelia and Dobbin, but he ignores them and hurries on his way. Amelia has been sick with grief and living in Brussels since the passage of her husband. But when her son Georgy is born, everything changes. He reminds her of George, so she is able to come to life again. However, she is quite paranoid about the child, not wanting anyone near him but Dobbin. Dobbin tries to get John Osborne to support the child, but Osborne refuses. Dobbin, Amelia and the baby return to England to live with the Sedleys. Dobbin brings everyone gifts every day. But soon he is overwhelmed by his love for Amelia and realizes he cannot stay with her anymore. He informs her that he is leaving with the military. Becky has remained at the height of Parisian society, which Rawdon ignored because he does not know how to speak French. Rawdon spent his time gambling, which he was quite good at, but which made Becky nervous because of all the IOUs he had to write when he did not win. Mrs. O'Dowd warns her husband not to gamble with Rawdon, and Becky argues with her about her interference. Becky solicits General Tufto for help with gambling debts. Becky is a terrible mother to her son. She sends him away to a nursemaid because she cannot stand the mess he makes. Rawdon, however, is quite the doting father; he manages to visit his son every day. In order to leave Paris and go back to England, Rebecca invents outrageous lies about Aunt Matilda and is only held accountable for a portion of their debts.

