found
one where the Misses Osborne were to be present.
Making his appearance at the ball, where he danced a couple
of sets with both of them, and was prodigiously polite, he
actually had the courage to ask Miss Osborne for a few
minutes' conversation at an early hour the next day, when
he had, he said, to communicate to her news of the
very greatest interest.

What was it that made her start back, and gaze upon
him for a moment, and then on the ground at her feet,
and make as if she would faint on his arm, had he not by
opportunely treading on her toes, brought the young lady
back to self-control?  Why was she so violently agitated
at Dobbin's request?  This can never be known.  But when
he came the next day, Maria was not in the drawing-room
with her sister, and Miss Wirt went off for the purpose
of fetching the latter, and the Captain and Miss Osborne
were left together.  They were both so silent that the ticktock
of the Sacrifice of Iphigenia clock on the mantelpiece
became quite rudely audible.

"What a nice party it was last night," Miss Osborne at
length began, encouragingly; "and--and how you're
improved in your dancing, Captain Dobbin.  Surely somebody
has taught you," she added, with amiable archness.

"You should see me dance a reel with Mrs. Major
O'Dowd of ours; and a jig--did you ever see a jig?  But
I think anybody could dance with you, Miss Osborne,
who dance so well."

"Is the Major's lady young and beautiful, Captain?" the
fair questioner continued.  "Ah, what a terrible thing it
must be to be a soldier's wife!  I wonder they have any
spirits to dance, and in these dreadful times of war, too!
O Captain Dobbin, I tremble sometimes when I think of
our dearest George, and the dangers of the poor soldier.
Are there many married officers of the --th, Captain
Dobbin?"

"Upon my word, she's playing her hand rather too
openly," Miss Wirt thought; but this observation is merely parenthetic, and was not heard through the crevice of
the door at which the governess uttered it.

"One of our young men is just married," Dobbin said,
now coming to the point.  "It was a very old attachment,
and the young couple are as poor as church mice."
"O, how delightful! O, how romantic!" Miss Osborne
cried, as the Captain said "old attachment" and "poor."
Her sympathy encouraged him.

"The finest young fellow in the regiment," he continued.
"Not a braver or handsomer officer in the army; and
such a charming wife!  How you would like her!  how
you will like her when you know her, Miss Osborne."  The
young lady thought the actual moment had arrived, and
that Dobbin's nervousness which now came on and was
visible in many twitchings of his face, in his manner of
beating the ground with his great feet, in the rapid
buttoning and unbuttoning of his frock-coat, &c.--Miss
Osborne, I say, thought that when he had given himself a
little air, he would unbosom himself entirely, and
prepared eagerly to listen.  And the clock, in the altar on
which Iphigenia was situated, beginning, after a preparatory convulsion, to toll twelve, the mere tolling seemed
as if it would last until one--so prolonged was the knell
to the anxious spinster.

"But it's not about marriage that I came to speak--
that is that marriage--that is--no, I mean--my dear
Miss Osborne, it's about our dear friend George,"
Dobbin said.

"About George?" she said in a tone so discomfited
that Maria and Miss Wirt laughed at the other side of
the door, and even that abandoned wretch of a Dobbin
felt inclined to smile himself; for he was not altogether
unconscious of the state of affairs:  George having often
bantered him gracefully and said, "Hang it, Will, why
don't you take old Jane?  She'll have you if you ask her.
I'll bet you five to two she will."

"Yes, about George, then," he continued.  "There has
been a difference between him and Mr. Osborne.  And I
regard him so much--for you know we have been like
brothers--that I hope and pray the quarrel may be
settled.  We must go abroad, Miss Osborne.  We may be
ordered off at a day's warning.  Who knows what may
happen in the campaign?  Don't be agitated, dear Miss
Osborne; and those two at least should part friends."

"There has been no quarrel, Captain Dobbin, except
a little usual scene with Papa," the lady said.  "We are
expecting George back daily.  What Papa wanted was only
for his good.  He has but to come back, and I'm sure all
will be well; and dear Rhoda, who went away from here
in sad sad anger, I know will forgive him.  Woman forgives
but too readily, Captain."

"Such an angel as YOU I am sure would," Mr. Dobbin
said, with atrocious astuteness.  "And no man can pardon
himself for giving a woman pain.  What would you feel,
if a man were faithless to you?"

"I should perish--I should throw myself out of window--
I should take poison--I should pine and die.  I
know I should," Miss cried, who had nevertheless gone
through one or two affairs of the heart without any idea
of suicide.

"And there are others," Dobbin continued, "as true
and as kind-hearted as yourself.  I'm not speaking about
the West Indian heiress, Miss Osborne, but about a poor
girl whom George once loved, and who was bred from
her childhood to think of nobody but him.  I've seen her
in her poverty uncomplaining, broken-hearted, without a
fault.  It is of Miss Sedley I speak.  Dear Miss Osborne,
can your generous heart quarrel with your brother for
being faithful to her?  Could his own conscience ever
forgive him if he deserted her?  Be her friend--she always
loved you--and--and I am come here charged by George
to tell you that he holds his engagement to her as the
most sacred duty he has; and to entreat you, at least,
to be on his side."

When any strong emotion took possession of Mr. Dobbin,
and after the first word or two of hesitation, he could
speak with perfect fluency, and it was evident that his
eloquence on this occasion made some impression upon
the lady whom he addressed.

"Well," said she, "this is--most surprising--most painful--
most extraordinary--what will Papa say?--that
George should fling away such a superb establishment as
was offered to himbut at any rate he has found a very
brave champion in you, Captain Dobbin.  It is of no use,
however," she continued, after a pause; "I feel for poor
Miss Sedley, most certainly--most sincerely, you know.
We never thought the match a good one, though we were
always very kind to her here--very.  But Papa will never
consent, I am sure.  And a well brought up young woman,
you know--with a well-regulated mind, must--George
must give her up, dear Captain Dobbin, indeed he must."

"Ought a man to give up the woman he loved, just
when misfortune befell her?" Dobbin said, holding out
his hand.  "Dear Miss Osborne, is this the counsel I hear
from you?  My dear young lady! you must befriend her.
He can't give her up.  He must not give her up.  Would a
man, think you, give YOU up if you were poor?"

This adroit question touched the heart of Miss Jane
Osborne not a little.  "I don't know whether we poor girls
ought to believe what you men say, Captain," she said.
"There is that in woman's tenderness which induces her
to believe too easily.  I'm afraid you are cruel, cruel
deceivers,"--and Dobbin certainly thought he felt a
pressure of the hand which Miss Osborne had extended
to him.

He dropped it in some alarm.  "Deceivers!" said he.
"No, dear Miss Osborne, all men are not; your brother
is not; George has loved Amelia Sedley ever since they
were children; no wealth would make him marry any but
her.  Ought he to forsake her?  Would you counsel him to
do so?"

What could Miss Jane say to such a question, and with
her own peculiar views?  She could not answer it, so she
parried it by saying, "Well, if you are not a deceiver, at
least you are very romantic"; and Captain William let
this observation pass without challenge.

At length when, by the help of farther polite speeches,
he deemed that Miss Osborne was sufficiently prepared to
receive the whole news, he poured it into her ear.
"George could not give up Amelia--George was married
to her"--and then he related the circumstances of the
marriage as we know them already:  how the poor girl
would have died had not her lover kept his faith:  how
Old Sedley had refused all consent to the match, and a
licence had been got: and Jos Sedley had come from
Cheltenham to give away the bride: how they had gone
to Brighton in Jos's chariot-and-four to pass the honeymoon:
and how George counted on his dear kind sisters to
befriend him with their father, as women--so true
and tender as they were--assuredly would do.  And so,
asking permission (readily granted) to see her again, and
rightly conjecturing that the news he had brought would
be told in the next five minutes to the other ladies,
Captain Dobbin made his bow and took his leave.

He was scarcely out of the house, when Miss Maria
and Miss Wirt rushed in to Miss Osborne, and the
whole wonderful secret was imparted to them by that
lady.  To do them justice, neither of the sisters was very
much displeased.  There is something about a runaway
match with which few ladies can be seriously angry, and
Amelia rather rose in their estimation, from the spirit
which she had displayed in consenting to the union.  As
they debated the story, and prattled about it, and wondered
what Papa would do and say, came a loud knock,
as of an avenging thunder-clap, at the door, which made
these conspirators start.  It must be Papa, they thought.
But it was not he.  It was only Mr. Frederick Bullock,
who had come from the City according to appointment,
to conduct the ladies to a flower-show.

This gentleman, as may be imagined, was not kept
long in ignorance of the secret.  But his face, when he
heard it, showed an amazement which was very different
to that look of sentimental wonder which the countenances
of the sisters wore.  Mr. Bullock was a man of the world,
and a junior partner of a wealthy firm.  He knew what
money was, and the value of it: and a delightful throb
of expectation lighted up his little eyes, and caused him
to smile on his Maria, as he thought that by this piece
of folly of Mr. George's she might be worth thirty
thousand pounds more than he had ever hoped to
get with her.

"Gad!  Jane," said he, surveying even the elder sister
with some interest, "Eels will be sorry he cried off.  You
may be a fifty thousand pounder yet."

The sisters had never thought of the money question
up to that moment, but Fred Bullock bantered them
with graceful gaiety about it during their forenoon's
excursion; and they had risen not a little in their own
esteem by the time when, the morning amusement over,
they drove back to dinner.  And do not let my respected
reader exclaim against this selfishness as unnatural.  It
was but this present morning, as he rode on the omnibus
from Richmond; while it changed horses, this present
chronicler, being on the roof, marked three little children
playing in a puddle below, very dirty, and friendly, and
happy.  To these three presently came another little one.
"POLLY," says she, "YOUR SISTER'S GOT A PENNY."  At which
the children got up from the puddle instantly, and ran
off to pay their court to Peggy.  And as the omnibus drove
off I saw Peggy with the infantine procession at her
tail, marching with great dignity towards the stall of a
neighbouring lollipop-woman.




CHAPTER XXIV



In Which Mr. Osborne Takes Down the Family Bible

So having prepared the sisters, Dobbin hastened away
to the City to perform the rest and more difficult part
of the task which he had undertaken.  The idea of facing
old Osborne rendered him not a little nervous, and more
than once he thought of leaving the young ladies to
communicate the secret, which, as he was aware, they could
not long retain.  But he had promised to report to George
upon the manner in which the elder Osborne bore the
intelligence; so going into the City to the paternal
counting-house in Thames Street, he despatched thence
a note to Mr. Osborne begging for a half-hour's conversation
relative to the affairs of his son George.  Dobbin's messenger
returned from Mr. Osborne's house of business, with the
compliments of the latter, who would be very happy to see the
Captain immediately, and away accordingly Dobbin went
to confront him.

The Captain, with a half-guilty secret to confess, and
with the prospect of a painful and stormy interview
before him, entered Mr. Osborne's offices with a most
dismal countenance and abashed gait, and, passing through
the outer room where Mr. Chopper presided, was greeted
by that functionary from his desk with a waggish air
which farther discomfited him.  Mr. Chopper winked and
nodded and pointed his pen towards his patron's door,
and said, "You'll find the governor all right," with the
most provoking good humour.

Osborne rose too, and shook him heartily by the hand,
and said, "How do, my dear boy?" with a cordiality that
made poor George's ambassador feel doubly guilty.  His
hand lay as if dead in the old gentleman's grasp.  He felt
that he, Dobbin, was more or less the cause of all that
had happened.  It was he had brought back George to
Amelia: it was he had applauded, encouraged, transacted
almost the marriage which he was come to reveal to
George's father:  and the latter was receiving him with
smiles of welcome; patting him on the shoulder, and calling
him "Dobbin, my dear boy." The envoy had indeed
good reason to hang his head.

Osborne fully believed that Dobbin had come to
announce his son's surrender.  Mr. Chopper and his
principal were talking over the matter between George and
his father, at the very moment when Dobbin's messenger
arrived.  Both agreed that George was sending in his
submission.  Both had been expecting it for some days--and
"Lord! Chopper, what a marriage we'll have!" Mr.
Osborne said to his clerk, snapping his big fingers, and
jingling all the guineas and shillings in his great pockets
as he eyed his subordinate with a look of triumph.

With similar operations conducted in both pockets,
and a knowing jolly air, Osborne from his chair regarded
Dobbin seated blank and silent opposite to him.  "What
a bumpkin he is for a Captain in the army," old Osborne
thought.  "I wonder George hasn't taught him better
manners."

At last Dobbin summoned courage to begin.  "Sir," said
he, "I've brought you some very grave news.  I have been
at the Horse Guards this morning, and there's no doubt
that our regiment will be ordered abroad, and on its
way to Belgium before the week is over.  And you know,
sir, that we shan't be home again before a tussle which
may be fatal to many of us."
  Osborne looked grave.  "My s-- , the regiment will
do its duty, sir, I daresay," he said.

"The French are very strong, sir," Dobbin went on.
"The Russians and Austrians will be a long time before
they can bring their troops down.  We shall have the first
of the fight, sir; and depend on it Boney will take care
that it shall be a hard one."

"What are you driving at, Dobbin?" his interlocutor
said, uneasy and with a scowl.  "I suppose no Briton's
afraid of any d-- Frenchman, hey?"

"I only mean, that before we go, and considering the
great and certain risk that hangs over every one of us--
if there are any differences between you and George--it
would be as well, sir, that--that you should shake hands:
wouldn't it?  Should anything happen to him, I think you
would never forgive yourself if you hadn't parted in
charity."

As he said this, poor William Dobbin blushed crimson,
and felt and owned that he himself was a traitor.  But
for him, perhaps, this severance need never have taken
place.  Why had not George's marriage been delayed?
What call was there to press it on so eagerly?  He felt that
George would have parted from Amelia at any rate without
a mortal pang.  Amelia, too, MIGHT have recovered the
shock of losing him.  It was his counsel had brought
about this marriage, and all that was to ensue from it.
And why was it?  Because he loved her so much that he
could not bear to see her unhappy:  or because his own
sufferings of suspense were so unendurable that he was
glad to crush them at once--as we hasten a funeral
after a death, or, when a separation from those we love
is imminent, cannot rest until the parting be over.

"You are a good fellow, William," said Mr. Osborne in
a softened voice; "and me and George shouldn't part in
anger, that is true.  Look here.  I've done for him as
much as any father ever did.  He's had three times as
much money from me, as I warrant your father ever
gave you.  But I don't brag about that.  How I've toiled
for him, and worked and employed my talents and energy,
I won't say.  Ask Chopper.  Ask himself.  Ask the City of
London.  Well, I propose to him such a marriage as any
nobleman in the land might be proud of--the only thing
in life I ever asked him--and he refuses me.  Am I wrong?
Is the quarrel of MY making?  What do I seek but his
good, for which I've been toiling like a convict ever since
he was born?  Nobody can say there's anything selfish in
me.  Let him come back.  I say, here's my hand.  I say,
forget and forgive.  As for marrying now, it's out of the
question.  Let him and Miss S. make it up, and make out the
marriage afterwards, when he comes back a Colonel;
for he shall be a Colonel, by G-- he shall, if money
can do it.  I'm glad you've brought him round.  I know it's
you, Dobbin.  You've took him out of many a scrape
before.  Let him come.  I shan't be hard.  Come along, and
dine in Russell Square to-day: both of you.  The old shop,
the old hour.  You'll find a neck of venison, and no
questions asked."

This praise and confidence smote Dobbin's heart very
keenly.  Every moment the colloquy continued in this
tone, he felt more and more guilty.  "Sir," said he, "I
fear you deceive yourself.  I am sure you do.  George is
much too high-minded a man ever to marry for money.  A
threat on your part that you would disinherit him in
case of disobedience would only be followed by resistance
on his."

"Why, hang it, man, you don't call offering him eight
or ten thousand a year threatening him?'' Mr. Osborne
said, with still provoking good humour.  "'Gad, if Miss
S. will have me, I'm her man.  I ain't particular about a
shade or so of tawny." And the old gentleman gave his
knowing grin and coarse laugh.

"You forget, sir, previous engagements into which
Captain Osborne had entered," the ambassador said, gravely.

"What engagements? What the devil do you mean?
You don't mean," Mr. Osborne continued, gathering
wrath and astonishment as the thought now first came
upon him; "you don't mean that he's such a d-- fool
as to be still hankering after that swindling old bankrupt's
daughter?  You've not come here for to make me
suppose that he wants to marry HER?  Marry HER, that IS
a good one.  My son and heir marry a beggar's girl out of
a gutter.  D-- him, if he does, let him buy a broom
and sweep a crossing.  She was always dangling and ogling
after him, I recollect now; and I've no doubt she was
put on by her old sharper of a father."

"Mr. Sedley was your very good friend, sir," Dobbin
interposed, almost pleased at finding himself growing
angry.  "Time was you called him better names than
rogue and swindler.  The match was of your making.
George had no right to play fast and loose--"

"Fast and loose!" howled out old Osborne.  "Fast and
loose!  Why, hang me, those are the very words my
gentleman used himself when he gave himself airs, last
Thursday was a fortnight, and talked about the British army
to his father who made him.  What, it's you who have
been a setting of him up--is it? and my service to you,
CAPTAIN.  It's you who want to introduce beggars into my
family.  Thank you for nothing, Captain.  Marry HER indeed
--he, he! why should he?  I warrant you she'd go to him
fast enough without."

"Sir," said Dobbin, starting up in undisguised anger;
"no man shall abuse that lady in my hearing, and you
least of all."

"O, you're a-going to call me out, are you?  Stop, let me
ring the bell for pistols for two.  Mr. George sent you
here to insult his father, did he?" Osborne said, pulling
at the bell-cord.

"Mr. Osborne," said Dobbin, with a faltering voice,
"it's you who are insulting the best creature in the world.
You had best spare her, sir, for she's your son's wife."

And with this, feeling that he could say no more, Dobbin
went away, Osborne sinking back in his chair, and
looking wildly after him.  A clerk came in, obedient to the
bell; and the Captain was scarcely out of the court where
Mr. Osborne's offices were, when Mr. Chopper the chief
clerk came rushing hatless after him.

"For God's sake, what is it?" Mr. Chopper said, catching
the Captain by the skirt.  "The governor's in a fit.
What has Mr. George been doing?"

"He married Miss Sedley five days ago," Dobbin replied.
"I was his groomsman, Mr. Chopper, and you must
stand his friend."

The old clerk shook his head.  "If that's your news,
Captain, it's bad.  The governor will never forgive him."

Dobbin begged Chopper to report progress to him at
the hotel where he was stopping, and walked off moodily
westwards, greatly perturbed as to the past and the
future.

When the Russell Square family came to dinner that
evening, they found the father of the house seated in his
usual place, but with that air of gloom on his face, which,
whenever it appeared there, kept the whole circle silent.
The ladies, and Mr. Bullock who dined with them, felt
that the news had been communicated to Mr. Osborne.
His dark looks affected Mr. Bullock so far as to render
him still and quiet: but he was unusually bland and
attentive to Miss Maria, by whom he sat, and to her sister
presiding at the head of the table.

Miss Wirt, by consequence, was alone on her side of
the board, a gap being left between her and Miss Jane
Osborne.  Now this was George's place when he dined at
home; and his cover, as we said, was laid for him in
expectation of that truant's return.  Nothing occurred
during dinner-time except smiling Mr. Frederick's flagging
confidential whispers, and the clinking of plate and china,
to interrupt the silence of the repast.  The servants went
about stealthily doing their duty.  Mutes at funerals could
not look more glum than the domestics of Mr. Osborne
The neck of venison of which he had invited Dobbin to
partake, was carved by him in perfect silence; but his
own share went away almost untasted, though he drank
much, and the butler assiduously filled his glass.

At last, just at the end of the dinner, his eyes, which
had been staring at everybody in turn, fixed themselves
for a while upon the plate laid for George.  He pointed
to it presently with his left hand.  His daughters looked at
him and did not comprehend, or choose to comprehend,
the signal; nor did the servants at first understand it.

"Take that plate away," at last he said, getting up with
an oath--and with this pushing his chair back, he walked
into his own room.

Behind Mr. Osborne's dining-room was the usual
apartment which went in his house by the name of the
study; and was sacred to the master of the house.  Hither
Mr. Osborne would retire of a Sunday forenoon when
not minded to go to church; and here pass the morning
in his crimson leather chair, reading the paper.  A couple
of glazed book-cases were here, containing standard
works in stout gilt bindings.  The "Annual Register," the
"Gentleman's Magazine," "Blair's Sermons," and "Hume
and Smollett." From year's end to year's end he never
took one of these volumes from the shelf; but there was
no member of the family that would dare for his life to
touch one of the books, except upon those rare Sunday
evenings when there was no dinner-party, and when the
great scarlet Bible and Prayer-book were taken out from
the corner where they stood beside his copy of the Peerage,
and the servants being rung up to the dining parlour,
Osborne read the evening service to his family in a
loud grating pompous voice.  No member of the household,
child, or domestic, ever entered that room without
a certain terror.  Here he checked the housekeeper's accounts,
and overhauled the butler's cellar-book.  Hence he
could command, across the clean gravel court-yard, the
back entrance of the stables with which one of his bells
communicated, and into this yard the coachman issued
from his premises as into a dock, and Osborne swore at
him from the study window.  Four times a year Miss
Wirt entered this apartment to get her salary; and his
daughters to receive their quarterly allowance.  George
as a boy had been horsewhipped in this room many
times; his mother sitting sick on the stair listening to the
cuts of the whip.  The boy was scarcely ever known to
cry under the punishment; the poor woman used to
fondle and kiss him secretly, and give him money to
soothe him when he came out.

There was a picture of the family over the mantelpiece,
removed thither from the front room after Mrs. Osborne's
death--George was on a pony, the elder sister
holding him up a bunch of flowers; the younger led by
her mother's hand; all with red cheeks and large red
mouths, simpering on each other in the approved family-
portrait manner.  The mother lay underground now, long
since forgotten--the sisters and brother had a hundred
different interests of their own, and, familiar still, were
utterly estranged from each other.  Some few score of
years afterwards, when all the parties represented are
grown old, what bitter satire there is in those flaunting
childish family-portraits, with their farce of sentiment and
smiling lies, and innocence so self-conscious and self-
satisfied.  Osborne's own state portrait, with that of his
great silver inkstand and arm-chair, had taken the place
of honour in the dining-room, vacated by the family-
piece.

To this study old Osborne retired then, greatly to the
relief of the small party whom he left.  When the
servants had withdrawn, they began to talk for a while
volubly but very low; then they went upstairs quietly,
Mr. Bullock accompanying them stealthily on his creaking
shoes.  He had no heart to sit alone drinking wine,
and so close to the terrible old gentleman in the study
hard at hand.

An hour at least after dark, the butler, not having
received any summons, ventured to tap at his door and
take him in wax candles and tea.  The master of the
house sate in his chair, pretending to read the paper,
and when the servant, placing the lights and refreshment
on the table by him, retired, Mr. Osborne got up and
locked the door after him.  This time there was no mistaking
the matter; all the household knew that some great
catastrophe was going to happen which was likely direly
to affect Master George.

In the large shining mahogany escritoire Mr. Osborne
had a drawer especially devoted to his son's affairs and
papers.  Here he kept all the documents relating to him
ever since he had been a boy: here were his prize copy-
books and drawing-books, all bearing George's hand,
and that of the master:  here were his first letters in large
round-hand sending his love to papa and mamma, and
conveying his petitions for a cake.  His dear godpapa
Sedley was more than once mentioned in them.  Curses
quivered on old Osborne's livid lips, and horrid hatred
and disappointment writhed in his heart, as looking
through some of these papers he came on that name.
They were all marked and docketed, and tied with red tape.
It was--From Georgy, requesting 5s., April 23, 18--;
answered, April 25"--or "Georgy about a pony, October
13"--and so forth. In another packet were "Dr. S.'s accounts"
--"G.'s tailor's bills and outfits, drafts on me by
G. Osborne, jun.," &c.--his letters from the West Indies
--his agent's letters, and the newspapers containing his
commissions: here was a whip he had when a boy, and in
a paper a locket containing his hair, which his mother
used to wear.

Turning one over after another, and musing over these
memorials, the unhappy man passed many hours.  His
dearest vanities, ambitious hopes, had all been here.  What
pride he had in his boy!  He was the handsomest child
ever seen.  Everybody said he was like a nobleman's
son.  A royal princess had remarked him, and kissed
him, and asked his name in Kew Gardens.  What City
man could show such another?  Could a prince have been
better cared for?  Anything that money could buy had
been his son's.  He used to go down on speech-days with
four horses and new liveries, and scatter new shillings
among the boys at the school where George was:  when
he went with George to the depot of his regiment, before
the boy embarked for Canada, he gave the officers
such a dinner as the Duke of York might have sat down
to.  Had he ever refused a bill when George drew one?
There they were--paid without a word.  Many a general
in the army couldn't ride the horses he had!  He had the
child before his eyes, on a hundred different days when
he remembered George after dinner, when he used
to come in as bold as a lord and drink off his glass by
his father's side, at the head of the table--on the pony
at Brighton, when he cleared the hedge and kept up with
the huntsman--on the day when he was presented to
the Prince Regent at the levee, when all Saint James's
couldn't produce a finer young fellow.  And this, this was
the end of all!--to marry a bankrupt and fly in the face
of duty and fortune!  What humiliation and fury:  what
pangs of sickening rage, balked ambition and love; what
wounds of outraged vanity, tenderness even, had this
old worldling now to suffer under!

Having examined these papers, and pondered over this
one and the other, in that bitterest of all helpless woe,
with which miserable men think of happy past times--
George's father took the whole of the documents out of
the drawer in which he had kept them so long, and locked
them into a writing-box, which he tied, and sealed with
his seal.  Then he opened the book-case, and took down
the great red Bible we have spoken of a pompous
book, seldom looked at, and shining all over with gold.
There was a frontispiece to the volume, representing
Abraham sacrificing Isaac.  Here, according to custom,
Osborne had recorded on the fly-leaf, and in his large
clerk-like hand, the dates of his marriage and his wife's
death, and the births and Christian names of his children.
Jane came first, then George Sedley Osborne, then Maria
Frances, and the days of the christening of each.  Taking
a pen, he carefully obliterated George's names from
the page; and when the leaf was quite dry, restored the
volume to the place from which he had moved it.  Then
he took a document out of another drawer, where his
own private papers were kept; and having read it, crumpled
it up and lighted it at one of the candles, and saw it
burn entirely away in the grate.  It was his will; which
being burned, he sate down and wrote off a letter, and
rang for his servant, whom he charged to deliver it in the
morning.  It was morning already: as he went up to bed,
the whole house was alight with the sunshine; and the
birds were singing among the fresh green leaves in
Russell Square.

Anxious to keep all Mr. Osborne's family and dependants
in good humour, and to make as many friends as
possible for George in his hour of adversity, William Dobbin,
who knew the effect which good dinners and good
wines have upon the soul of man, wrote off immediately
on his return to his inn the most hospitable of invitations
to Thomas Chopper, Esquire, begging that gentleman to
dine with him at the Slaughters' next day.  The note
reached Mr. Chopper before he left the City, and the
instant reply was, that "Mr. Chopper presents his
respectful compliments, and will have the honour and
pleasure of waiting on Captain D."  The invitation and the
rough draft of the answer were shown to Mrs. Chopper
and her daughters on his return to Somers' Town that
evening, and they talked about military gents and West
End men with great exultation as the family sate and
partook of tea.  When the girls had gone to rest, Mr. and
Mrs. C. discoursed upon the strange events which were
occurring in the governor's family.  Never had the clerk
seen his principal so moved.  When he went in to Mr.
Osborne, after Captain Dobbin's departure, Mr. Chopper
found his chief black in the face, and all but in a fit:
some dreadful quarrel, he was certain, had occurred
between Mr. O. and the young Captain.  Chopper had been
instructed to make out an account of all sums paid to
Captain Osborne within the last three years.  "And a
precious lot of money he has had too," the chief clerk said,
and respected his old and young master the more, for
the liberal way in which the guineas had been flung about.
The dispute was something about Miss Sedley.  Mrs.
Chopper vowed and declared she pitied that poor young
lady to lose such a handsome young fellow as the Capting.
As the daughter of an unlucky speculator, who had paid a
very shabby dividend, Mr. Chopper had no great regard
for Miss Sedley.  He respected the house of Osborne
before all others in the City of London: and his hope and
wish was that Captain George should marry a nobleman's
daughter.  The clerk slept a great deal sounder than
his principal that night; and, cuddling his children after
breakfast (of which he partook with a very hearty
appetite, though his modest cup of life was only
sweetened with brown sugar), he set off in his best Sunday
suit and frilled shirt for business, promising his admiring
wife not to punish Captain D.'s port too severely that
evening.

Mr. Osborne's countenance, when he arrived in the
City at his usual time, struck those dependants who were
accustomed, for good reasons, to watch its expression,
as peculiarly ghastly and worn.  At twelve o'clock Mr.
Higgs (of the firm of Higgs & Blatherwick, solicitors,
Bedford Row) called by appointment, and was ushered
into the governor's private room, and closeted there for
more than an hour.  At about one Mr. Chopper
received a note brought by Captain Dobbin's man, and
containing an inclosure for Mr. Osborne, which the clerk
went in and delivered.  A short time afterwards Mr.
Chopper and Mr. Birch, the next clerk, were summoned, and
requested to witness a paper.  "I've been making a new
will," Mr. Osborne said, to which these gentlemen
appended their names accordingly.  No conversation
passed.  Mr. Higgs looked exceedingly grave as he came
into the outer rooms, and very hard in Mr. Chopper's
face; but there were not any explanations.  It was
remarked that Mr. Osborne was particularly quiet and
gentle all day, to the surprise of those who had augured ill
from his darkling demeanour.  He called no man names
that day, and was not heard to swear once.  He left business
early; and before going away, summoned his chief
clerk once more, and having given him general instructions,
asked him, after some seeming hesitation and reluctance
to speak, if he knew whether Captain Dobbin was in town?

Chopper said he believed he was.  Indeed both of them
knew the fact perfectly.

Osborne took a letter directed to that officer, and
giving it to the clerk, requested the latter to deliver it
into Dobbin's own hands immediately.

"And now, Chopper," says he, taking his hat, and with
a strange look, "my mind will be easy."  Exactly as the
clock struck two (there was no doubt an appointment
between the pair) Mr. Frederick Bullock called, and he
and Mr. Osborne walked away together.


The Colonel of the --th regiment, in which Messieurs
Dobbin and Osborne had companies, was an old General
who had made his first campaign under Wolfe at Quebec,
and was long since quite too old and feeble for command;
but he took some interest in the regiment of which
he was the nominal head, and made certain of his young
officers welcome at his table, a kind of hospitality
which I believe is not now common amongst his
brethren.  Captain Dobbin was an especial favourite
of this old General.  Dobbin was versed in the literature
of his profession, and could talk about the great Frederick,
and the Empress Queen, and their wars, almost as well
as the General himself, who was indifferent to the triumphs
of the present day, and whose heart was with the
tacticians of fifty years back.  This officer sent a summons
to Dobbin to come and breakfast with him, on the
morning when Mr. Osborne altered his will and Mr. Chopper
put on his best shirt frill, and then informed his young
favourite, a couple of days in advance, of that which they
were all expecting--a marching order to go to Belgium.
The order for the regiment to hold itself in readiness
would leave the Horse Guards in a day or two; and as
transports were in plenty, they would get their route
before the week was over.  Recruits had come in during
the stay of the regiment at Chatham; and the old General
hoped that the regiment which had helped to beat
Montcalm in Canada, and to rout Mr. Washington on
Long Island, would prove itself worthy of its historical
reputation on the oft-trodden battle-grounds of the Low
Countries.  "And so, my good friend, if you have any
affaire la, said the old General, taking a pinch of snuff
with his trembling white old hand, and then pointing to
the spot of his robe de chambre under which his heart
was still feebly beating, "if you have any Phillis to console,
or to bid farewell to papa and mamma, or any will
to make, I recommend you to set about your business
without delay." With which the General gave his young
friend a finger to shake, and a good-natured nod of his
powdered and pigtailed head; and the door being closed
upon Dobbin, sate down to pen a poulet (he was
exceedingly vain of his French) to Mademoiselle
Amenaide of His Majesty's Theatre.

This news made Dobbin grave, and he thought of our
friends at Brighton, and then he was ashamed of himself
that Amelia was always the first thing in his thoughts
(always before anybody--before father and mother,
sisters and duty--always at waking and sleeping indeed,
and all day long); and returning to his hotel, he sent off a
brief note to Mr. Osborne acquainting him with the
information which he had received, and which might tend
farther, he hoped, to bring about a reconciliation with
George.

This note, despatched by the same messenger who had
carried the invitation to Chopper on the previous day,
alarmed the worthy clerk not a little.  It was inclosed to
him, and as he opened the letter he trembled lest the
dinner should be put off on which he was calculating.  His
mind was inexpressibly relieved when he found that the
envelope was only a reminder for himself.  ("I shall
expect you at half-past five," Captain Dobbin wrote.) He was
very much interested about his employer's family; but,
que voulez-vous? a grand dinner was of more concern to
him than the affairs of any other mortal.

Dobbin was quite justified in repeating the General's
information to any officers of the regiment whom he
should see in the course of his peregrinations; accordingly
he imparted it to Ensign Stubble, whom he met at the
agent's, and who--such was his military ardour--went
off instantly to purchase a new sword at the
accoutrement-maker's.  Here this young fellow, who,
though only seventeen years of age, and about sixty-five
inches high, with a constitution naturally rickety and
much impaired by premature brandy and water, had an
undoubted courage and a lion's heart, poised, tried, bent,
and balanced a weapon such as he thought would do execution amongst Frenchmen.  Shouting "Ha, ha!" and stamping his little
feet with tremendous energy, he delivered the point twice
or thrice at Captain Dobbin, who parried the thrust
laughingly with his bamboo walking-stick.

Mr. Stubble, as may be supposed from his size and
slenderness, was of the Light Bobs.  Ensign Spooney, on
the contrary, was a tall youth, and belonged to (Captain
Dobbin's) the Grenadier Company, and he tried on a new
bearskin cap, under which he looked savage beyond his
years.  Then these two lads went off to the Slaughters', and
having ordered a famous dinner, sate down and wrote off
letters to the kind anxious parents at home--letters full of
love and heartiness, and pluck and bad spelling.  Ah! there
were many anxious hearts beating through England at
that time; and mothers' prayers and tears flowing in many
homesteads.

Seeing young Stubble engaged in composition at one of
the coffee-room tables at the Slaughters', and the tears
trickling down his nose on to the paper (for the youngster
was thinking of his mamma, and that he might never see
her again), Dobbin, who was going to write off a letter to
George Osborne, relented, and locked up his desk.  "Why
should I?" said he.  "Let her have this night happy.  I'll go
and see my parents early in the morning, and go down to
Brighton myself to-morrow."

So he went up and laid his big hand on young Stubble's
shoulder, and backed up that young champion, and told
him if he would leave off brandy and water he would
be a good soldier, as he always was a gentlemanly good-
hearted fellow.  Young Stubble's eyes brightened up at this,
for Dobbin was greatly respected in the regiment, as the
best officer and the cleverest man in it.

"Thank you, Dobbin," he said, rubbing his eyes with
his knuckles, "I was just--just telling her I would.  And,
O Sir, she's so dam kind to me." The water pumps were
at work again, and I am not sure that the soft-hearted
Captain's eyes did not also twinkle.

The two ensigns, the Captain, and Mr. Chopper, dined
together in the same box.  Chopper brought the letter from
Mr. Osborne, in which the latter briefly presented his
compliments to Captain Dobbin, and requested him to
forward the inclosed to Captain George Osborne.  Chopper
knew nothing further; he described Mr. Osborne's appearance,
it is true, and his interview with his lawyer, wondered
how the governor had sworn at nobody, and--especially
as the wine circled round--abounded in speculations
and conjectures.  But these grew more vague with
every glass, and at length became perfectly unintelligible.
At a late hour Captain Dobbin put his guest into a hackney
coach, in a hiccupping state, and swearing that he would
be the kick--the kick--Captain's friend for ever and ever.

When Captain Dobbin took leave of Miss Osborne we
have said that he asked leave to come and pay her
another visit, and the spinster expected him for some hours
the next day, when, perhaps, had he come, and had he
asked her that question which she was prepared to answer,
she would have declared herself as her brother's
friend, and a reconciliation might have been effected
between George and his angry father.  But though she waited
at home the Captain never came.  He had his own affairs
to pursue; his own parents to visit and console; and at an
early hour of the day to take his place on the Lightning
coach, and go down to his friends at Brighton.  In the
course of the day Miss Osborne heard her father give
orders that that meddling scoundrel, Captain Dobbin,
should never be admitted within his doors again, and any
hopes in which she may have indulged privately were thus
abruptly brought to an end.  Mr. Frederick Bullock came,
and was particularly affectionate to Maria, and attentive
to the broken-spirited old gentleman.  For though he said
his mind would be easy, the means which he had taken to
secure quiet did not seem to have succeeded as yet, and
the events of the past two days had visibly shattered him.




CHAPTER XXV



In Which All the Principal Personages Think Fit
to Leave Brighton

Conducted to the ladies, at the Ship Inn, Dobbin assumed
a jovial and rattling manner, which proved that this
young officer was becoming a more consummate hypocrite
every day of his life.  He was trying to hide his own
private feelings, first upon seeing Mrs. George Osborne
in her new condition, and secondly to mask the
apprehensions he entertained as to the effect which
the dismal news brought down by him would certainly
have upon her.

"It is my opinion, George," he said, "that the French
Emperor will be upon us, horse and foot, before three
weeks are over, and will give the Duke such a dance as
shall make the Peninsula appear mere child's play.  But
you need not say that to Mrs. Osborne, you know.  There
mayn't be any fighting on our side after all, and our
business in Belgium may turn out to be a mere military
occupation.  Many persons think so; and Brussels is full
of fine people and ladies of fashion." So it was agreed to
represent the duty of the British army in Belgium in this
harmless light to Amelia.

This plot being arranged, the hypocritical Dobbin saluted
Mrs. George Osborne quite gaily, tried to pay her
one or two compliments relative to her new position as a
bride (which compliments, it must be confessed, were
exceedingly clumsy and hung fire woefully), and then fell
to talking about Brighton, and the sea-air, and the gaieties
of the place, and the beauties of the road and the merits
of the Lightning coach and horses--all in a manner
quite incomprehensible to Amelia, and very amusing to
Rebecca, who was watching the Captain, as indeed she
watched every one near whom she came.

Little Amelia, it must be owned, had rather a mean
opinion of her husband's friend, Captain Dobbin.  He lisped
--he was very plain and homely-looking: and exceedingly
awkward and ungainly.  She liked him for his attachment
to her husband (to be sure there was very little merit in
that), and she thought George was most generous and
kind in extending his friendship to his brother officer.
George had mimicked Dobbin's lisp and queer manners
many times to her, though to do him justice, he always
spoke most highly of his friend's good qualities.  In her
little day of triumph, and not knowing him intimately as
yet, she made light of honest William--and he knew her
opinions of him quite well, and acquiesced in them very
humbly.  A time came when she knew him better, and
changed her notions regarding him; but that was distant as
yet.

As for Rebecca, Captain Dobbin had not been two hours
in the ladies' company before she understood his secret
perfectly.  She did not like him, and feared him privately;
nor was he very much prepossessed in her favour.  He
was so honest, that her arts and cajoleries did not affect
him, and he shrank from her with instinctive repulsion.
And, as she was by no means so far superior to her sex as
to be above jealousy, she disliked him the more for his
adoration of Amelia.  Nevertheless, she was very respectful
and cordial in her manner towards him.  A friend to
the Osbornes! a friend to her dearest benefactors!  She
vowed she should always love him sincerely: she remembered
him quite well on the Vauxhall night, as she told
Amelia archly, and she made a little fun of him when the
two ladies went to dress for dinner.  Rawdon Crawley paid
scarcely any attention to Dobbin, looking upon him as a
good-natured nincompoop and under-bred City man.  Jos
patronised him with much dignity.

When George and Dobbin were alone in the latter's
room, to which George had followed him, Dobbin took
from his desk the letter which he had been charged by
Mr. Osborne to deliver to his son.  "It's not in my father's
handwriting," said George, looking rather alarmed; nor
was it: the letter was from Mr. Osborne's lawyer, and to
the following effect:

Bedford Row, May 7, 1815.

SIR,

I am commissioned by Mr. Osborne to inform you,
that he abides by the determination which he before
expressed to you, and that in consequence of the marriage
which you have been pleased to contract, he ceases to
consider you henceforth as a member of his family.
This determination is final and irrevocable.

Although the monies expended upon you in your
minority, and the bills which you have drawn upon
him so unsparingly of late years, far exceed in amount
the sum to which you are entitled in your own right
(being the third part of the fortune of your mother,
the late Mrs. Osborne and which reverted to you at her
decease, and to Miss Jane Osborne and Miss Maria
Frances Osborne); yet I am instructed by Mr. Osborne
to say, that he waives all claim upon your estate, and
that the sum of 2,0001., 4 per cent. annuities, at the
value of the day (being your one-third share of the sum
of 6,0001.), shall be paid over to yourself or your agents
upon your receipt for the same, by

Your obedient Servt.,

S. HIGGS.

P.S.--Mr. Osborne desires me to say, once for all,
that he declines to receive any messages, letters, or
communications from you on this or any other subject.

"A pretty way you have managed the affair," said
George, looking savagely at William Dobbin.  "Look there,
Dobbin," and he flung over to the latter his parent's letter.
"A beggar, by Jove, and all in consequence of my d--d
sentimentality.  Why couldn't we have waited?  A ball might
have done for me in the course of the war, and may still,
and how will Emmy be bettered by being left a beggar's
widow?  It was all your doing.  You were never easy until
you had got me married and ruined.  What the deuce am
I to do with two thousand pounds?  Such a sum won't
last two years.  I've lost a hundred and forty to Crawley at
cards and billiards since I've been down here.  A pretty
manager of a man's matters YOU are, forsooth."

"There's no denying that the position is a hard one,"
Dobbin replied, after reading over the letter with a blank
countenance; "and as you say, it is partly of my making.
There are some men who wouldn't mind changing with
you," he added, with a bitter smile.  "How many captains
in the regiment have two thousand pounds to the fore,
think you?  You must live on your pay till your father
relents, and if you die, you leave your wife a hundred a
year."

"Do you suppose a man of my habits call live on his
pay and a hundred a year?" George cried out in great
anger.  "You must be a fool to talk so, Dobbin.  How the
deuce am I to keep up my position in the world upon
such a pitiful pittance?  I can't change my habits.  I must
have my comforts.  I wasn't brought up on porridge, like
MacWhirter, or on potatoes, like old O'Dowd.  Do you
expect my wife to take in soldiers' washing, or ride after
the regiment in a baggage waggon?"

"Well, well," said Dobbin, still good-naturedly, "we'll
get her a better conveyance.  But try and remember that
you are only a dethroned prince now, George, my boy;
and be quiet whilst the tempest lasts.  It won't be for
long.  Let your name be mentioned in the Gazette, and
I'll engage the old father relents towards you:"

"Mentioned in the Gazette!" George answered.  "And in
what part of it?  Among the killed and wounded returns,
and at the top of the list, very likely."

"Psha!  It will be time enough to cry out when we are
hurt," Dobbin said.  "And if anything happens, you know,
George, I have got a little, and I am not a marrying
man, and I shall not forget my godson in my will," he
added, with a smile.  Whereupon the dispute ended--as
many scores of  such conversations between Osborne
and his friend had concluded previously--by the former
declaring there was no possibility of being angry with
Dobbin long, and forgiving him very generously after
abusing him without cause.

"I say, Becky," cried Rawdon Crawley out of his
dressing-room, to his lady, who was attiring herself for
dinner in her own chamber.

"What?" said Becky's shrill voice.  She was looking
over her shoulder in the glass.  She had put on the neatest
and freshest white frock imaginable, and with bare
shoulders and a little necklace, and a light blue sash, she
looked the image of youthful innocence and girlish
happiness.

"I say, what'll Mrs. O. do, when 0. goes out with the
regiment?" Crawley said coming into the room, performing
a duet on his head with two huge hair-brushes, and
looking out from under his hair with admiration on his
pretty little wife.

"I suppose she'll cry her eyes out," Becky answered.
"She has been whimpering half a dozen times, at the
very notion of it, already to me."

"YOU don't care, I suppose?" Rawdon said, half angry
at his wife's want of feeling.

"You wretch! don't you know that I intend to go with
you," Becky replied.  "Besides, you're different.  You go
as General Tufto's aide-de-camp.  We don't belong to the
line," Mrs. Crawley said, throwing up her head with an
air that so enchanted her husband that he stooped down
and kissed it.

"Rawdon dear--don't you think--you'd better get that
--money from Cupid, before he goes?" Becky continued,
fixing on a killing bow.  She called George Osborne,
Cupid.  She had flattered him about his good looks a
score of times already.  She watched over him kindly at
ecarte of a night when he would drop in to Rawdon's
quarters for a half-hour before bed-time.

She had often called him a horrid dissipated wretch,
and threatened to tell Emmy of his wicked ways and
naughty extravagant habits.  She brought his cigar and
lighted it for him; she knew the effect of that manoeuvre,
having practised it in former days upon Rawdon Crawley.
He thought her gay, brisk, arch, distinguee, delightful.
In their little drives and dinners, Becky, of course,
quite outshone poor Emmy, who remained very mute
and timid while Mrs. Crawley and her husband rattled
away together, and Captain Crawley (and Jos after he
joined the young married people) gobbled in silence.

Emmy's mind somehow misgave her about her friend.
Rebecca's wit, spirits, and accomplishments troubled her
with a rueful disquiet.  They were only a week married,
and here was George already suffering ennui, and eager
for others' society!  She trembled for the future.  How
shall I be a companion for him, she thought--so clever
and so brilliant, and I such a humble foolish creature?
How noble it was of him to marry me--to give up everything
and stoop down to me!  I ought to have refused
him, only I had not the heart.  I ought to have stopped at
home and taken care of poor Papa.  And her neglect of
her parents (and indeed there was some foundation for
this charge which the poor child's uneasy conscience
brought against her) was now remembered for the first
time, and caused her to blush with humiliation.  Oh!
thought she, I have been very wicked and selfish--selfish
in forgetting them in their sorrows--selfish in forcing
George to marry me.  I know I'm not worthy of him--I
know he would have been happy without me--and yet--
I tried, I tried to give him up.

It is hard when, before seven days of marriage are
over, such thoughts and confessions as these force
themselves on a little bride's mind.  But so it was, and the
night before Dobbin came to join these young people--
on a fine brilliant moonlight night of May--so warm
and balmy that the windows were flung open to the balcony,
from which George and Mrs. Crawley were gazing upon
the calm ocean spread shining before them,
while Rawdon and Jos were engaged at backgammon
within--Amelia couched in a great chair quite neglected, and
watching both these parties, felt a despair and remorse
such as were bitter companions for that tender lonely
soul.  Scarce a week was past, and it was come to this!
The future, had she regarded it, offered a dismal prospect;
but Emmy was too shy, so to speak, to look to that,
and embark alone on that wide sea, and unfit to navigate
it without a guide and protector.  I know Miss Smith has
a mean opinion of her.  But how many, my dear Madam,
are endowed with your prodigious strength of mind?

"Gad, what a fine night, and how bright the moon is!"
George said, with a puff of his cigar, which went soaring
up skywards.

"How delicious they smell in the open air!  I adore
them.  Who'd think the moon was two hundred and thirty-
six thousand eight hundred and forty-seven miles off?"
Becky added, gazing at that orb with a smile.  "Isn't it
clever of me to remember that?  Pooh!  we learned it all
at Miss Pinkerton's!  How calm the sea is, and how clear
everything.  I declare I can almost see the coast of
France!" and her bright green eyes streamed out, and
shot into the night as if they could see through it.

"Do you know what I intend to do one morning?" she
said; "I find I can swim beautifully, and some day, when
my Aunt Crawley's companion--old Briggs, you know
--you remember her--that hook-nosed woman, with the
long wisps of hair--when Briggs goes out to bathe, I
intend to dive under her awning, and insist on a
reconciliation in the water.  Isn't that a stratagem?"

George burst out laughing at the idea of this aquatic
meeting.  "What's the row there, you two?" Rawdon
shouted out, rattling the box.  Amelia was making a fool
of herself in an absurd hysterical manner, and retired
to her own room to whimper in private.

Our history is destined in this chapter to go backwards
and forwards in a very irresolute manner seemingly, and
having conducted our story to to-morrow presently, we
shall immediately again have occasion to step back to
yesterday, so that the whole of the tale may get a hearing.
As you behold at her Majesty's drawing-room, the
ambassadors' and high dignitaries' carriages whisk off
from a private door, while Captain Jones's ladies are waiting
for their fly: as you see in the Secretary of the Treasury's antechamber, a half-dozen of petitioners waiting
patiently for their audience, and called out one by one,
when suddenly an Irish member or some eminent personage
enters the apartment, and instantly walks into Mr.
Under-Secretary over the heads of all the people present:
so in the conduct of a tale, the romancer is obliged to
exercise this most partial sort of justice.  Although all the
little incidents must be heard, yet they must be put off
when the great events make their appearance; and surely
such a circumstance as that which brought Dobbin to
Brighton, viz., the ordering out of the Guards and the line
to Belgium, and the mustering of the allied armies in that
country under the command of his Grace the Duke of
Wellington--such a dignified circumstance as that, I say,
was entitled to the pas over all minor occurrences whereof
this history is composed mainly, and hence a little
trifling disarrangement and disorder was excusable and
becoming.  We have only now advanced in time so far
beyond Chapter XXII as to have got our various characters
up into their dressing-rooms before the dinner,
which took place as usual on the day of Dobbin's arrival.

George was too humane or too much occupied with the
tie of his neckcloth to convey at once all the news to
Amelia which his comrade had brought with him from
London.  He came into her room, however, holding the
attorney's letter in his hand, and with so solemn and
important an air that his wife, always ingeniously on
the watch for calamity, thought the worst was about to
befall, and running up to her husband, besought her
dearest George to tell her everything--he was ordered
abroad; there would be a battle next week--she knew
there would.

Dearest George parried the question about foreign
service, and with a melancholy shake of the head said,
"No, Emmy; it isn't that:  it's not myself I care about:
it's you.  I have had bad news from my father.  He refuses
any communication with me; he has flung us off; and
leaves us to poverty.  I can rough it well enough; but
you, my dear, how will you bear it? read here." And he
handed her over the letter.

Amelia, with a look of tender alarm in her eyes,
listened to her noble hero as he uttered the above generous
sentiments, and sitting down on the bed, read the letter
which George gave her with such a pompous martyr-like
air.  Her face cleared up as she read the document, however.
The idea of sharing poverty and privation in company
with the beloved object is, as we have before said,
far from being disagreeable to a warm-hearted woman.
The notion was actually pleasant to little Amelia.  Then,
as usual, she was ashamed of herself for feeling happy at
such an indecorous moment, and checked her pleasure,
saying demurely, "O, George, how your poor heart must
bleed at the idea of being separated from your papa!"

"It does," said George, with an agonised countenance.

"But he can't be angry with you long," she continued.
"Nobody could, I'm sure.  He must forgive you, my
dearest, kindest husband.  O, I shall never forgive myself
if he does not."

"What vexes me, my poor Emmy, is not my misfortune,
but yours," George said.  "I don't care for a little
poverty; and I think, without vanity, I've talents enough
to make my own way."

"That you have," interposed his wife, who thought that
war should cease, and her husband should be made a
general instantly.

"Yes, I shall make my way as well as another," Osborne
went on; "but you, my dear girl, how can I bear
your being deprived of the comforts and station in
society which my wife had a right to expect?  My dearest
girl in barracks; the wife of a soldier in a marching
regiment; subject to all sorts of annoyance and privation!
It makes me miserable."

Emmy, quite at ease, as this was her husband's only
cause of disquiet, took his hand, and with a radiant face
and smile began to warble that stanza from the favourite
song of "Wapping Old Stairs," in which the heroine, after
rebuking her Tom for inattention, promises "his trousers
to mend, and his grog too to make," if he will be constant
and kind, and not forsake her.  "Besides," she said,
after a pause, during which she looked as pretty and
happy as any young woman need, "isn't two thousand
pounds an immense deal of money, George?"

George laughed at her naivete; and finally they went
down to dinner, Amelia clinging to George's arm, still
warbling the tune of "Wapping Old Stairs," and more
pleased and light of mind than she had been for some
days past.

Thus the repast, which at length came off, instead of
being dismal, was an exceedingly brisk and merry one.
The excitement of the campaign counteracted in George's
mind the depression occasioned by the disinheriting letter.
Dobbin still kept up his character of rattle.  He amused
the company with accounts of the army in Belgium;
where nothing but fetes and gaiety and fashion were
going on.  Then, having a particular end in view, this
dexterous captain proceeded to describe Mrs. Major
O'Dowd packing her own and her Major's wardrobe, and
how his best epaulets had been stowed into a tea canister,
whilst her own famous yellow turban, with the bird of
paradise wrapped in brown paper, was locked up in the
Major's tin cocked-hat case, and wondered what effect
it would have at the French king's court at Ghent, or the
great military balls at Brussels.

"Ghent! Brussels!" cried out Amelia with a sudden
shock and start.  "Is the regiment ordered away, George
--is it ordered away?" A look of terror came over the
sweet smiling face, and she clung to George as by an
instinct.

"Don't be afraid, dear," he said good-naturedly; "it
is but a twelve hours' passage.  It won't hurt you.  You
shall go, too, Emmy."

"I intend to go," said Becky.  "I'm on the staff.  General
Tufto is a great flirt of mine.  Isn't he, Rawdon?"
Rawdon laughed out with his usual roar.  William
Dobbin flushed up quite red.  "She can't go," he said; "think
of the--of the danger," he was going to add; but had
not all his conversation during dinner-time tended to
prove there was none?  He became very confused and
silent.

"I must and will go," Amelia cried with the greatest
spirit; and George, applauding her resolution, patted her
under the chin, and asked all the persons present if
they ever saw such a termagant of a wife, and agreed
that the lady should bear him company.  "We'll have
Mrs. O'Dowd to chaperon you," he said.  What cared she
so long as her husband was near her?  Thus somehow
the bitterness of a parting was juggled away.  Though war
and danger were in store, war and danger might not
befall for months to come.  There was a respite at any rate,
which made the timid little Amelia almost as happy as
a full reprieve would have done, and which even Dobbin
owned in his heart was very welcome.  For, to be permitted
to see her was now the greatest privilege and hope
of his life, and he thought with himself secretly how he
would watch and protect her.  I wouldn't have let her go
if I had been married to her, he thought.  But George was
the master, and his friend did not think fit to remonstrate.

Putting her arm round her friend's waist, Rebecca at
length carried Amelia off from the dinner-table where so
much business of importance had been discussed, and
left the gentlemen in a highly exhilarated state, drinking
and talking very gaily.

In the course of the evening Rawdon got a little family-
note from his wife, which, although he crumpled it up
and burnt it instantly in the candle, we had the good
luck to read over Rebecca's shoulder.  "Great news," she
wrote.  "Mrs. Bute is gone.  Get the money from Cupid tonight,
as he'll be off to-morrow most likely.  Mind this.
--R." So when the little company was about adjourning
to coffee in the women's apartment, Rawdon touched
Osborne on the elbow, and said gracefully, "I say, Osborne,
my boy, if quite convenient, I'll trouble you for
that 'ere small trifle." It was not quite convenient, but
nevertheless George gave him a considerable present
instalment in bank-notes from his pocket-book, and a bill
on his agents at a week's date, for the remaining sum.

This matter arranged, George, and Jos, and Dobbin,
held a council of war over their cigars, and agreed that a
general move should be made for London in Jos's open
carriage the next day.  Jos, I think, would have preferred
staying until Rawdon Crawley quitted Brighton, but Dobbin
and George overruled him, and he agreed to carry
the party to town, and ordered four horses, as became his
dignity.  With these they set off in state, after breakfast,
the next day.  Amelia had risen very early in the morning,
and packed her little trunks with the greatest alacrity,
while Osborne lay in bed deploring that she had not a
maid to help her.  She was only too glad, however, to
perform this office for herself.  A dim uneasy sentiment
about Rebecca filled her mind already; and although they
kissed each other most tenderly at parting, yet we know
what jealousy is; and Mrs. Amelia possessed that among
other virtues of her sex.

Besides these characters who are coming and going
away, we must remember that there were some other old
friends of ours at Brighton; Miss Crawley, namely, and
the suite in attendance upon her.  Now, although Rebecca
and her husband were but at a few stones' throw of the
lodgings which the invalid Miss Crawley occupied, the
old lady's door remained as pitilessly closed to them as it
had been heretofore in London.  As long as she remained
by the side of her sister-in-law, Mrs. Bute Crawley took
care that her beloved Matilda should not be agitated by a
meeting with her nephew.  When the spinster took her
drive, the faithful Mrs. Bute sate beside her in the carriage.
When Miss Crawley took the air in a chair, Mrs.
Bute marched on one side of the vehicle, whilst honest
Briggs occupied the other wing.  And if they met Rawdon
and his wife by chance--although the former constantly
and obsequiously took off his hat, the Miss-Crawley party
passed him by with such a frigid and killing indifference,
that Rawdon began to despair.

"We might as well be in London as here," Captain
Rawdon often said, with a downcast air.

"A comfortable inn in Brighton is better than a
spunging-house in Chancery Lane," his wife answered, who was
of a more cheerful temperament.  "Think of those two
aides-de-camp of Mr. Moses, the sheriff's-officer, who
watched our lodging for a week.  Our friends here are
very stupid, but Mr. Jos and Captain Cupid are better
companions than Mr. Moses's men, Rawdon, my love."

"I wonder the writs haven't followed me down here,"
Rawdon continued, still desponding.

"When they do, we'll find means to give them the slip,"
said dauntless little Becky, and further pointed out to her
husband the great comfort and advantage of meeting
Jos and Osborne, whose acquaintance had brought to
Rawdon Crawley a most timely little supply of ready
money.

"It will hardly be enough to pay the inn bill," grumbled
the Guardsman.

"Why need we pay it?" said the lady, who had an answer
for everything.

Through Rawdon's valet, who still kept up a trifling
acquaintance with the male inhabitants of Miss Crawley's
servants' hall, and was instructed to treat the coachman
to drink whenever they met, old Miss Crawley's movements
were pretty well known by our young couple; and
Rebecca luckily bethought herself of being unwell, and of
calling in the same apothecary who was in attendance
upon the spinster, so that their information was on the
whole tolerably complete.  Nor was Miss Briggs, although
forced to adopt a hostile attitude, secretly inimical to
Rawdon and his wife.  She was naturally of a kindly and
forgiving disposition.  Now that the cause of jealousy was
removed, her dislike for Rebecca disappeared also, and
she remembered the latter's invariable good words
and good humour.  And, indeed, she and Mrs.
Firkin, the lady's-maid, and the whole of Miss Crawley's
household, groaned under the tyranny of the
triumphant Mrs. Bute.

As often will be the case, that good but imperious
woman pushed her advantages too far, and her successes
quite unmercifully.  She had in the course of a few weeks
brought the invalid to such a state of helpless docility,
that the poor soul yielded herself entirely to her sister's
orders, and did not even dare to complain of her slavery
to Briggs or Firkin.  Mrs. Bute measured out the glasses
of wine which Miss Crawley was daily allowed to take,
with irresistible accuracy, greatly to the annoyance of
Firkin and the butler, who found themselves deprived of
control over even the sherry-bottle.  She apportioned the
sweetbreads, jellies, chickens; their quantity and order.
Night and noon and morning she brought the abominable
drinks ordained by the Doctor, and made her patient
swallow them with so affecting an obedience that Firkin
said "my poor Missus du take her physic like a lamb." She
prescribed the drive in the carriage or the ride in the
chair, and, in a word, ground down the old lady in her
convalescence in such a way as only belongs to your
proper-managing, motherly moral woman.  If ever the
patient faintly resisted, and pleaded for a little bit more
dinner or a little drop less medicine, the nurse threatened
her with instantaneous death, when Miss Crawley
instantly gave in.  "She's no spirit left in her," Firkin
remarked to Briggs; "she ain't ave called me a fool these
three weeks." Finally, Mrs. Bute had made up her mind
to dismiss the aforesaid honest lady's-maid, Mr. Bowls
the large confidential man, and Briggs herself, and to
send for her daughters from the Rectory, previous to
removing the dear invalid bodily to Queen's Crawley, when
an odious accident happened which called her away from
duties so pleasing.  The Reverend Bute Crawley, her
husband, riding home one night, fell with his horse and
broke his collar-bone.  Fever and inflammatory symptoms
set in, and Mrs. Bute was forced to leave Sussex for
Hampshire.  As soon as ever Bute was restored, she
promised to return to her dearest friend, and departed,
leaving the strongest injunctions with the household
regarding their behaviour to their mistress; and as soon as
she got into the Southampton coach, there was such a
jubilee and sense of relief in all Miss Crawley's house,
as the company of persons assembled there had not
experienced for many a week before.  That very day Miss
Crawley left off her afternoon dose of medicine:  that
afternoon Bowls opened an independent bottle of sherry
for himself and Mrs. Firkin:  that night Miss Crawley
and Miss Briggs indulged in a game of piquet instead
of one of Porteus's sermons.  It was as in the old nursery-
story, when the stick forgot to beat the dog, and the
whole course of events underwent a peaceful and happy
revolution.

At a very early hour in the morning, twice or thrice a
week, Miss Briggs used to betake herself to a bathing-
machine, and disport in the water in a flannel gown and
an oilskin cap.  Rebecca, as we have seen, was aware of
this circumstance, and though she did not attempt to
storm Briggs as she had threatened, and actually dive
into that lady's presence and surprise her under the
sacredness of the awning, Mrs. Rawdon determined to
attack Briggs as she came away from her bath, refreshed
and invigorated by her dip, and likely to be in good
humour.

So getting up very early the next morning, Becky
brought the telescope in their sitting-room, which faced
the sea, to bear upon the bathing-machines on the beach;
saw Briggs arrive, enter her box; and put out to sea;
and was on the shore just as the nymph of whom she
came in quest stepped out of the little caravan on to the
shingles.  It was a pretty picture:  the beach; the bathing-
women's faces; the long line of rocks and building were
blushing and bright in the sunshine.  Rebecca wore a kind,
tender smile on her face, and was holding out her pretty
white hand as Briggs emerged from the box.  What could
Briggs do but accept the salutation?

"Miss Sh--Mrs. Crawley," she said.

Mrs. Crawley seized her hand, pressed it to her heart,
and with a sudden impulse, flinging her arms round
Briggs, kissed her affectionately.  "Dear, dear friend!" she
said, with a touch of such natural feeling, that Miss
Briggs of course at once began to melt, and even the
bathing-woman was mollified.

Rebecca found no difficulty in engaging Briggs in a long,
intimate, and delightful conversation.  Everything that had
passed since the morning of Becky's sudden departure
from Miss Crawley's house in Park Lane up to the present
day, and Mrs. Bute's happy retreat, was discussed and
described by Briggs.  All Miss Crawley's symptoms, and
the particulars of her illness and medical treatment, were
narrated by the confidante with that fulness and
accuracy which women delight in.  About their complaints
and their doctors do ladies ever tire of talking to each
other?  Briggs did not on this occasion; nor did Rebecca
weary of listening.  She was thankful, truly thankful, that
the dear kind Briggs, that the faithful, the invaluable
Firkin, had been permitted to remain with their benefactress
through her illness.  Heaven bless her! though she,
Rebecca, had seemed to act undutifully towards Miss
Crawley; yet was not her fault a natural and excusable one?
Could she help giving her hand to the man who had won
her heart?  Briggs, the sentimental, could only turn up
her eyes to heaven at this appeal, and heave a
sympathetic sigh, and think that she, too, had given
away her affections long years ago, and own that Rebecca
was no very great criminal.

"Can I ever forget her who so befriended the friendless
orphan?  No, though she has cast me off," the latter
said, "I shall never cease to love her, and I would devote
my life to her service.  As my own benefactress, as my
beloved Rawdon's adored relative, I love and admire Miss
Crawley, dear Miss Briggs, beyond any woman in the
world, and next to her I love all those who are faithful
to her.  I would never have treated Miss Crawley's
faithful friends as that odious designing Mrs. Bute has
done.  Rawdon, who was all heart," Rebecca continued,
"although his outward manners might seem rough and
careless, had said a hundred times, with tears in his eyes,
that he blessed Heaven for sending his dearest Aunty two
such admirable nurses as her attached Firkin and her
admirable Miss Briggs.  Should the machinations of the
horrible Mrs. Bute end, as she too much feared they would,
in banishing everybody that Miss Crawley loved from her
side, and leaving that poor lady a victim to those harpies
at the Rectory, Rebecca besought her (Miss Briggs) to
remember that her own home, humble as it was, was
always open to receive Briggs.  Dear friend," she
exclaimed, in a transport of enthusiasm, "some hearts
can never forget benefits; all women are not Bute
Crawleys!  Though why should I complain of her," Rebecca
added; "though I have been her tool and the victim to her
arts, do I not owe my dearest Rawdon to her?"  And
Rebecca unfolded to Briggs all Mrs. Bute's conduct at
Queen's Crawley, which, though unintelligible to her then,
was clearly enough explained by the events now--now
that the attachment had sprung up which Mrs. Bute had
encouraged by a thousand artifices--now that two
innocent people had fallen into the snares which she had
laid for them, and loved and married and been ruined
through her schemes.

It was all very true.  Briggs saw the stratagems as
clearly as possible.  Mrs. Bute had made the match
between Rawdon and Rebecca.  Yet, though the latter was a
perfectly innocent victim, Miss Briggs could not disguise
from her friend her fear that Miss Crawley's affections
were hopelessly estranged from Rebecca, and that the old
lady would never forgive her nephew for making so
imprudent a marriage.

On this point Rebecca had her own opinion, and
still kept up a good heart.  If Miss Crawley did not
forgive them at present, she might at least relent on a
future day.  Even now, there was only that puling, sickly
Pitt Crawley between Rawdon and a baronetcy; and should
anything happen to the former, all would be well.  At all
events, to have Mrs. Bute's designs exposed, and herself
well abused, was a satisfaction, and might be advantageous
to Rawdon's interest; and Rebecca, after an hour's
chat with her recovered friend, left her with the most
tender demonstrations of regard, and quite assured that
the conversation they had had together would be
reported to Miss Crawley before many hours were over.

This interview ended, it became full time for Rebecca
to return to her inn, where all the party of the previous
day were assembled at a farewell breakfast.  Rebecca took
such a tender leave of Amelia as became two women who
loved each other as sisters; and having used her handkerchief plentifully, and hung on her friend's neck as if they
were parting for ever, and waved the handkerchief
(which was quite dry, by the way) out of window, as the
carriage drove off, she came back to the breakfast table,
and ate some prawns with a good deal of appetite,
considering her emotion; and while she was munching these
delicacies, explained to Rawdon what had occurred in her
morning walk between herself and Briggs.  Her hopes
were very high:  she made her husband share them.  She
generally succeeded in making her husband share all her
opinions, whether melancholy or cheerful.

"You will now, if you please, my dear, sit down at the
writing-table and pen me a pretty little letter to Miss
Crawley, in which you'll say that you are a good boy,
and that sort of thing."  So Rawdon sate down, and wrote
off, "Brighton, Thursday," and "My dear Aunt," with
great rapidity: but there the gallant officer's imagination
failed him.  He mumbled the end of his pen, and looked
up in his wife's face.  She could not help laughing at his
rueful countenance, and marching up and down the room
with her hands behind her, the little woman began to
dictate a letter, which he took down.

"Before quitting the country and commencing a campaign,
which very possibly may be fatal."

"What?" said Rawdon, rather surprised, but took the
humour of the phrase, and presently wrote it down with
a grin.

"Which very possibly may be fatal, I have come
hither--"

"Why not say come here, Becky?  Come here's grammar,"
the dragoon interposed.

"I have come hither," Rebecca insisted, with a stamp
of her foot, "to say farewell to my dearest and earliest
friend.  I beseech you before I go, not perhaps to
return, once more to let me press the hand from which
I have received nothing but kindnesses all my life."

"Kindnesses all my life," echoed Rawdon, scratching
down the words, and quite amazed at his own facility of
composition.

"I ask nothing from you but that we should part not in
anger.  I have the pride of my family on some points,
though not on all.  I married a painter's daughter, and am
not ashamed of the union."

"No, run me through the body if I am!" Rawdon ejaculated.

"You old booby," Rebecca said, pinching his ear and
looking over to see that he made no mistakes in spelling
--"beseech is not spelt with an a, and earliest is."  So he
altered these words, bowing to the superior knowledge of
his little Missis.

"I thought that you were aware of the progress of my
attachment," Rebecca continued:  "I knew that Mrs. Bute
Crawley confirmed and encouraged it.  But I make no
reproaches.  I married a poor woman, and am content to
abide by what I have done.  Leave your property, dear
Aunt, as you will.  I shall never complain of the way in
which you dispose of it.  I would have you believe that I
love you for yourself, and not for money's sake.  I want to
be reconciled to you ere I leave England.  Let me, let
me see you before I go.  A few weeks or months hence it
may be too late, and I cannot bear the notion of quitting
the country without a kind word of farewell from you."

"She won't recognise my style in that," said Becky.  "I
made the sentences short and brisk on purpose." And
this authentic missive was despatched under cover to Miss
Briggs.

Old Miss Crawley laughed when Briggs, with great
mystery, handed her over this candid and simple
statement.  "We may read it now Mrs. Bute is away,"
she said.  "Read it to me, Briggs."

When Briggs had read the epistle out, her patroness
laughed more.  "Don't you see, you goose," she said to
Briggs, who professed to be much touched by the honest
affection which pervaded the composition, "don't you
see that Rawdon never wrote a word of it.  He never
wrote to me without asking for money in his life, and all
his letters are full of bad spelling, and dashes, and bad
grammar.  It is that little serpent of a governess who rules
him." They are all alike, Miss Crawley thought in her
heart.  They all want me dead, and are hankering for my
money.

"I don't mind seeing Rawdon," she added, after a
pause, and in a tone of perfect indifference.  "I had just
as soon shake hands with him as not.  Provided there is
no scene, why shouldn't we meet?  I don't mind.  But
human patience has its limits; and mind, my dear, I
respectfully decline to receive Mrs. Rawdon--I can't
support that quite"--and Miss Briggs was fain to be content
with this half-message of conciliation; and thought that
the best method of bringing the old lady and her nephew
together, was to warn Rawdon to be in waiting on the
Cliff, when Miss Crawley went out for her air in her
chair.

There they met.  I don't know whether Miss Crawley
had any private feeling of regard or emotion upon seeing
her old favourite; but she held out a couple of fingers
to him with as smiling and good-humoured an air, as if
they had met only the day before.  And as for Rawdon,
he turned as red as scarlet, and wrung off Briggs's hand,
so great was his rapture and his confusion at the meeting.
Perhaps it was interest that moved him:  or perhaps
affection:  perhaps he was touched by the change which
the illness of the last weeks had wrought in his aunt.

"The old girl has always acted like a trump to me," he
said to his wife, as he narrated the interview, "and I felt,
you know, rather queer, and that sort of thing.  I walked
by the side of the what-dy'e-call-'em, you know, and to
her own door, where Bowls came to help her in.  And I
wanted to go in very much, only--"

"YOU DIDN'T GO IN, Rawdon!" screamed his wife.

"No, my dear; I'm hanged if I wasn't afraid when it
came to the point."

"You fool! you ought to have gone in, and never come
out again," Rebecca said.

"Don't call me names," said the big Guardsman, sulkily.
"Perhaps I WAS a fool, Becky, but you shouldn't say
so"; and he gave his wife a look, such as his countenance
could wear when angered, and such as was not pleasant
to face.

"Well, dearest, to-morrow you must be on the look-out,
and go and see her, mind, whether she asks you or no,"
Rebecca said, trying to soothe her angry yoke-mate.  On
which he replied, that he would do exactly as he liked,
and would just thank her to keep a civil tongue in her
head--and the wounded husband went away, and passed
the forenoon at the billiard-room, sulky, silent, and
suspicious.

But before the night was over he was compelled to
give in, and own, as usual, to his wife's superior prudence
and foresight, by the most melancholy confirmation of the
presentiments which she had regarding the consequences
of the mistake which he had made.  Miss Crawley must
have had some emotion upon seeing him and shaking
hands with him after so long a rupture.  She mused upon
the meeting a considerable time.  "Rawdon is getting very
fat and old, Briggs," she said to her companion.  "His
nose has become red, and he is exceedingly coarse in
appearance.  His marriage to that woman has hopelessly
vulgarised him.  Mrs. Bute always said they drank together;
and I have no doubt they do.  Yes:  he smelt of gin
abominably.  I remarked it.  Didn't you?"

In vain Briggs interposed that Mrs. Bute spoke ill of
everybody: and, as far as a person in her humble position
could judge, was an--

"An artful designing woman?  Yes, so she is, and she
does speak ill of every one--but I am certain that woman
has made Rawdon drink.  All those low people do--"

"He was very much affected at seeing you, ma'am," the
companion said; "and I am sure, when you remember that
he is going to the field of danger--"

"How much money has he promised you, Briggs?" the
old spinster cried out, working herself into a nervous
rage--"there now, of course you begin to cry.  I hate
scenes.  Why am I always to be worried?  Go and cry up in
your own room, and send Firkin to me-- no, stop, sit
down and blow your nose, and leave off crying, and write
a letter to Captain Crawley." Poor Briggs went and
placed herself obediently at the writing-book.  Its leaves
were blotted all over with relics of the firm, strong, rapid
handwriting of the spinster's late amanuensis, Mrs. Bute
Crawley.

"Begin 'My dear sir,' or 'Dear sir,' that will be better,
and say you are desired by Miss Crawley--no, by Miss
Crawley's medical man, by Mr. Creamer, to state that
my health is such that all strong emotions would be
dangerous in my present delicate condition--and that I must
decline any family discussions or interviews whatever.
And thank him for coming to Brighton, and so forth, and
beg him not to stay any longer on my account.  And, Miss
Briggs, you may add that I wish him a bon voyage, and
that if he will take the trouble to call upon my lawyer's
in Gray's Inn Square, he will find there a communication
for him.  Yes, that will do; and that will make him leave
Brighton." The benevolent Briggs penned this sentence
with the utmost satisfaction.

"To seize upon me the very day after Mrs. Bute was
gone," the old lady prattled on; "it was too indecent.
Briggs, my dear, write to Mrs. Crawley, and say SHE
needn't come back.  No--she needn't--and she shan't--
and I won't be a slave in my own house--and I won't be
starved and choked with poison.  They all want to kill me
--all--all"--and with this the lonely old woman burst
into a scream of hysterical tears.

The last scene of her dismal Vanity Fair comedy was
fast approaching; the tawdry lamps were going out one
by one; and the dark curtain was almost ready to
descend.

That final paragraph, which referred Rawdon to Miss
Crawley's solicitor in London, and which Briggs had
written so good-naturedly, consoled the dragoon and his
wife somewhat, after their first blank disappointment, on
reading the spinster's refusal of a reconciliation.  And it
effected the purpose for which the old lady had caused it
to be written, by making Rawdon very eager to get to
London.

Out of Jos's losings and George Osborne's bank-notes,
he paid his bill at the inn, the landlord whereof does not
probably know to this day how doubtfully his account
once stood.  For, as a general sends his baggage to the
rear before an action, Rebecca had wisely packed up all
their chief valuables and sent them off under care of
George's servant, who went in charge of the trunks on
the coach back to London.  Rawdon and his wife
returned by the same conveyance next day.

"I should have liked to see the old girl before we went,"
Rawdon said.  "She looks so cut up and altered that I'm
sure she can't last long.  I wonder what sort of a cheque
I shall have at Waxy's.  Two hundred--it can't be less
than two hundred--hey, Becky?"

In consequence of the repeated visits of the aides-de-
camp of the Sheriff of Middlesex, Rawdon and his wife
did not go back to their lodgings at Brompton, but put
up at an inn.  Early the next morning, Rebecca had an
opportunity of seeing them as she skirted that suburb
on her road to old Mrs. Sedley's house at Fulham, whither
she went to look for her dear Amelia and her Brighton
friends.  They were all off to Chatham, thence to Harwich,
to take shipping for Belgium with the regiment--
kind old Mrs. Sedley very much depressed and tearful,
solitary.  Returning from this visit, Rebecca found her
husband, who had been off to Gray's Inn, and learnt his
fate.  He came back furious.

"By Jove, Becky," says he, "she's only given me twenty
pound!"

Though it told against themselves, the joke was too
good, and Becky burst out laughing at Rawdon's
discomfiture.




CHAPTER XXVI



Between London and Chatham

On quitting Brighton, our friend George, as became a
person of rank and fashion travelling in a barouche with
four horses, drove in state to a fine hotel in Cavendish
Square, where a suite of splendid rooms, and a table
magnificently furnished with plate and surrounded by a
half-dozen of black and silent waiters, was ready to
receive the young gentleman and his bride.  George did the
honours of the place with a princely air to Jos and
Dobbin; and Amelia, for the first time, and with exceeding
shyness and timidity, presided at what George called her
own table.

George pooh-poohed the wine and bullied the waiters
royally, and Jos gobbled the turtle with immense satisfaction.
Dobbin helped him to it; for the lady of the house,
before whom the tureen was placed, was so ignorant of
the contents, that she was going to help Mr. Sedley without bestowing upon him either calipash or calipee.

The splendour of the entertainment, and the apartments
in which it was given, alarmed Mr. Dobbin, who
remonstrated after dinner, when Jos was asleep in the great
chair.  But in vain he cried out against the enormity of
turtle and champagne that was fit for an archbishop.
"I've always been accustomed to travel like a gentleman,"
George said, "and, damme, my wife shall travel like a
lady.  As long as there's a shot in the locker, she shall
want for nothing," said the generous fellow, quite pleased
with himself for his magnificence of spirit.  Nor did
Dobbin try and convince him that Amelia's happiness was not
centred in turtle-soup.

A while after dinner, Amelia timidly expressed a wish
to go and see her mamma, at Fulham: which permission
George granted her with some grumbling.  And she tripped
away to her enormous bedroom, in the centre of which
stood the enormous funereal bed, "that the Emperor
Halixander's sister slep in when the allied sufferings was
here," and put on her little bonnet and shawl with the
utmost eagerness and pleasure.  George was still drinking
claret when she returned to the dining-room, and made
no signs of moving.  "Ar'n't you coming with me, dearest?"
she asked him.  No; the "dearest" had "business"
that night.  His man should get her a coach and go with
her.  And the coach being at the door of the hotel, Amelia
made George a little disappointed curtsey after looking
vainly into his face once or twice, and went sadly down
the great staircase, Captain Dobbin after, who handed her
into the vehicle, and saw it drive away to its destination.
The very valet was ashamed of mentioning the address to
the hackney-coachman before the hotel waiters, and
promised to instruct him when they got further on.

Dobbin walked home to his old quarters and the
Slaughters', thinking very likely that it would be delightful
to be in that hackney-coach, along with Mrs. Osborne.
George was evidently of quite a different taste; for when
he had taken wine enough, he went off to half-price at
the play, to see Mr. Kean perform in Shylock.  Captain
Osborne was a great lover of the drama, and had himself
performed high-comedy characters with great distinction
in several garrison theatrical entertainments.  Jos slept on
until long after dark, when he woke up with a start at
the motions of his servant, who was removing and
emptying the decanters on the table; and the hackney-coach
stand was again put into requisition for a carriage to
convey this stout hero to his lodgings and bed.

Mrs. Sedley, you may be sure, clasped her daughter to
her heart with all maternal eagerness and affection,
running out of the door as the carriage drew up before the
little garden-gate, to welcome the weeping, trembling,
young bride.  Old Mr. Clapp, who was in his shirt-sleeves,
trimming the garden-plot, shrank back alarmed.  The Irish
servant-lass rushed up from the kitchen and smiled a
"God bless you."  Amelia could hardly walk along the
flags and up the steps into the parlour.

How the floodgates were opened, and mother and
daughter wept, when they were together embracing each
other in this sanctuary, may readily be imagined by every
reader who possesses the least sentimental turn.  When
don't ladies weep?  At what occasion of joy, sorrow, or
other business of life, and, after such an event as a
marriage, mother and daughter were surely at liberty to give
way to a sensibility which is as tender as it is refreshing.
About a question of marriage I have seen women
who hate each other kiss and cry together quite fondly.
How much more do they feel when they love!  Good mothers
are married over again at their daughters' weddings:
and as for subsequent events, who does not know how
ultra-maternal grandmothers are?--in fact a woman, until
she is a grandmother, does not often really know what to
be a mother is.  Let us respect Amelia and her mamma
whispering and whimpering and laughing and crying in
the parlour and the twilight.  Old Mr. Sedley did.  HE had
not divined who was in the carriage when it drove up.  He
had not flown out to meet his daughter, though he kissed
her very warmly when she entered the room (where he
was occupied, as usual, with his papers and tapes and
statements of accounts), and after sitting with the mother
and daughter for a short time, he very wisely left the
little apartment in their possession.

George's valet was looking on in a very supercilious
manner at Mr. Clapp in his shirt-sleeves, watering his
rose-bushes.  He took off his hat, however, with much
condescension to Mr. Sedley, who asked news about
his son-in-law, and about Jos's carriage, and whether his
horses had been down to Brighton, and about that
infernal traitor Bonaparty, and the war; until the Irish
maid-servant came with a plate and a bottle of wine,
from which the old gentleman insisted upon helping the
valet.  He gave him a half-guinea too, which the servant
pocketed with a mixture of wonder and contempt.  "To
the health of your master and mistress, Trotter," Mr.
Sedley said, "and here's something to drink your health
when you get home, Trotter."

There were but nine days past since Amelia had left
that little cottage and home--and yet how far off the
time seemed since she had bidden it farewell.  What a
gulf lay between her and that past life.  She could look
back to it from her present standing-place, and contemplate,
almost as another being, the young unmarried girl
absorbed in her love, having no eyes but for one special
object, receiving parental affection if not ungratefully,
at least indifferently, and as if it were her due--her
whole heart and thoughts bent on the accomplishment of
one desire.  The review of those days, so lately gone yet
so far away, touched her with shame; and the aspect of
the kind parents filled her with tender remorse.  Was the
prize gained--the heaven of life--and the winner still
doubtful and unsatisfied?  As his hero and heroine pass
the matrimonial barrier, the novelist generally drops the
curtain, as if the drama were over then:  the doubts and
struggles of life ended:  as if, once landed in the marriage
country, all were green and pleasant there:  and wife
and husband had nothing to do but to link each other's
arms together, and wander gently downwards towards
old age in happy and perfect fruition.  But our little
Amelia was just on the bank of her new country, and was
already looking anxiously back towards the sad friendly
figures waving farewell to her across the stream, from the
other distant shore.

In honour of the young bride's arrival, her mother
thought it necessary to prepare I don't know what festive
entertainment, and after the first ebullition of talk, took
leave of Mrs. George Osborne for a while, and dived
down to the lower regions of the house to a sort of
kitchen-parlour (occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Clapp, and
in the evening, when her dishes were washed and her
curl-papers removed, by Miss Flannigan, the Irish servant),
there to take measures for the preparing of a magnificent ornamented tea.  All people have their ways of
expressing kindness, and it seemed to Mrs. Sedley that a
muffin and a quantity of orange marmalade spread out
in a little cut-glass saucer would be peculiarly agreeable
refreshments to Amelia in her most interesting situation.

While these delicacies were being transacted below,
Amelia, leaving the drawing-room, walked upstairs and
found herself, she scarce knew how, in the little room
which she had occupied before her marriage, and in that
very chair in which she had passed so many bitter hours.
She sank back in its arms as if it were an old friend;
and fell to thinking over the past week, and the life
beyond it.  Already to be looking sadly and vaguely back:
always to be pining for something which, when obtained,
brought doubt and sadness rather than pleasure; here
was the lot of our poor little creature and harmless lost
wanderer in the great struggling crowds of Vanity Fair.

Here she sate, and recalled to herself fondly that image
of George to which she had knelt before marriage.  Did
she own to herself how different the real man was from
that superb young hero whom she had worshipped?  It
requires many, many years--and a man must be very bad
indeed--before a woman's pride and vanity will let her
own to such a confession.  Then Rebecca's twinkling
green eyes and baleful smile lighted upon her, and filled
her with dismay.  And so she sate for awhile indulging
in her usual mood of selfish brooding, in that very
listless melancholy attitude in which the honest maid-servant
had found her, on the day when she brought up the
letter in which George renewed his offer of marriage.

She looked at the little white bed, which had been hers
a few days before, and thought she would like to sleep
in it that night, and wake, as formerly, with her mother
smiling over her in the morning:  Then she thought with
terror of the great funereal damask pavilion in the vast
and dingy state bedroom, which was awaiting her at the
grand hotel in Cavendish Square.  Dear little white bed!
how many a long night had she wept on its pillow!
How she had despaired and hoped to die there; and now
were not all her wishes accomplished, and the lover of
whom she had despaired her own for ever?  Kind mother!
how patiently and tenderly she had watched round that
bed!  She went and knelt down by the bedside; and there
this wounded and timorous, but gentle and loving soul,
sought for consolation, where as yet, it must be owned,
our little girl had but seldom looked for it.  Love had
been her faith hitherto; and the sad, bleeding disappointed
heart began to feel the want of another consoler.

Have we a right to repeat or to overhear her prayers?
These, brother, are secrets, and out of the domain of
Vanity Fair, in which our story lies.

But this may be said, that when the tea was finally
announced, our young lady came downstairs a great deal
more cheerful; that she did not despond, or deplore her
fate, or think about George's coldness, or Rebecca's eyes,
as she had been wont to do of late.  She went downstairs,
and kissed her father and mother, and talked to
the old gentleman, and made him more merry than he
had been for many a day.  She sate down at the piano
which Dobbin had bought for her, and sang over all her
father's favourite old songs.  She pronounced the tea to
be excellent, and praised the exquisite taste in which
the marmalade was arranged in the saucers.  And in
determining to make everybody else happy, she found
herself so; and was sound asleep in the great funereal
pavilion, and only woke up with a smile when George
arrived from the theatre.

For the next day, George had more important "business"
to transact than that which took him to see Mr.
Kean in Shylock.  Immediately on his arrival in London
he had written off to his father's solicitors, signifying his
royal pleasure that an interview should take place between
them on the morrow.  His hotel bill, losses at
billiards and cards to Captain Crawley had almost drained
the young man's purse, which wanted replenishing before
he set out on his travels, and he had no resource but
to infringe upon the two thousand pounds which the
attorneys were commissioned to pay over to him.  He
had a perfect belief in his own mind that his father
would relent before very long.  How could any parent
be obdurate for a length of time against such a
paragon as he was?  If his mere past and personal merits did
not succeed in mollifying his father, George determined
that he would distinguish himself so prodigiously in the
ensuing campaign that the old gentleman must give in to
him.  And if not?  Bah! the world was before him.  His
luck might change at cards, and there was a deal of
spending in two thousand pounds.

So he sent off Amelia once more in a carriage to her
mamma, with strict orders and carte blanche to the two
ladies to purchase everything requisite for a lady of Mrs.
George Osborne's fashion, who was going on a foreign
tour.  They had but one da