in
occupation in life was to buy knick-knacks that he might
give them away afterwards, bought the little chap a
pony not much bigger than a large rat, the donor said,
and on this little black Shetland pygmy young Rawdon's
great father was pleased to mount the boy, and to walk
by his side in the park.  It pleased him to see his old
quarters, and his old fellow-guardsmen at Knightsbridge:
he had begun to think of his bachelorhood with
something like regret.  The old troopers were glad to recognize
their ancient officer and dandle the little colonel.
Colonel Crawley found dining at mess and with his
brother-officers very pleasant.  "Hang it, I ain't clever
enough for her--I know it.  She won't miss me," he used to
say:  and he was right, his wife did not miss him.

Rebecca was fond of her husband.  She was always
perfectly good-humoured and kind to him.  She did not
even show her scorn much for him; perhaps she liked
him the better for being a fool.  He was her upper servant
and maitre d'hotel.  He went on her errands; obeyed
her orders without question; drove in the carriage in the
ring with her without repining; took her to the opera-box,
solaced himself at his club during the performance, and
came punctually back to fetch her when due.  He would
have liked her to be a little fonder of the boy, but even
to that he reconciled himself.  "Hang it, you know she's so
clever," he said, "and I'm not literary and that, you
know." For, as we have said before, it requires no great
wisdom to be able to win at cards and billiards, and
Rawdon made no pretensions to any other sort of skill.

When the companion came, his domestic duties became
very light.  His wife encouraged him to dine
abroad:  she would let him off duty at the opera.  "Don't
stay and stupefy yourself at home to-night, my dear,"
she would say.  "Some men are coming who will only bore
you.  I would not ask them, but you know it's for your
good, and now I have a sheep-dog, I need not be afraid
to be alone."

"A sheep-dog--a companion!  Becky Sharp with a
companion!  Isn't it good fun?" thought Mrs. Crawley to
herself.  The notion tickled hugely her sense of humour.

One Sunday morning, as Rawdon Crawley, his little
son, and the pony were taking their accustomed walk in
the park, they passed by an old acquaintance of the
Colonel's, Corporal Clink, of the regiment, who was in
conversation with a friend, an old gentleman, who held
a boy in his arms about the age of little Rawdon.  This
other youngster had seized hold of the Waterloo medal
which the Corporal wore, and was examining it with
delight.

"Good morning, your Honour," said Clink, in reply to
the "How do, Clink?" of the Colonel.  "This ere young
gentleman is about the little Colonel's age, sir,"
continued the corporal.

"His father was a Waterloo man, too," said the old
gentleman, who carried the boy.  "Wasn't he, Georgy?"

"Yes," said Georgy.  He and the little chap on the pony
were looking at each other with all their might--solemnly
scanning each other as children do.

"In a line regiment," Clink said with a patronizing air.

"He was a Captain in the --th regiment," said the old
gentleman rather pompously.  "Captain George Osborne,
sir--perhaps you knew him.  He died the death of a
hero, sir, fighting against the Corsican tyrant."
Colonel Crawley blushed quite red.  "I knew him very
well, sir," he said, "and his wife, his dear little wife,
sir--how is she?"

"She is my daughter, sir," said the old gentleman,
putting down the boy and taking out a card with great
solemnity, which he handed to the Colonel.  On it
written--

"Mr. Sedley, Sole Agent for the Black Diamond and
Anti-Cinder Coal Association, Bunker's Wharf, Thames
Street, and Anna-Maria Cottages, Fulham Road West."

Little Georgy went up and looked at the Shetland
pony.

"Should you like to have a ride?" said Rawdon minor
from the saddle.

"Yes," said Georgy.  The Colonel, who had been
looking at him with some interest, took up the child
and put him on the pony behind Rawdon minor.

"Take hold of him, Georgy," he said--"take my little
boy round the waist--his name is Rawdon." And both the
children began to laugh.

"You won't see a prettier pair I think, THIS summer's
day, sir," said the good-natured Corporal; and the
Colonel, the Corporal, and old Mr. Sedley with his umbrella,
walked by the side of the children.




CHAPTER XXXVIII


A Family in a Very Small Way

We must suppose little George Osborne has ridden from
Knightsbridge towards Fulham, and will stop and make
inquiries at that village regarding some friends whom we
have left there.  How is Mrs. Amelia after the storm of
Waterloo? Is she living and thriving? What has come of
Major Dobbin, whose cab was always hankering about
her premises? And is there any news of the Collector
of Boggley Wollah? The facts concerning the latter are
briefly these:

Our worthy fat friend Joseph Sedley returned to India
not long after his escape from Brussels.  Either his
furlough was up, or he dreaded to meet any witnesses of his
Waterloo flight.  However it might be, he went back to his
duties in Bengal very soon after Napoleon had taken
up his residence at St.  Helena, where Jos saw the ex-
Emperor.  To hear Mr. Sedley talk on board ship you
would have supposed that it was not the first time he and
the Corsican had met, and that the civilian had bearded
the French General at Mount St.  John.  He had a
thousand anecdotes about the famous battles; he knew the
position of every regiment and the loss which each
had incurred.  He did not deny that he had been
concerned in those victories--that he had been with the
army and carried despatches for the Duke of Wellington.
And he described what the Duke did and said on
every conceivable moment of the day of Waterloo, with
such an accurate knowledge of his Grace's sentiments
and proceedings that it was clear he must have been by
the conqueror's side throughout the day; though, as a
non-combatant, his name was not mentioned in the
public documents relative to the battle.  Perhaps he actually
worked himself up to believe that he had been engaged
with the army; certain it is that he made a prodigious
sensation for some time at Calcutta, and was called
Waterloo Sedley during the whole of his subsequent stay in
Bengal.

The bills which Jos had given for the purchase of those
unlucky horses were paid without question by him and
his agents.  He never was heard to allude to the bargain,
and nobody knows for a certainty what became
of the horses, or how he got rid of them, or of Isidor, his
Belgian servant, who sold a grey horse, very like the one
which Jos rode, at Valenciennes sometime during the
autumn of 1815.

Jos's London agents had orders to pay one hundred
and twenty pounds yearly to his parents at Fulham.  It
was the chief support of the old couple; for Mr. Sedley's
speculations in life subsequent to his bankruptcy did not
by any means retrieve the broken old gentleman's
fortune.  He tried to be a wine-merchant, a coal-merchant,
a commission lottery agent, &c., &c.  He sent round
prospectuses to his friends whenever he took a new trade,
and ordered a new brass plate for the door, and talked
pompously about making his fortune still.  But Fortune
never came back to the feeble and stricken old man.  One
by one his friends dropped off, and were weary of
buying dear coals and bad wine from him; and there
was only his wife in all the world who fancied, when he
tottered off to the City of a morning, that he was still
doing any business there.  At evening he crawled slowly
back; and he used to go of nights to a little club at a
tavern, where he disposed of the finances of the nation.
It was wonderful to hear him talk about millions, and
agios, and discounts, and what Rothschild was
doing, and Baring Brothers.  He talked of such vast sums
that the gentlemen of the club (the apothecary, the
undertaker, the great carpenter and builder, the parish clerk,
who was allowed to come stealthily, and Mr. Clapp, our
old acquaintance,) respected the old gentleman.  "I was
better off once, sir," he did not fail to tell everybody who
"used the room." "My son, sir, is at this minute chief
magistrate of Ramgunge in the Presidency of Bengal, and
touching his four thousand rupees per mensem.  My
daughter might be a Colonel's lady if she liked.  I might
draw upon my son, the first magistrate, sir, for two
thousand pounds to-morrow, and Alexander would cash my
bill, down sir, down on the counter, sir.  But the Sedleys
were always a proud family." You and I, my dear
reader, may drop into this condition one day:  for have
not many of our friends attained it? Our luck may fail:
our powers forsake us:  our place on the boards be taken
by better and younger mimes--the chance of life roll
away and leave us shattered and stranded.  Then men
will walk across the road when they meet you--or, worse
still, hold you out a couple of fingers and patronize you
in a pitying way--then you will know, as soon as your
back is turned, that your friend begins with a "Poor
devil, what imprudences he has committed, what chances
that chap has thrown away!" Well, well--a carriage and
three thousand a year is not the summit of the reward
nor the end of God's judgment of men.  If quacks prosper
as often as they go to the wall--if zanies succeed and
knaves arrive at fortune, and, vice versa, sharing ill
luck and prosperity for all the world like the ablest and
most honest amongst us--I say, brother, the gifts and
pleasures of Vanity Fair cannot be held of any great
account, and that it is probable .  .  .  but we are
wandering out of the domain of the story.

Had Mrs. Sedley been a woman of energy, she would
have exerted it after her husband's ruin and, occupying
a large house, would have taken in boarders.  The broken
Sedley would have acted well as the boarding-house
landlady's husband; the Munoz of private life; the titular lord
and master:  the carver, house-steward, and humble
husband of the occupier of the dingy throne.  I have seen
men of good brains and breeding, and of good hopes and
vigour once, who feasted squires and kept hunters in
their youth, meekly cutting up legs of mutton for
rancorous old harridans and pretending to preside over their
dreary tables--but Mrs. Sedley, we say, had not spirit
enough to bustle about for "a few select inmates to join
a cheerful musical family," such as one reads of in the
Times.  She was content to lie on the shore where
fortune had stranded her--and you could see that the
career of this old couple was over.

I don't think they were unhappy.  Perhaps they were
a little prouder in their downfall than in their prosperity.
Mrs. Sedley was always a great person for her landlady,
Mrs. Clapp, when she descended and passed many hours
with her in the basement or ornamented kitchen.  The
Irish maid Betty Flanagan's bonnets and ribbons, her
sauciness, her idleness, her reckless prodigality of kitchen
candles, her consumption of tea and sugar, and so forth
occupied and amused the old lady almost as much as the
doings of her former household, when she had Sambo and
the coachman, and a groom, and a footboy, and a
housekeeper with a regiment of female domestics--her former
household, about which the good lady talked a hundred
times a day.  And besides Betty Flanagan, Mrs. Sedley
had all the maids-of-all-work in the street to superintend.
She knew how each tenant of the cottages paid or
owed his little rent.  She stepped aside when Mrs.
Rougemont the actress passed with her dubious family.  She
flung up her head when Mrs. Pestler, the apothecary's
lady, drove by in her husband's professional one-horse
chaise.  She had colloquies with the greengrocer about
the pennorth of turnips which Mr. Sedley loved; she kept
an eye upon the milkman and the baker's boy; and
made visitations to the butcher, who sold hundreds of
oxen very likely with less ado than was made about
Mrs. Sedley's loin of mutton:  and she counted the
potatoes under the joint on Sundays, on which days, dressed
in her best, she went to church twice and read Blair's
Sermons in the evening.

On that day, for "business" prevented him on weekdays
from taking such a pleasure, it was old Sedley's
delight to take out his little grandson Georgy to the
neighbouring parks or Kensington Gardens, to see the soldiers
or to feed the ducks.  Georgy loved the redcoats, and his
grandpapa told him how his father had been a famous
soldier, and introduced him to many sergeants and others
with Waterloo medals on their breasts, to whom the
old grandfather pompously presented the child as the
son of Captain Osborne of the --th, who died gloriously
on the glorious eighteenth.  He has been known to treat
some of these non-commissioned gentlemen to a glass of
porter, and, indeed, in their first Sunday walks was
disposed to spoil little Georgy, sadly gorging the boy with
apples and parliament, to the detriment of his health--
until Amelia declared that George should never go out
with his grandpapa unless the latter promised solemnly,
and on his honour, not to give the child any cakes,
lollipops, or stall produce whatever.

Between Mrs. Sedley and her daughter there was a sort
of coolness about this boy, and a secret jealousy--for
one evening in George's very early days, Amelia, who
had been seated at work in their little parlour scarcely
remarking that the old lady had quitted the room, ran
upstairs instinctively to the nursery at the cries of the
child, who had been asleep until that moment--and
there found Mrs. Sedley in the act of surreptitiously
administering Daffy's Elixir to the infant.  Amelia, the
gentlest and sweetest of everyday mortals, when she
found this meddling with her maternal authority, thrilled
and trembled all over with anger.  Her cheeks, ordinarily
pale, now flushed up, until they were as red as they used
to be when she was a child of twelve years old.  She
seized the baby out of her mother's arms and then
grasped at the bottle, leaving the old lady gaping at her,
furious, and holding the guilty tea-spoon.

Amelia flung the bottle crashing into the fire-place.
"I will NOT have baby poisoned, Mamma," cried Emmy,
rocking the infant about violently with both her arms
round him and turning with flashing eyes at her mother.

"Poisoned, Amelia!" said the old lady; "this language
to me?"

"He shall not have any medicine but that which Mr.
Pestler sends for hi n.  He told me that Daffy's Elixir was
poison."

"Very good:  you think I'm a murderess then," replied
Mrs. Sedley.  "This is the language you use to your mother.
I have met with misfortunes:  I have sunk low in life:  I
have kept my carriage, and now walk on foot:  but I did
not know I was a murderess before, and thank you for the
NEWS."

"Mamma," said the poor girl, who was always ready for
tears--"you shouldn't be hard upon me.  I--I didn't mean
--I mean, I did not wish to say you would to any
wrong to this dear child, only--"

"Oh, no, my love,--only that I was a murderess; in
which case I had better go to the Old Bailey.  Though I
didn't poison YOU, when you were a child, but gave you
the best of education and the most expensive masters
money could procure.  Yes; I've nursed five children and
buried three; and the one I loved the best of all, and
tended through croup, and teething, and measles, and
hooping-cough, and brought up with foreign masters,
regardless of expense, and with accomplishments at Minerva
House--which I never had when I was a girl--when I was
too glad to honour my father and mother, that I might
live long in the land, and to be useful, and not to mope
all day in my room and act the fine lady--says I'm a
murderess.  Ah, Mrs. Osborne! may YOU never nourish a
viper in your bosom, that's MY prayer."

"Mamma, Mamma!" cried the bewildered girl; and the
child in her arms set up a frantic chorus of shouts.
"A murderess, indeed!  Go down on your knees and
pray to God to cleanse your wicked ungrateful heart,
Amelia, and may He forgive you as I do." And Mrs.
Sedley tossed out of the room, hissing out the word
poison once more, and so ending her charitable
benediction.

Till the termination of her natural life, this breach
between Mrs. Sedley and her daughter was never thoroughly mended.  The quarrel gave the elder lady numberless
advantages which she did not fail to turn to account with
female ingenuity and perseverance.  For instance, she
scarcely spoke to Amelia for many weeks afterwards.
She warned the domestics not to touch the child, as Mrs.
Osborne might be offended.  She asked her daughter to
see and satisfy herself that there was no poison prepared
in the little daily messes that were concocted for Georgy.
When neighbours asked after the boy's health, she
referred them pointedly to Mrs. Osborne.  SHE never
ventured to ask whether the baby was well or not.  SHE
would not touch the child although he was her grandson,
and own precious darling, for she was not USED to
children, and might kill it.  And whenever Mr. Pestler came
upon his healing inquisition, she received the doctor with
such a sarcastic and scornful demeanour, as made the
surgeon declare that not Lady Thistlewood herself, whom
he had the honour of attending professionally, could
give herself greater airs than old Mrs. Sedley, from whom
he never took a fee.  And very likely Emmy was jealous
too, upon her own part, as what mother is not, of those
who would manage her children for her, or become
candidates for the first place in their affections.  It is certain
that when anybody nursed the child, she was uneasy, and
that she would no more allow Mrs. Clapp or the
domestic to dress or tend him than she would have let them
wash her husband's miniature which hung up over her
little bed--the same little bed from which the poor girl
had gone to his; and to which she retired now for many
long, silent, tearful, but happy years.

In this room was all Amelia's heart and treasure.  Here
it was that she tended her boy and watched him through
the many ills of childhood, with a constant passion of
love.  The elder George returned in him somehow, only
improved, and as if come back from heaven.  In a
hundred little tones, looks, and movements, the child was
so like his father that the widow's heart thrilled as she
held him to it; and he would often ask the cause of her
tears.  It was because of his likeness to his father, she
did not scruple to tell him.  She talked constantly to him
about this dead father, and spoke of her love for George
to the innocent and wondering child; much more than she
ever had done to George himself, or to any confidante of
her youth.  To her parents she never talked about this
matter, shrinking from baring her heart to them.  Little
George very likely could understand no better than they,
but into his ears she poured her sentimental secrets
unreservedly, and into his only.  The very joy of this
woman was a sort of grief, or so tender, at least, that
its expression was tears.  Her sensibilities were so weak
and tremulous that perhaps they ought not to be talked
about in a book.  I was told by Dr. Pestler (now a most
flourishing lady's physician, with a sumptuous dark green
carriage, a prospect of speedy knighthood, and a house
in Manchester Square) that her grief at weaning the child
was a sight that would have unmanned a Herod.  He was
very soft-hearted many years ago, and his wife was
mortally jealous of Mrs. Amelia, then and long afterwards.

Perhaps the doctor's lady had good reason for her
jealousy:  most women shared it, of those who formed the
small circle of Amelia's acquaintance, and were quite
angry at the enthusiasm with which the other sex regarded
her.  For almost all men who came near her loved
her; though no doubt they would be at a loss to tell you
why.  She was not brilliant, nor witty, nor wise over
much, nor extraordinarily handsome.  But wherever she
went she touched and charmed every one of the male
sex, as invariably as she awakened the scorn and
incredulity of her own sisterhood.  I think it was her
weakness which was her principal charm--a kind of sweet
submission and softness, which seemed to appeal to
each man she met for his sympathy and protection.  We
have seen how in the regiment, though she spoke but to
few of George's comrades there, all the swords of the
young fellows at the mess-table would have leapt from
their scabbards to fight round her; and so it was in
the little narrow lodging-house and circle at Fulham, she
interested and pleased everybody.  If she had been Mrs.
Mango herself, of the great house of Mango, Plantain,
and Co., Crutched Friars, and the magnificent proprietress
of the Pineries, Fulham, who gave summer dejeuners
frequented by Dukes and Earls, and drove about
the parish with magnificent yellow liveries and bay horses,
such as the royal stables at Kensington themselves could
not turn out--I say had she been Mrs. Mango herself, or
her son's wife, Lady Mary Mango (daughter of the
Earl of Castlemouldy, who condescended to marry the
head of the firm), the tradesmen of the neighbourhood
could not pay her more honour than they invariably
showed to the gentle young widow, when she passed by
their doors, or made her humble purchases at their shops.

Thus it was not only Mr. Pestler, the medical man, but
Mr. Linton the young assistant, who doctored the servant
maids and small tradesmen, and might be seen any day
reading the Times in the surgery, who openly declared
himself the slave of Mrs. Osborne.  He was a personable
young gentleman, more welcome at Mrs. Sedley's lodgings
than his principal; and if anything went wrong with
Georgy, he would drop in twice or thrice in the day to
see the little chap, and without so much as the thought
of a fee.  He would abstract lozenges, tamarinds, and
other produce from the surgery-drawers for little
Georgy's benefit, and compounded draughts and mixtures
for him of miraculous sweetness, so that it was quite a
pleasure to the child to be ailing.  He and Pestler, his
chief, sat up two whole nights by the boy in that
momentous and awful week when Georgy had the measles; and
when you would have thought, from the mother's terror,
that there had never been measles in the world before.
Would they have done as much for other people? Did
they sit up for the folks at the Pineries, when Ralph
Plantagenet, and Gwendoline, and Guinever Mango had the
same juvenile complaint? Did they sit up for little Mary
Clapp, the landlord's daughter, who actually caught the
disease of little Georgy? Truth compels one to say, no.
They slept quite undisturbed, at least as far as she was
concerned--pronounced hers to be a slight case, which
would almost cure itself, sent her in a draught or two,
and threw in bark when the child rallied, with perfect
indifference, and just for form's sake.

Again, there was the little French chevalier opposite,
who gave lessons in his native tongue at various schools
in the neighbourhood, aud who might be heard in his
apartment of nights playing tremulous old gavottes and
minuets on a wheezy old fiddle.  Whenever this powdered
and courteous old man, who never missed a Sunday at the
convent chapel at Hammersmith, and who was in all
respects, thoughts, conduct, and bearing utterly unlike the
bearded savages of his nation, who curse perfidious
Albion, and scowl at you from over their cigars, in the
Quadrant arcades at the present day--whenever the
old Chevalier de Talonrouge spoke of Mistress Osborne,
he would first finish his pinch of snuff, flick away the
remaining particles of dust with a graceful wave of his
hand, gather up his fingers again into a bunch, and,
bringing them up to his mouth, blow them open with a kiss,
exclaiming, Ah! la divine creature!  He vowed and
protested that when Amelia walked in the Brompton Lanes
flowers grew in profusion under her feet.  He called little
Georgy Cupid, and asked him news of Venus, his mamma;
and told the astonished Betty Flanagan that she was
one of the Graces, and the favourite attendant of the
Reine des Amours.

Instances might be multiplied of this easily gained and
unconscious popularity.  Did not Mr. Binny, the mild
and genteel curate of the district chapel, which the family
attended, call assiduously upon the widow, dandle the
little boy on his knee, and offer to teach him Latin, to the
anger of the elderly virgin, his sister, who kept house
for him? "There is nothing in her, Beilby," the latter
lady would say.  "When she comes to tea here she does
not speak a word during the whole evening.  She is but a
poor lackadaisical creature, and it is my belief has no
heart at all.  It is only her pretty face which all you
gentlemen admire so.  Miss Grits, who has five thousand
pounds, and expectations besides, has twice as much
character, and is a thousand times more agreeable to my
taste; and if she were good-looking I know that you would
think her perfection."

Very likely Miss Binny was right to a great extent.  It
IS the pretty face which creates sympathy in the hearts of
men, those wicked rogues.  A woman may possess the
wisdom and chastity of Minerva, and we give no heed to
her, if she has a plain face.  What folly will not a pair of
bright eyes make pardonable? What dulness may not
red lips and sweet accents render pleasant? And so, with
their usual sense of justice, ladies argue that because a
woman is handsome, therefore she is a fool.  O ladies,
ladies! there are some of you who are neither handsome
nor wise.

These are but trivial incidents to recount in the life of
our heroine.  Her tale does not deal in wonders, as the
gentle reader has already no doubt perceived; and if a
journal had been kept of her proceedings during the
seven years after the birth of her son, there would be
found few incidents more remarkable in it than that of
the measles, recorded in the foregoing page.  Yes, one
day, and greatly to her wonder, the Reverend Mr. Binny,
just mentioned, asked her to change her name of Osborne
for his own; when, with deep blushes and tears in her
eyes and voice, she thanked him for his regard for her,
expressed gratitude for his attentions to her and to her
poor little boy, but said that she never, never could
think of any but--but the husband whom she had lost.

On the twenty-fifth of April, and the eighteenth of
June, the days of marriage and widowhood, she kept her
room entirely, consecrating them (and we do not know
how many hours of solitary night-thought, her little boy
sleeping in his crib by her bedside) to the memory of that
departed friend.  During the day she was more active.
She had to teach George to read and to write and a little
to draw.  She read books, in order that she might tell
him stories from them.  As his eyes opened and his mind
expanded under the influence of the outward nature
round about him, she taught the child, to the best of
her humble power, to acknowledge the Maker of all, and
every night and every morning he and she--(in that
awful and touching communion which I think must bring
a thrill to the heart of every man who witnesses or who
remembers it)--the mother and the little boy--prayed
to Our Father together, the mother pleading with all her
gentle heart, the child lisping after her as she spoke.  And
each time they prayed to God to bless dear Papa, as
if he were alive and in the room with them.

To wash and dress this young gentleman--to take him
for a run of the mornings, before breakfast, and the
retreat of grandpapa for "business"--to make for him the
most wonderful and ingenious dresses, for which end the
thrifty widow cut up and altered every available little bit
of finery which she possessed out of her wardrobe during
her marriage--for Mrs. Osborne herself (greatly to her
mother's vexation, who preferred fine clothes, especially
since her misfortunes) always wore a black gown and a
straw bonnet with a black ribbon--occupied her many
hours of the day.  Others she had to spare, at the service
of her mother and her old father.  She had taken the pains
to learn, and used to play cribbage with this gentleman
on the nights when he did not go to his club.  She sang
for him when he was so minded, and it was a good
sign, for he invariably fell into a comfortable sleep during
the music.  She wrote out his numerous memorials,
letters, prospectuses, and projects.  It was in her
handwriting that most of the old gentleman's former
acquaintances were informed that he had become an agent for
the Black Diamond and Anti-Cinder Coal Company and
could supply his friends and the public with the best coals
at --s.  per chaldron.  All he did was to sign the circulars
with his flourish and signature, and direct them in a
shaky, clerklike hand.  One of these papers was sent to
Major Dobbin, --Regt., care of Messrs.  Cox and Greenwood;
but the Major being in Madras at the time, had no
particular call for coals.  He knew, though, the hand
which had written the prospectus.  Good God! what
would he not have given to hold it in his own!  A second
prospectus came out, informing the Major that J.  Sedley
and Company, having established agencies at Oporto,
Bordeaux, and St.  Mary's, were enabled to offer to their
friends and the public generally the finest and most
celebrated growths of ports, sherries, and claret wines at
reasonable prices and under extraordinary advantages.
Acting upon this hint, Dobbin furiously canvassed the
governor, the commander-in-chief, the judges, the
regiments, and everybody whom he knew in the Presidency,
and sent home to Sedley and Co.  orders for wine which
perfectly astonished Mr. Sedley and Mr. Clapp, who was
the Co.  in the business.  But no more orders came after
that first burst of good fortune, on which poor old Sedley
was about to build a house in the City, a regiment of
clerks, a dock to himself, and correspondents all over
the world.  The old gentleman's former taste in wine had
gone:  the curses of the mess-room assailed Major Dobbin
for the vile drinks he had been the means of introducing
there; and he bought back a great quantity of the wine
and sold it at public outcry, at an enormous loss to himself.
As for Jos, who was by this time promoted to a seat
at the Revenue Board at Calcutta, he was wild with rage
when the post brought him out a bundle of these
Bacchanalian prospectuses, with a private note from his
father, telling Jos that his senior counted upon him in
this enterprise, and had consigned a quantity of select
wines to him, as per invoice, drawing bills upon him for
the amount of the same.  Jos, who would no more have it
supposed that his father, Jos Sedley's father, of the Board
of Revenue, was a wine merchant asking for orders, than
that he was Jack Ketch, refused the bills with scorn, wrote
back contumeliously to the old gentleman, bidding him
to mind his own affairs; and the protested paper coming
back, Sedley and Co.  had to take it up, with the profits
which they had made out of the Madras venture, and
with a little portion of Emmy's savings.

Besides her pension of fifty pounds a year, there had
been five hundred pounds, as her husband's executor
stated, left in the agent's hands at the time of Osborne's
demise, which sum, as George's guardian, Dobbin
proposed to put out at 8 per cent in an Indian house of
agency.  Mr. Sedley, who thought the Major had some
roguish intentions of his own about the money, was
strongly against this plan; and he went to the agents to
protest personally against the employment of the money
in question, when he learned, to his surprise, that there
had been no such sum in their hands, that all the late
Captain's assets did not amount to a hundred pounds,
and that the five hundred pounds in question must be a
separate sum, of which Major Dobbin knew the particulars.
More than ever convinced that there was some
roguery, old Sedley pursued the Major.  As his daughter's
nearest friend, he demanded with a high hand a statement
of the late Captain's accounts.  Dobbin's stammering,
blushing, and awkwardness added to the other's
convictions that he had a rogue to deal with, and in a
majestic tone he told that officer a piece of his mind, as
he called it, simply stating his belief that the Major was
unlawfully detaining his late son-in-law's money.

Dobbin at this lost all patience, and if his accuser had
not been so old and so broken, a quarrel might have
ensued between them at the Slaughters' Coffee-house, in
a box of which place of entertainment the gentlemen had
their colloquy.  "Come upstairs, sir," lisped out the
Major.  "I insist on your coming up the stairs, and I will
show which is the injured party, poor George or I"; and,
dragging the old gentleman up to his bedroom, he
produced from his desk Osborne's accounts, and a bundle
of IOU's which the latter had given, who, to do him
justice, was always ready to give an IOU.  "He paid
his bills in England," Dobbin added, "but he had not a
hundred pounds in the world when he fell.  I and one or
two of his brother officers made up the little sum, which
was all that we could spare, and you dare tell us that
we are trying to cheat the widow and the orphan."
Sedley was very contrite and humbled, though the fact is
that William Dobbin had told a great falsehood to the old
gentleman; having himself given every shilling of the
money, having buried his friend, and paid all the fees and
charges incident upon the calamity and removal of poor
Amelia.

About these expenses old Osborne had never given
himself any trouble to think, nor any other relative of
Amelia, nor Amelia herself, indeed.  She trusted to Major
Dobbin as an accountant, took his somewhat confused
calculations for granted, and never once suspected how
much she was in his debt.

Twice or thrice in the year, according to her promise,
she wrote him letters to Madras, letters all about
little Georgy.  How he treasured these papers!  Whenever
Amelia wrote he answered, and not until then.  But
he sent over endless remembrances of himself to his
godson and to her.  He ordered and sent a box of scarfs
and a grand ivory set of chess-men from China.  The
pawns were little green and white men, with real swords
and shields; the knights were on horseback, the castles
were on the backs of elephants.  "Mrs. Mango's own set at
the Pineries was not so fine," Mr. Pestler remarked.  These
chess-men were the delight of Georgy's life, who printed
his first letter in acknowledgement of this gift of his
godpapa.  He sent over preserves and pickles, which latter
the young gentleman tried surreptitiously in the sideboard
and half-killed himself with eating.  He thought it was a
judgement upon him for stealing, they were so hot.  Emmy
wrote a comical little account of this mishap to the
Major:  it pleased him to think that her spirits were rallying
and that she could be merry sometimes now.  He
sent over a pair of shawls, a white one for her and a black
one with palm-leaves for her mother, and a pair of red
scarfs, as winter wrappers, for old Mr. Sedley and George.
The shawls were worth fifty guineas apiece at the very
least, as Mrs. Sedley knew.  She wore hers in state at
church at Brompton, and was congratulated by her
female friends upon the splendid acquisition.  Emmy's, too,
became prettily her modest black gown.  "What a pity it
is she won't think of him!" Mrs. Sedley remarked to
Mrs. Clapp and to all her friends of Brompton.  "Jos never
sent us such presents, I am sure, and grudges us
everything.  It is evident that the Major is over head and ears
in love with her; and yet, whenever I so much as hint it,
she turns red and begins to cry and goes and sits upstairs
with her miniature.  I'm sick of that miniature.  I wish we
had never seen those odious purse-proud Osbornes."

Amidst such humble scenes and associates George's
early youth was passed, and the boy grew up delicate,
sensitive, imperious, woman-bred--domineering the
gentle mother whom he loved with passionate affection.  He
ruled all the rest of the little world round about him.
As he grew, the elders were amazed at his haughty
manner and his constant likeness to his father.  He asked
questions about everything, as inquiring youth will do.  The
profundity of his remarks and interrogatories astonished
his old grandfather, who perfectly bored the club at the
tavern with stories about the little lad's learning and
genius.  He suffered his grandmother with a good-humoured indifference.  The small circle round about him
believed that the equal of the boy did not exist upon the
earth.  Georgy inherited his father's pride, and perhaps
thought they were not wrong.

When he grew to be about six years old, Dobbin began
to write to him very much.  The Major wanted to hear
that Georgy was going to a school and hoped he would
acquit himself with credit there:  or would he have a good
tutor at home? It was time that he should begin to learn;
and his godfather and guardian hinted that he hoped to
be allowed to defray the charges of the boy's education,
which would fall heavily upon his mother's straitened
income.  The Major, in a word, was always thinking about
Amelia and her little boy, and by orders to his agents
kept the latter provided with picture-books, paint-boxes,
desks, and all conceivable implements of amusement and
instruction.  Three days before George's sixth birthday a
gentleman in a gig, accompanied by a servant, drove
up to Mr. Sedley's house and asked to see Master George
Osborne:  it was Mr. Woolsey, military tailor, of Conduit
Street, who came at the Major's order to measure the
young gentleman for a suit of clothes.  He had had the
honour of making for the Captain, the young
gentleman's father.

Sometimes, too, and by the Major's desire no doubt,
his sisters, the Misses Dobbin, would call in the family
carriage to take Amelia and the little boy to drive if they
were so inclined.  The patronage and kindness of these
ladies was very uncomfortable to Amelia, but she bore it
meekly enough, for her nature was to yield; and, besides,
the carriage and its splendours gave little Georgy
immense pleasure.  The ladies begged occasionally that the
child might pass a day with them, and he was always glad
to go to that fine garden-house at Denmark Hill, where
they lived, and where there were such fine grapes in the
hot-houses and peaches on the walls.

One day they kindly came over to Amelia with news
which they were SURE would delight her--something VERY
interesting about their dear William.

"What was it:  was he coming home?" she asked with
pleasure beaming in her eyes.

"Oh, no--not the least--but they had very good reason
to believe that dear William was about to be married--
and to a relation of a very dear friend of Amelia's--to
Miss Glorvina O'Dowd, Sir Michael O'Dowd's sister,
who had gone out to join Lady O'Dowd at Madras--a very
beautiful and accomplished girl, everybody said."

Amelia said "Oh!" Amelia was very VERY happy indeed.
But she supposed Glorvina could not be like her old
acquaintance, who was most kind--but--but she was
very happy indeed.  And by some impulse of which I
cannot explain the meaning, she took George in her arms
and kissed him with an extraordinary tenderness.  Her
eyes were quite moist when she put the child down; and
she scarcely spoke a word during the whole of the
drive--though she was so very happy indeed.




CHAPTER XXXIX


A Cynical Chapter

Our duty now takes us back for a brief space to some old
Hampshire acquaintances of ours, whose hopes respecting
the disposal of their rich kinswoman's property were so
woefully disappointed.  After counting upon thirty thousand
pounds from his sister, it was a heavy blow.  to Bute Crawley
to receive but five; out of which sum, when he had paid
his own debts and those of Jim, his son at college, a very
small fragment remained to portion off his four plain
daughters.  Mrs. Bute never knew, or at least never
acknowledged, how far her own tyrannous behaviour had
tended to ruin her husband.  All that woman could do, she
vowed and protested she had done.  Was it her fault if
she did not possess those sycophantic arts which her
hypocritical nephew, Pitt Crawley, practised? She wished
him all the happiness which he merited out of his
ill-gotten gains.  "At least the money will remain in the
family," she said charitably.  "Pitt will never spend it, my
dear, that is quite certain; for a greater miser does not
exist in England, and he is as odious, though in a
different way, as his spendthrift brother, the abandoned
Rawdon."

So Mrs. Bute, after the first shock of rage and
disappointment, began to accommodate herself as best
she could to her altered fortunes and to save and retrench
with all her might.  She instructed her daughters how to
bear poverty cheerfully, and invented a thousand notable
methods to conceal or evade it.  She took them about to
balls and public places in the neighbourhood, with
praiseworthy energy; nay, she entertained her friends in a
hospitable comfortable manner at the Rectory, and much
more frequently than before dear Miss Crawley's legacy
had fallen in.  From her outward bearing nobody would
have supposed that the family had been disappointed
in their expectations, or have guessed from her frequent
appearance in public how she pinched and starved at
home.  Her girls had more milliners' furniture than they
had ever enjoyed before.  They appeared perseveringly
at the Winchester and Southampton assemblies; they
penetrated to Cowes for the race-balls and regatta-gaieties
there; and their carriage, with the horses taken from the
plough, was at work perpetually, until it began almost to
be believed that the four sisters had had fortunes left them
by their aunt, whose name the family never mentioned in
public but with the most tender gratitude and regard.  I
know no sort of lying which is more frequent in Vanity
Fair than this, and it may be remarked how people who
practise it take credit to themselves for their hypocrisy,
and fancy that they are exceedingly virtuous and
praiseworthy, because they are able to deceive the world
with regard to the extent of their means.

Mrs. Bute certainly thought herself one of the most
virtuous women in England, and the sight of her happy
family was an edifying one to strangers.  They were so
cheerful, so loving, so well-educated, so simple!  Martha
painted flowers exquisitely and furnished half the charity
bazaars in the county.  Emma was a regular County Bulbul,
and her verses in the Hampshire Telegraph were
the glory of its Poet's Corner.  Fanny and Matilda sang
duets together, Mamma playing the piano, and the other
two sisters sitting with their arms round each other's waists
and listening affectionately.  Nobody saw the poor girls
drumming at the duets in private.  No one saw Mamma
drilling them rigidly hour after hour.  In a word, Mrs. Bute
put a good face against fortune and kept up appearances
in the most virtuous manner.

Everything that a good and respectable mother could
do Mrs. Bute did.  She got over yachting men from
Southampton, parsons from the Cathedral Close at Winchester,
and officers from the barracks there.  She tried to inveigle
the young barristers at assizes and encouraged Jim to
bring home friends with whom he went out hunting with
the H.  H.  What will not a mother do for the benefit of
her beloved ones?

Between such a woman and her brother-in-law, the
odious Baronet at the Hall, it is manifest that there could
be very little in common.  The rupture between Bute and
his brother Sir Pitt was complete; indeed, between Sir
Pitt and the whole county, to which the old man was a
scandal.  His dislike for respectable society increased with
age, and the lodge-gates had not opened to a gentleman's
carriage-wheels since Pitt and Lady Jane came to pay their
visit of duty after their marriage.

That was an awful and unfortunate visit, never to be
thought of by the family without horror.  Pitt begged his
wife, with a ghastly countenance, never to speak of it,
and it was only through Mrs. Bute herself, who still
knew everything which took place at the Hall, that the
circumstances of Sir Pitt's reception of his son and
daughter-in-law were ever known at all.

As they drove up the avenue of the park in their neat
and well-appointed carriage, Pitt remarked with dismay
and wrath great gaps among the trees--his trees--which
the old Baronet was felling entirely without license.  The
park wore an aspect of utter dreariness and ruin.  The
drives were ill kept, and the neat carriage splashed and
floundered in muddy pools along the road.  The great
sweep in front of the terrace and entrance stair was
black and covered with mosses; the once trim flower-beds
rank and weedy.  Shutters were up along almost the
whole line of the house; the great hall-door was unbarred
after much ringing of the bell; an individual in ribbons
was seen flitting up the black oak stair, as Horrocks at
length admitted the heir of Queen's Crawley and his bride
into the halls of their fathers.  He led the way into Sir
Pitt's "Library," as it was called, the fumes of tobacco
growing stronger as Pitt and Lady Jane approached that
apartment, "Sir Pitt ain't very well," Horrocks remarked
apologetically and hinted that his master was afflicted
with lumbago.

The library looked out on the front walk and park.
Sir Pitt had opened one of the windows, and was bawling
out thence to the postilion and Pitt's servant, who seemed
to be about to take the baggage down.

"Don't move none of them trunks," he cried, pointing
with a pipe which he held in his hand.  "It's only a morning
visit, Tucker, you fool.  Lor, what cracks that off hoss
has in his heels!  Ain't there no one at the King's Head to
rub 'em a little? How do, Pitt? How do, my dear? Come
to see the old man, hay? 'Gad--you've a pretty face, too.
You ain't like that old horse-godmother, your mother.
Come and give old Pitt a kiss, like a good little gal."

The embrace disconcerted the daughter-in-law
somewhat, as the caresses of the old gentleman, unshorn and
perfumed with tobacco, might well do.  But she
remembered that her brother Southdown had mustachios,
and smoked cigars, and submitted to the Baronet with a
tolerable grace.

"Pitt has got vat," said the Baronet, after this mark of
affection.  "Does he read ee very long zermons, my dear?
Hundredth Psalm, Evening Hymn, hay Pitt? Go and get
a glass of Malmsey and a cake for my Lady Jane, Horrocks,
you great big booby, and don't stand stearing there like
a fat pig.  I won't ask you to stop, my dear; you'll find it too
stoopid, and so should I too along a Pitt.  I'm an old man
now, and like my own ways, and my pipe and backgammon
of a night."

"I can play at backgammon, sir," said Lady Jane,
laughing.  "I used to play with Papa and Miss Crawley, didn't
I, Mr. Crawley?"

"Lady Jane can play, sir, at the game to which you
state that you are so partial," Pitt said haughtily.

But she wawn't stop for all that.  Naw, naw, goo back
to Mudbury and give Mrs. Rincer a benefit; or drive down
to the Rectory and ask Buty for a dinner.  He'll be charmed
to see you, you know; he's so much obliged to you for
gettin' the old woman's money.  Ha, ha!  Some of it will
do to patch up the Hall when I'm gone."

"I perceive, sir," said Pitt with a heightened voice,
"that your people will cut down the timber."

"Yees, yees, very fine weather, and seasonable for the
time of year," Sir Pitt answered, who had suddenly
grown deaf.  "But I'm gittin' old, Pitt, now.  Law bless you,
you ain't far from fifty yourself.  But he wears well, my
pretty Lady Jane, don't he? It's all godliness, sobriety, and
a moral life.  Look at me, I'm not very fur from fowr-score
--he, he"; and he laughed, and took snuff, and leered
at her and pinched her hand.

Pitt once more brought the conversation back to the
timber, but the Baronet was deaf again in an instant.

"I'm gittin' very old, and have been cruel bad this year
with the lumbago.  I shan't be here now for long; but I'm
glad ee've come, daughter-in-law.  I like your face, Lady
Jane:  it's got none of the damned high-boned Binkie look
in it; and I'll give ee something pretty, my dear, to go to
Court in." And he shuffled across the room to a cupboard,
from which he took a little old case containing jewels of
some value.  "Take that," said he, "my dear; it belonged
to my mother, and afterwards to the first Lady Binkie.
Pretty pearls--never gave 'em the ironmonger's daughter.
No, no.  Take 'em and put 'em up quick," said he, thrusting
the case into his daughter's hand, and clapping the door of
the cabinet to, as Horrocks entered with a salver and
refreshments.

"What have you a been and given Pitt's wife?" said
the individual in ribbons, when Pitt and Lady Jane had
taken leave of the old gentleman.  It was Miss Horrocks,
the butler's daughter--the cause of the scandal
throughout the county--the lady who reigned now almost
supreme at Queen's Crawley.

The rise and progress of those Ribbons had been
marked with dismay by the county and family.  The
Ribbons opened an account at the Mudbury Branch Savings
Bank; the Ribbons drove to church, monopolising the
pony-chaise, which was for the use of the servants at
the Hall.  The domestics were dismissed at her pleasure.
The Scotch gardener, who still lingered on the premises,
taking a pride in his walls and hot-houses, and indeed
making a pretty good livelihood by the garden, which he
farmed, and of which he sold the produce at Southampton,
found the Ribbons eating peaches on a sunshiny morning
at the south-wall, and had his ears boxed when he
remonstrated about this attack on his property.  He and
his Scotch wife and his Scotch children, the only
respectable inhabitants of Queen's Crawley, were forced to
migrate, with their goods and their chattels, and left the
stately comfortable gardens to go to waste, and the
flower-beds to run to seed.  Poor Lady Crawley's rose-garden
became the dreariest wilderness.  Only two or three
domestics shuddered in the bleak old servants' hall.  The
stables and offices were vacant, and shut up, and half
ruined.  Sir Pitt lived in private, and boozed nightly with
Horrocks, his butler or house-steward (as he now began
to be called), and the abandoned Ribbons.  The times
were very much changed since the period when she drove
to Mudbury in the spring-cart and called the small tradesmen
"Sir." It may have been shame, or it may have been
dislike of his neighbours, but the old Cynic of Queen's
Crawley hardly issued from his park-gates at all now.  He
quarrelled with his agents and screwed his tenants by
letter.  His days were passed in conducting his own
correspondence; the lawyers and farm-bailiffs who had to
do business with him could not reach him but through the
Ribbons, who received them at the door of the
housekeeper's room, which commanded the back entrance by
which they were admitted; and so the Baronet's daily
perplexities increased, and his embarrassments multiplied
round him.

The horror of Pitt Crawley may be imagined, as these
reports of his father's dotage reached the most exemplary
and correct of gentlemen.  He trembled daily lest he should
hear that the Ribbons was proclaimed his second legal
mother-in-law.  After that first and last visit, his father's
name was never mentioned in Pitt's polite and genteel
establishment.  It was the skeleton in his house, and all the
family walked by it in terror and silence.  The Countess
Southdown kept on dropping per coach at the lodge-gate
the most exciting tracts, tracts which ought to frighten
the hair off your head.  Mrs. Bute at the parsonage
nightly looked out to see if the sky was red over the
elms behind which the Hall stood, and the mansion was on
fire.  Sir G.  Wapshot and Sir H.  Fuddlestone, old friends of
the house, wouldn't sit on the bench with Sir Pitt at
Quarter Sessions, and cut him dead in the High Street
of Southampton, where the reprobate stood offering his
dirty old hands to them.  Nothing had any effect upon him;
he put his hands into his pockets, and burst out laughing,
as he scrambled into his carriage and four; he used to
burst out laughing at Lady Southdown's tracts; and he
laughed at his sons, and at the world, and at the
Ribbons when she was angry, which was not seldom.

Miss Horrocks was installed as housekeeper at Queen's
Crawley, and ruled all the domestics there with great
majesty and rigour.  All the servants were instructed to
address her as "Mum," or "Madam"--and there was one
little maid, on her promotion, who persisted in calling
her "My Lady," without any rebuke on the part of the
housekeeper.  "There has been better ladies, and there
has been worser, Hester," was Miss Horrocks' reply to
this compliment of her inferior; so she ruled, having
supreme power over all except her father, whom,
however, she treated with considerable haughtiness, warning
him not to be too familiar in his behaviour to one "as was
to be a Baronet's lady." Indeed, she rehearsed that exalted
part in life with great satisfaction to herself, and to the
amusement of old Sir Pitt, who chuckled at her airs and
graces, and would laugh by the hour together at her
assumptions of dignity and imitations of genteel life.
He swore it was as good as a play to see her in the
character of a fine dame, and he made her put on one of
the first Lady Crawley's court-dresses, swearing (entirely
to Miss Horrocks' own concurrence) that the dress
became her prodigiously, and threatening to drive her off
that very instant to Court in a coach-and-four.  She had
the ransacking of the wardrobes of the two defunct ladies,
and cut and hacked their posthumous finery so as to suit
her own tastes and figure.  And she would have liked to
take possession of their jewels and trinkets too; but the
old Baronet had locked them away in his private cabinet;
nor could she coax or wheedle him out of the keys.  And
it is a fact, that some time after she left Queen's Crawley
a copy-book belonging to this lady was discovered, which
showed that she had taken great pains in private to learn
the art of writing in general, and especially of writing
her own name as Lady Crawley, Lady Betsy Horrocks,
Lady Elizabeth Crawley, &c.

Though the good people of the Parsonage never went to
the Hall and shunned the horrid old dotard its owner, yet
they kept a strict knowledge of all that happened there,
and were looking out every day for the catastrophe for
which Miss Horrocks was also eager.  But Fate intervened
enviously and prevented her from receiving the reward due
to such immaculate love and virtue.

One day the Baronet surprised "her ladyship," as he
jocularly called her, seated at that old and tuneless piano
in the drawing-room, which had scarcely been touched
since Becky Sharp played quadrilles upon it--seated at
the piano with the utmost gravity and squalling to the
best of her power in imitation of the music which she
had sometimes heard.  The little kitchen-maid on her
promotion was standing at her mistress's side, quite delighted
during the operation, and wagging her head up and down
and crying, "Lor, Mum, 'tis bittiful"--just like a genteel
sycophant in a real drawing-room.

This incident made the old Baronet roar with laughter,
as usual.  He narrated the circumstance a dozen times to
Horrocks in the course of the evening, and greatly to the
discomfiture of Miss Horrocks.  He thrummed on the table
as if it had been a musical instrument, and squalled in
imitation of her manner of singing.  He vowed that such
a beautiful voice ought to be cultivated and declared she
ought to have singing-masters, in which proposals she
saw nothing ridiculous.  He was in great spirits that night,
and drank with his friend and butler an extraordinary
quantity of rum-and-water--at a very late hour the
faithful friend and domestic conducted his master to his
bedroom.

Half an hour afterwards there was a great hurry and
bustle in the house.  Lights went about from window to
window in the lonely desolate old Hall, whereof but two or
three rooms were ordinarily occupied by its owner.
Presently, a boy on a pony went galloping off to Mudbury,
to the Doctor's house there.  And in another hour (by
which fact we ascertain how carefully the excellent Mrs.
Bute Crawley had always kept up an understanding with
the great house), that lady in her clogs and calash, the
Reverend Bute Crawley, and James Crawley, her son,
had walked over from the Rectory through the park, and
had entered the mansion by the open hall-door.

They passed through the hall and the small oak parlour,
on the table of which stood the three tumblers and the
empty rum-bottle which had served for Sir Pitt's carouse,
and through that apartment into Sir Pitt's study, where
they found Miss Horrocks, of the guilty ribbons, with a
wild air, trying at the presses and escritoires with a
bunch of keys.  She dropped them with a scream of
terror, as little Mrs. Bute's eyes flashed out at her from
under her black calash.

"Look at that, James and Mr. Crawley,?" cried Mrs.
Bute, pointing at the scared figure of the black-eyed,
guilty wench.

"He gave 'em me; he gave 'em me!" she cried.

"Gave them you, you abandoned creature!" screamed
Mrs. Bute.  "Bear witness, Mr. Crawley, we found this
good-for-nothing woman in the act of stealing your
brother's property; and she will be hanged, as I always
said she would."

Betsy Horrocks, quite daunted, flung herself down on
her knees, bursting into tears.  But those who know a really
good woman are aware that she is not in a hurry to
forgive, and that the humiliation of an enemy is a triumph
to her soul.

"Ring the bell, James," Mrs. Bute said.  "Go on ringing it
till the people come." The three or four domestics
resident in the deserted old house came presently at that
jangling and continued summons.

"Put that woman in the strong-room," she said.  "We
caught her in the act of robbing Sir Pitt.  Mr. Crawley,
you'll make out her committal--and, Beddoes, you'll
drive her over in the spring cart, in the morning, to
Southampton Gaol."

"My dear," interposed the Magistrate and Rector--
"she's only--"

"Are there no handcuffs?" Mrs. Bute continued,
stamping in her clogs.  "There used to be handcuffs.
Where's the creature's abominable father?"

"He DID give 'em me," still cried poor Betsy; "didn't
he, Hester? You saw Sir Pitt--you know you did--
give 'em me, ever so long ago--the day after Mudbury
fair:  not that I want 'em.  Take 'em if you think they
ain't mine." And here the unhappy wretch pulled out
from her pocket a large pair of paste shoe-buckles which
had excited her admiration, and which she had just
appropriated out of one of the bookcases in the study,
where they had lain.

"Law, Betsy, how could you go for to tell such a wicked
story!" said Hester, the little kitchen-maid late on her
promotion--"and to Madame Crawley, so good and kind,
and his Rev'rince (with a curtsey), and you may search
all MY boxes, Mum, I'm sure, and here's my keys as I'm
an honest girl, though of pore parents and workhouse
bred--and if you find so much as a beggarly bit of lace
or a silk stocking out of all the gownds as YOU'VE had the
picking of, may I never go to church agin."

"Give up your keys, you hardened hussy," hissed out
the virtuous little lady in the calash.

"And here's a candle, Mum, and if you please, Mum,
I can show you her room, Mum, and the press in the
housekeeper's room, Mum, where she keeps heaps and
heaps of things, Mum," cried out the eager little Hester
with a profusion of curtseys.

"Hold your tongue, if you please.  I know the room
which the creature occupies perfectly well.  Mrs. Brown,
have the goodness to come with me, and Beddoes don't
you lose sight of that woman," said Mrs. Bute, seizing the
candle.  "Mr. Crawley, you had better go upstairs and
see that they are not murdering your unfortunate brother"
--and the calash, escorted by Mrs. Brown, walked away
to the apartment which, as she said truly, she knew
perfectly well.

Bute went upstairs and found the Doctor from
Mudbury, with the frightened Horrocks over his master in a
chair.  They were trying to bleed Sir Pitt Crawley.

With the early morning an express was sent off to Mr.
Pitt Crawley by the Rector's lady, who assumed the
command of everything, and had watched the old Baronet
through the night.  He had been brought back to a sort of
life; he could not speak, but seemed to recognize people.
Mrs. Bute kept resolutely by his bedside.  She never seemed
to want to sleep, that little woman, and did not close her
fiery black eyes once, though the Doctor snored in the
arm-chair.  Horrocks made some wild efforts to assert
his authority and assist his master; but Mrs. Bute called
him a tipsy old wretch and bade him never show his face
again in that house, or he should be transported like his
abominable daughter.

Terrified by her manner, he slunk down to the oak
parlour where Mr. James was, who, having tried the
bottle standing there and found no liquor in it, ordered
Mr. Horrocks to get another bottle of rum, which he
fetched, with clean glasses, and to which the Rector and
his son sat down, ordering Horrocks to put down the keys
at that instant and never to show his face again.

Cowed by this behaviour, Horrocks gave up the keys,
and he and his daughter slunk off silently through the
night and gave up possession of the house of Queen's
Crawley.




CHAPTER XL

In Which Becky Is Recognized by the Family

The heir of Crawley arrived at home, in due time, after
this catastrophe, and henceforth may be said to have
reigned in Queen's Crawley.  For though the old Baronet
survived many months, he never recovered the use of
his intellect or his speech completely, and the government
of the estate devolved upon his elder son.  In a
strange condition Pitt found it.  Sir Pitt was always buying
and mortgaging; he had twenty men of business, and
quarrels with each; quarrels with all his tenants, and
lawsuits with them; lawsuits with the lawyers; lawsuits
with the Mining and Dock Companies in which he was
proprietor; and with every person with whom he had
business.  To unravel these difficulties and to set the
estate clear was a task worthy of the orderly and
persevering diplomatist of Pumpernickel, and he set
himself to work with prodigious assiduity.  His whole family,
of course, was transported to Queen's Crawley, whither
Lady Southdown, of course, came too; and she set about
converting the parish under the Rector's nose, and
brought down her irregular clergy to the dismay of the
angry Mrs Bute.  Sir Pitt had concluded no bargain for
the sale of the living of Queen's Crawley; when it should
drop, her Ladyship proposed to take the patronage into
her own hands and present a young protege to the
Rectory, on which subject the diplomatic Pitt said
nothing.

Mrs. Bute's intentions with regard to Miss Betsy
Horrocks were not carried into effect, and she paid no visit
to Southampton Gaol.  She and her father left the Hall
when the latter took possession of the Crawley Arms in
the village, of which he had got a lease from Sir Pitt.
The ex-butler had obtained a small freehold there
likewise, which gave him a vote for the borough.  The Rector
had another of these votes, and these and four others
formed the representative body which returned the two
members for Queen's Crawley.

There was a show of courtesy kept up between the
Rectory and the Hall ladies, between the younger ones at
least, for Mrs. Bute and Lady Southdown never could
meet without battles, and gradually ceased seeing each
other.  Her Ladyship kept her room when the ladies from
the Rectory visited their cousins at the Hall.  Perhaps Mr.
Pitt was not very much displeased at these occasional
absences of his mamma-in-law.  He believed the Binkie
family to be the greatest and wisest and most interesting
in the world, and her Ladyship and his aunt had long held
ascendency over him; but sometimes he felt that she
commanded him too much.  To be considered young was
complimentary, doubtless, but at six-and-forty to be
treated as a boy was sometimes mortifying.  Lady Jane
yielded up everything, however, to her mother.  She was
only fond of her children in private, and it was lucky
for her that Lady Southdown's multifarious business, her
conferences with ministers, and her correspondence with
all the missionaries of Africa, Asia, aud Australasia, &c.,
occupied the venerable Countess a great deal, so that
she had but little time to devote to her granddaughter,
the little Matilda, and her grandson, Master Pitt Crawley.
The latter was a feeble child, and it was only by
prodigious quantities of calomel that Lady Southdown was
able to keep him in life at all.

As for Sir Pitt he retired into those very apartments
where Lady Crawley had been previously extinguished,
and here was tended by Miss Hester, the girl upon her
promotion, with constant care and assiduity.  What love,
what fidelity, what constancy is there equal to that of a
nurse with good wages? They smooth pillows; and make
arrowroot; they get up at nights; they bear complaints
and querulousness; they see the sun shining out of doors
and don't want to go abroad; they sleep on arm-chairs
and eat their meals in solitude; they pass long long
evenings doing nothing, watching the embers, and the
patient's drink simmering in the jug; they read the weekly
paper the whole week through; and Law's Serious Call or
the Whole Duty of Man suffices them for literature for
the year--and we quarrel with them because, when their
relations come to see them once a week, a little gin
is smuggled in in their linen basket.  Ladies, what man's
love is there that would stand a year's nursing of the
object of his affection? Whereas a nurse will stand by you
for ten pounds a quarter, and we think her too highly
paid.  At least Mr. Crawley grumbled a good deal about
paying half as much to Miss Hester for her constant
attendance upon the Baronet his father.

Of sunshiny days this old gentleman was taken out in a
chair on the terrace--the very chair which Miss Crawley
had had at Brighton, and which had been transported
thence with a number of Lady Southdown's effects to
Queen's Crawley.  Lady Jane always walked by the old
man, and was an evident favourite with him.  He used to
nod many times to her and smile when she came in, and
utter inarticulate deprecatory moans when she was going
away.  When the door shut upon her he would cry and
sob--whereupon Hester's face and manner, which was
always exceedingly bland and gentle while her lady was
present, would change at once, and she would make faces
at him and clench her fist and scream out "Hold your
tongue, you stoopid old fool," and twirl away his chair
from the fire which he loved to look at--at which he
would cry more.  For this was all that was left after more
than seventy years of cunning, and struggling, and
drinking, and scheming, and sin and selfishness--a
whimpering old idiot put in and out of bed and cleaned
and fed like a baby.

At last a day came when the nurse's occupation was
over.  Early one morning, as Pitt Crawley was at his
steward's and bailiff's books in the study, a knock came
to the door, and Hester presented herself, dropping a
curtsey, and said,

"If you please, Sir Pitt, Sir Pitt died this morning, Sir
Pitt.  I was a-making of his toast, Sir Pitt, for his gruel,
Sir Pitt, which he took every morning regular at six, Sir
Pitt, and--I thought I heard a moan-like, Sir Pitt--and--
and--and--" She dropped another curtsey.

What was it that made Pitt's pale face flush quite
red? Was it because he was Sir Pitt at last, with a seat
in Parliament, and perhaps future honours in prospect?
"I'll clear the estate now with the ready money," he
thought and rapidly calculated its incumbrances and the
improvements which he would make.  He would not use his
aunt's money previously lest Sir Pitt should recover and
his outlay be in vain.

All the blinds were pulled down at the Hall and Rectory:
the church bell was tolled, and the chancel hung in
black; and Bute Crawley didn't go to a coursing meeting,
but went and dined quietly at Fuddleston, where
they talked about his deceased brother and young Sir
Pitt over their port.  Miss Betsy, who was by this time
married to a saddler at Mudbury, cried a good deal.
The family surgeon rode over and paid his respectful
compliments, and inquiries for the health of their
ladyships.  The death was talked about at Mudbury and at
the Crawley Arms, the landlord whereof had become
reconciled with the Rector of late, who was occasionally
known to step into the parlour and taste Mr. Horrocks'
mild beer.

"Shall I write to your brother--or will you?" asked
Lady Jane of her husband, Sir Pitt.

"I will write, of course," Sir Pitt said, "and invite him
to the funeral:  it will be but becoming."

"And--and--Mrs. Rawdon," said Lady Jane timidly.

"Jane!" said Lady Southdown, "how can you think of
such a thing?"

"Mrs. Rawdon must of course be asked," said Sir Pitt,
resolutely.

"Not whilst I am in the house!" said Lady Southdown.

"Your Ladyship will be pleased to recollect that I am
the head of this family," Sir Pitt replied.  "If you please,
Lady Jane, you will write a letter to Mrs. Rawdon
Crawley, requesting her presence upon this melancholy
occasion."

"Jane, I forbid you to put pen to paper!" cried the
Countess.

"I believe I am the head of this family," Sir Pitt
repeated; "and however much I may regret any
circumstance which may lead to your Ladyship quitting this
house, must, if you please, continue to govern it as I see
fit."

Lady Southdown rose up as magnificent as Mrs. Siddons
in Lady Macbeth and ordered that horses might be put
to her carriage.  If her son and daughter turned her out
of their house, she would hide her sorrows somewhere in
loneliness and pray for their conversion to better
thoughts.

"We don't turn you out of our house, Mamma," said
the timid Lady Jane imploringly.

"You invite such company to it as no Christian lady
should meet, and I will have my horses to-morrow
morning."

"Have the goodness to write, Jane, under my dictation,"
said Sir Pitt, rising and throwing himself into an attitude
of command, like the portrait of a Gentleman in the
Exhibition, "and begin.  'Queen's Crawley, September 14,
1822.--My dear brother--' "

Hearing these decisive and terrible words, Lady Macbeth,
who had been waiting for a sign of weakness or
vacillation on the part of her son-in-law, rose and, with a
scared look, left the library.  Lady Jane looked up to
her husband as if she would fain follow and soothe her
mamma, but Pitt forbade his wife to move.

"She won't go away," he said.  "She has let her house
at Brighton and has spent her last half-year's dividends.
A Countess living at an inn is a ruined woman.  I have
been waiting long for an opportunity--to take this--this
decisive step, my love; for, as you must perceive, it is
impossible that there should be two chiefs in a family:
and now, if you please, we will resume the dictation.  'My
dear brother, the melancholy intelligence which it is my
duty to convey to my family must have been long
anticipated by,' " &c.

In a word, Pitt having come to his kingdom, and having
by good luck, or desert rather, as he considered, assumed
almost all the fortune which his other relatives
had expected, was determined to treat his family kindly
and respectably and make a house of Queen's Crawley
once more.  It pleased him to think that he should be its
chief.  He proposed to use the vast influence that his
commanding talents and position must speedily acquire
for him in the county to get his brother placed and his
cousins decently provided for, and perhaps had a little
sting of repentance as he thought that he was the
proprietor of all that they had hoped for.  In the course of
three or four days' reign his bearing was changed and
his plans quite fixed:  he determined to rule justly and
honestly, to depose Lady Southdown, and to be on the
friendliest possible terms with all the relations of his
blood.

So he dictated a letter to his brother Rawdon--a solemn
and elaborate letter, containing the profoundest
observations, couched in the longest words, and filling with
wonder the simple little secretary, who wrote under her
husband's order.  "What an orator this will be," thought
she, "when he enters the House of Commons" (on which
point, and on the tyranny of Lady Southdown, Pitt had
sometimes dropped hints to his wife in bed); "how wise
and good, and what a genius my husband is!  I fancied
him a little cold; but how good, and what a genius!"

The fact is, Pitt Crawley had got every word of the
letter by heart and had studied it, with diplomatic
secrecy, deeply and perfectly, long before he thought fit to
communicate it to his astonished wife.

This letter, with a huge black border and seal, was
accordingly despatched by Sir Pitt Crawley to his brother
the Colonel, in London.  Rawdon Crawley was but
half-pleased at the receipt of it.  "What's the use of going
down to that stupid place?" thought he.  "I can't stand
being alone with Pitt after dinner, and horses there
and back will cost us twenty pound."

He carried the letter, as he did all difficulties, to Becky,
upstairs in her bedroom--with her chocolate, which he
always made and took to her of a morning.

He put the tray with the breakfast and the letter on
the dressing-table, before which Becky sat combing her
yellow hair.  She took up the black-edged missive, and
having read it, she jumped up from the chair, crying
"Hurray!" and waving the note round her head.

"Hurray?" said Rawdon, wondering at the little figure
capering about in a streaming flannel dressing-gown, with
tawny locks dishevelled.  "He's not left us anything,
Becky.  I had my share when I came of age."

"You'll never be of age, you silly old man," Becky
replied.  "Run out now to Madam Brunoy's, for I must
have some mourning:  and get a crape on your hat, and a
black waistcoat--I don't think you've got one; order it
to be brought home to-morrow, so that we may be able
to start on Thursday."

"You don't mean to go?" Rawdon interposed.

"Of course I mean to go.  I mean that Lady Jane shall
present me at Court next year.  I mean that your brother
shall give you a seat in Parliament, you stupid old
creature.  I mean that Lord Steyne shall have your vote and
his, my dear, old silly man; and that you shall be an Irish
Secretary, or a West Indian Governor:  or a Treasurer,
or a Consul, or some such thing."

"Posting will cost a dooce of a lot of money," grumbled
Rawdon.

"We might take Southdown's carriage, which ought to
be present at the funeral, as he is a relation of the
family:  but, no--I intend that we shall go by the coach.
They'll like it better.  It seems more humble--"

"Rawdy goes, of course?" the Colonel asked.

"No such thing; why pay an extra place? He's too big to
travel bodkin between you and me.  Let him stay here in
the nursery, and Briggs can make him a black frock.  Go
you, and do as I bid you.  And you had best tell Sparks,
your man, that old Sir Pitt is dead and that you will
come in for something considerable when the affairs are
arranged.  He'll tell this to Raggles, who has been pressing
for money, and it will console poor Raggles." And so
Becky began sipping her chocolate.

When the faithful Lord Steyne arrived in the evening,
he found Becky and her companion, who was no other
than our friend Briggs, busy cutting, ripping, snipping,
and tearing all sorts of black stuffs available for the
melancholy occasion.

"Miss Briggs and I are plunged in grief and despondency
for the death of our Papa," Rebecca said.  "Sir Pitt
Crawley is dead, my lord.  We have been tearing our hair
all the morning, and now we are tearing up our old
clothes."

"Oh, Rebecca, how can you--" was all that Briggs could
say as she turned up her eyes.

"Oh, Rebecca, how can you--" echoed my Lord.  "So
that old scoundrel's dead, is he? He might have been a
Peer if he had played his cards better.  Mr. Pitt had very
nearly made him; but he ratted always at the wrong
time.  What an old Silenus it was!"

"I might have been Silenus's widow," said Rebecca.
"Don't you remember, Miss Briggs, how you peeped in
at the door and saw old Sir Pitt on his knees to me?"
Miss Briggs, our old friend, blushed very much at this
reminiscence, and was glad when Lord Steyne ordered
her to go downstairs and make him a cup of tea.

Briggs was the house-dog whom Rebecca had provided
as guardian of her innocence and reputation.  Miss Crawley
had left her a little annuity.  She would have been
content to remain in the Crawley family with Lady Jane,
who was good to her and to everybody; but Lady
Southdown dismissed poor Briggs as quickly as decency
permitted; and Mr. Pitt (who thought himself much injured
by the uncalled-for generosity of his deceased relative
towards a lady who had only been Miss Crawley's
faithful retainer a score of years) made no objection to that
exercise of the dowager's authority.  Bowls and Firkin
likewise received their legacies and their dismissals, and
married and set up a lodging-house, according to the
custom of their kind.

Briggs tried to live with her relations in the country,
but found that attempt was vain after the better society
to which she had been accustomed.  Briggs's friends, small
tradesmen, in a country town, quarrelled over Miss
Briggs's forty pounds a year as eagerly and more openly
than Miss Crawley's kinsfolk had for that lady's
inheritance.  Briggs's brother, a radical hatter and grocer, called
his sister a purse-proud aristocrat, because she would not
advance a part of her capital to stock his shop; and she
would have done so most likely, but that their sister, a
dissenting shoemaker's lady, at variance with the hatter
and grocer, who went to another chapel, showed how
their brother was on the verge of bankruptcy, and took
possession of Briggs for a while.  The dissenting
shoemaker wanted Miss Briggs to send his son to college
and make a gentleman of him.  Between them the two
families got a great portion of her private savings out of
her, and finally she fled to London followed by the
anathemas of both, and determined to seek for servitude
again as infinitely less onerous than liberty.  And advertising
in the papers that a "Gentlewoman of agreeable
manners, and accustomed to the best society, was anxious
to," &c., she took up her residence with Mr. Bowls
in Half Moon Street, and waited the result of the
advertisement.

So it was that she fell in with Rebecca.  Mrs. Rawdon's
dashing little carriage and ponies was whirling down the
street one day, just as Miss Briggs, fatigued, had
reached Mr. Bowls's door, after a weary walk to the
Times Office in the City to insert her advertisement for
the sixth time.  Rebecca was driving, and at once
recognized the gentlewoman with agreeable manners, and
being a perfectly good-humoured woman, as we have
seen, and having a regard for Briggs, she pulled up the
ponies at the doorsteps, gave the reins to the groom,
and jumping out, had hold of both Briggs's hands, before
she of the agreeable manners had recovered from the
shock of seeing an old friend.

Briggs cried, and Becky laughed a great deal and
kissed the gentlewoman as soon as they got into the
passage; and thence into Mrs. Bowls's front parlour, with
the red moreen curtains, and the round looking-glass,
with the chained eagle above, gazing upon the back of
the ticket in the window which announced "Apartments
to Let."

Briggs told all her history amidst those perfectly
uncalled-for sobs and ejaculations of wonder with which
women of her soft nature salute an old acquaintance, or
regard a rencontre in the street; for though people meet
other people every day, yet some there are who insist
upon discovering miracles; and women, even though they
have disliked each other, begin to cry when they meet,
deploring and remembering the time when they last
quarrelled.  So, in a word, Briggs told all her history, and
Becky gave a narrative of her own life, with her usual
artlessness and candour.

Mrs. Bowls, late Firkin, came and listened grimly in
the passage to the hysterical sniffling and giggling which
went on in the front parlour.  Becky had never been a
favourite of hers.  Since the establishment of the married
couple in London they had frequented their former
friends of the house of Raggles, and did not like the
latter's account of the Colonel's menage.  "I wouldn't trust
him, Ragg, my boy," Bowls remarked; and his wife,
when Mrs. Rawdon issued from the parlour, only saluted
the lady with a very sour curtsey; and her fingers
were like so many sausages, cold and lifeless, when she
held them out in deference to Mrs. Rawdon, who persisted
in shaking hands with the retired lady's maid.  She whirled
away into Piccadilly, nodding with the sweetest of smiles
towards Miss Briggs, who hung nodding at the window
close under the advertisement-card, and at the next
moment was in the park with a half-dozen of dandies
cantering after her carriage.

When she found how her friend was situated, and how
having a snug legacy from Miss Crawley, salary was no
object to our gentlewoman, Becky instantly formed some
benevolent little domestic plans concerning her.  This
was just such a companion as would suit her establishment,
and she invited Briggs to come to dinner with her
that very evening, when she should see Becky's dear little
darling Rawdon.

Mrs. Bowls cautioned her lodger against venturing into
the lion's den, "wherein you will rue it, Miss B., mark my
words, and as sure as my name is Bowls." And Briggs
promised to be very cautious.  The upshot of which
caution was that she went to live with Mrs. Rawdon the next
week, and had lent Rawdon Crawley six hundred pounds
upon annuity before six months were over.




CHAPTER XLI


In Which Becky Revisits the Halls of Her Ancestors

So the mourning being ready, and Sir Pitt Crawley warned
of their arrival, Colonel Crawley and his wife took a
couple of places in the same old High-flyer coach by
which Rebecca had travelled in the defunct Baronet's
company, on her first journey into the world some nine
years before.  How well she remembered the Inn Yard,
and the ostler to whom she refused money, and the
insinuating Cambridge lad who wrapped her in his coat on
the journey!  Rawdon took his place outside, and would
have liked to drive, but his grief forbade him.  He sat by
the coachman and talked about horses and the road the
whole way; and who kept the inns, and who horsed the
coach by which he had travelled so many a time, when
he and Pitt were boys going to Eton.  At Mudbury a
carriage and a pair of horses received them, with a
coachman in black.  "It's the old drag, Rawdon," Rebecca said
as they got in.  "The worms have eaten the cloth a good
deal--there's the stain which Sir Pitt--ha!  I see Dawson
the Ironmonger has his shutters up--which Sir Pitt made
such a noise about.  It was a bottle of cherry brandy he
broke which we went to fetch for your aunt from
Southampton.  How time flies, to be sure!  That can't be Polly
Talboys, that bouncing girl standing by her mother at
the cottage there.  I remember her a mangy little urchin
picking weeds in the garden."

"Fine gal," said Rawdon, returning the salute which the
cottage gave him, by two fingers applied to his crape
hatband.  Becky bowed and saluted, and recognized
people here and there graciously.  These recognitions were
inexpressibly pleasant to her.  It seemed as if she was
not an imposter any more, and was coming to the home
of her ancestors.  Rawdon was rather abashed and cast
down, on the other hand.  What recollections of boyhood
and innocence might have been flitting across his brain?
What pangs of dim remorse and doubt and shame?

"Your sisters must be young women now," Rebecca
said, thinking of those girls for the first time perhaps
since she had left them.

"Don't know, I'm shaw," replied the Colonel.  "Hullo!
here's old Mother Lock.  How-dy-do, Mrs. Lock? Remember
me, don't you? Master Rawdon, hey? Dammy how
those old women last; she was a hundred when I was a
boy."

They were going through the lodge-gates kept by old
Mrs. Lock, whose hand Rebecca insisted upon shaking,
as she flung open the creaking old iron gate, and the
carriage passed between the two moss-grown pillars
surmounted by the dove and serpent.

"The governor has cut into the timber," Rawdon said,
looking about, and then was silent--so was Becky.  Both
of them were rather agitated, and thinking of old times.
He about Eton, and his mother, whom he remembered,
a frigid demure woman, and a sister who died, of whom
he had been passionately fond; and how he used to thrash
Pitt; and about little Rawdy at home.  And Rebecca
thought about her own youth and the dark secrets of
those early tainted days; and of her entrance into life
by yonder gates; and of Miss Pinkerton, and Joe, and
Amelia.

The gravel walk and terrace had been scraped quite
clean.  A grand painted hatchment was already over the
great entrance, and two very solemn and tall personages
in black flung open each a leaf of the door as the
carriage pulled up at the familiar steps.  Rawdon turned red,
and Becky somewhat pale, as they passed through the
old hall, arm in arm.  She pinched her husband's arm
as they entered the oak parlour, where Sir Pitt and his
wife were ready to receive them.  Sir Pitt in black, Lady
Jane in black, and my Lady Southdown with a large black
head-piece of bugles and feathers, which waved on her
Ladyship's head like an undertaker's tray.

Sir Pitt had judged correctly, that she would not quit
the premises.  She contented herself by preserving a
solemn and stony silence, when in company of Pitt and
his rebellious wife, and by frightening the children in
the nursery by the ghastly gloom of her demeanour.
Only a very faint bending of the head-dress and plumes
welcomed Rawdon and his wife, as those prodigals
returned to their family.

To say the truth, they were not affected very much
one way or other by this coolness.  Her Ladyship was a
person only of secondary consideration in their minds
just then--they were intent upon the reception which
the reigning brother and sister would afford them.

Pitt, with rather a heightened colour, went up and
shook his brother by the hand, and saluted Rebecca with
a hand-shake and a very low bow.  But Lady Jane took both
the hands of her sister-in-law and kissed her affectionately.
The embrace somehow brought tears into the eyes of
the little adventuress--which ornaments, as we know,
she wore very seldom.  The artless mark of kindness and
confidence touched and pleased her; and Rawdon,
encouraged by this demonstration on his sister's part,
twirled up his mustachios and took leave to salute Lady
Jane with a kiss, which caused her Ladyship to blush
exceedingly.

"Dev'lish nice little woman, Lady Jane," was his verdict,
when he and his wife were together again.  "Pitt's got fat,
too, and is doing the thing handsomely." "He can afford
it," said Rebecca and agreed in her husband's farther
opinion "that the mother-in-law was a tremendous old
Guy--and that the sisters were rather well-looking
young women."

They, too, had been summoned from school to attend
the funeral ceremonies.  It seemed Sir Pitt Crawley, for
the dignity of the house and family, had thought right to
have about the place as many persons in black as could
possibly be assembled.  All the men and maids of the
house, the old women of the Alms House, whom the elder
Sir Pitt had cheated out of a great portion of their
due, the parish clerk's family, and the special retainers
of both Hall and Rectory were habited in sable; added to
these, the undertaker's men, at least a score, with crapes
and hatbands, and who made goodly show when the
great burying show took place--but these are mute
personages in our drama; and having nothing to do or say,
need occupy a very little space here.

With regard to her sisters-in-law Rebecca did not
attempt to forget her former position of Governess
towards them, but recalled it frankly and kindly, and asked
them about their studies with great gravity, and told them
that she had thought of them many and many a day,
and longed to know of their welfare.  In fact you would
have supposed that ever since she had left them she had
not ceased to keep them uppermost in her thoughts and to
take the tenderest interest in their welfare.  So supposed
Lady Crawley herself and her young sisters.

"She's hardly changed since eight years," said Miss
Rosalind to Miss Violet, as they were preparing for dinner.

"Those red-haired women look wonderfully well,"
replied the other.

"Hers is much darker than it was; I think she must dye
it," Miss Rosalind added.  "She is stouter, too, and
altogether improved," continued Miss Rosalind, who was
disposed to be very fat.

"At least she gives herself no airs and remembers that
she was our Governess once," Miss Violet said, intimating
that it befitted all governesses to keep their proper place,
and forgetting altogether that she was granddaughter not
only of Sir Walpole Crawley, but of Mr. Dawson of
Mudbury, and so had a coal-scuttle in her scutcheon.  There
are other very well-meaning people whom one meets
every day in Vanity Fair who are surely equally oblivious.

"It can't be true what the girls at the Rectory said, that
her mother was an opera-dancer--"

"A person can't help their birth," Rosalind replied with
great liberality.  "And I agree with our brother, that as she
is in the family, of course we are bound to notice her.
I am sure Aunt Bute need not talk; she wants to marry
Kate to young Hooper, the wine-merchant, and absolutely
asked him to come to the Rectory for orders."

"I wonder whether Lady Southdown will go away, she
looked very glum upon Mrs. Rawdon," the other said.

"I wish she would.  I won't read the Washerwoman
of Finchley Common," vowed Violet; and so saying, and
avoiding a passage at the end of which a certain coffin was
placed with a couple of watchers, and lights perpetually
burning in the closed room, these young women came
down to the family dinner, for which the bell rang as
usual.

But before this, Lady Jane conducted Rebecca to the
apartments prepared for her, which, with the rest of the
house, had assumed a very much improved appearance
of order and comfort during Pitt's regency, and here
beholding that Mrs. Rawdon's modest little trunks had
arrived, and were placed in the bedroom and
dressing-room adjoining, helped her to take off her neat
black bonnet and cloak, and asked her sister-in-law in
what more she could be useful.

"What I should like best," said Rebecca, "would be to
go to the nursery and see your dear little children." On
which the two ladies looked very kindly at each other
and went to that apartment hand in hand.

Becky admired little Matilda, who was not quite four
years old, as the most charming little love in the world;
and the boy, a little fellow of two years--pale, heavy-eyed,
and large-headed--she pronounced to be a perfect
prodigy in point of size, intelligence, and beauty.

"I wish Mamma would not insist on giving him so much
medicine," Lady Jane said with a sigh.  "I often think we
should all be better without it." And then Lady Jane and
her new-found friend had one of those confidential medical conversations about the children, which all mothers,
and most women, as I am given to understand, delight in.
Fifty years ago, and when the present writer, being an
interesting little boy, was ordered out of the room with
the ladies after dinner, I remember quite well that their
talk was chiefly about their ailments; and putting this
question directly to two or three since, I have always got
from them the acknowledgement that times are not
changed.  Let my fair readers remark for themselves this
very evening when they quit the dessert-table and
assemble to celebrate the drawing-room mysteries.  Well
--in half an hour Becky and Lady Jane were close and
intimate friends--and in the course of the evening her
Ladyship informed Sir Pitt that she thought her new
sister-in-law was a kind, frank, unaffected, and affectionate
young woman.

And so having easily won the daughter's good-will, the
indefatigable little woman bent herself to conciliate the
august Lady Southdown.  As soon as she found her Ladyship
alone, Rebecca attacked her on the nursery question
at once and said that her own little boy was saved,
actually saved, by calomel, freely administered, when all the
physicians in Paris had given the dear child up.  And then
she mentioned how often she had heard of Lady Southdown
from that excellent man the Reverend Lawrence
Grills, Minister of the chapel in May Fair, which she
frequented; and how her views were very much changed
by circumstances and misfortunes; and how she hoped that
a past life spent in worldliness and error might not
incapacitate her from more serious thought for the future.
She described how in former days she had been indebted
to Mr. Crawley for religious instruction, touched upon
the Washerwoman of Finchley Common, which she had
read with the greatest profit, and asked about Lady
Emily, its gifted author, now Lady Emily Hornblower, at
Cape Town, where her husband had strong hopes of
becoming Bishop of Caffraria.

But she crowned all, and confirmed herself in Lady
Southdown's favour, by feeling very much agitated and
unwell after the funeral and requesting her Ladyship's
medical advice, which the Dowager not only gave, but,
wrapped up in a bed-gown and looking more like Lady
Macbeth than ever, came privately in the night to Becky's
room with a parcel of favourite tracts, and a medicine
of her own composition, which she insisted that Mrs.
Rawdon should take.

Becky first accepted the tracts and began to examine
them with great interest, engaging the Dowager in a
conversation concerning them and the welfare of her soul,
by which means she hoped that her body might escape
medication.  But after the religious topics were exhausted,
Lady Macbeth would not quit Becky's chamber until her
cup of night-drink was emptied too; and poor Mrs. Rawdon
was compelled actually to assume a look of gratitude, and
to swallow the medicine under the unyielding old Dowager's
nose, who left her victim finally with a benediction.

It did not much comfort Mrs. Rawdon; her countenance
was very queer when Rawdon came in and heard what
had happened; and.  his explosions of laughter were as
loud as usual, when Becky, with a fun which she could
not disguise, even though it was at her own expense,
described the occurrence and how she had been victimized
by Lady Southdown.  Lord Steyne, and her son in
London, had many a laugh over the story when Rawdon
and his wife returned to their quarters in May Fair.  Becky
acted the whole scene for them.  She put on a night-cap
and gown.  She preached a great sermon in the true serious
manner; she lectured on the virtue of the medicine
which she pretended to administer, with a gravity of
imitation so perfect that you would have thought it was
the Countess's own Roman nose through which she snuffled.
"Give us Lady Southdown and the black dose," was
a constant cry amongst the folks in Becky's little
drawing-room in May Fair.  And for the first time in her
life the Dowager Countess of Southdown was made amusing.

Sir Pitt remembered the testimonies of respect and
veneration which Rebecca had paid personally to himself
in early days, and was tolerably well disposed towards
her.  The marriage, ill-advised as it was, had improved
Rawdon very much--that was clear from the Colonel's
altered habits and demeanour--and had it not been a
lucky union as regarded Pitt himself? The cunning
diplomatist smiled inwardly as he owned that he owed his
fortune to it, and acknowledged that he at least ought not
to cry out against it.  His satisfaction was not removed
by Rebecca's own statements, behaviour, and
conversation.

She doubled the deference which before had charmed
him, calling out his conversational powers in such a
manner as quite to surprise Pitt himself, who, always
inclined to respect his own talents, admired them the more
when Rebecca pointed them out to him.  With her
sister-in-law, Rebecca was satisfactorily able to prove that it
was Mrs. Bute Crawley who brought about the marriage
which she afterwards so calumniated; that it was Mrs.
Bute's avarice--who hoped to gain all Miss Crawley's
fortune and deprive Rawdon of his aunt's favour--which
caused and invented all the wicked reports against
Rebecca.  "She succeeded in making us poor," Rebecca
said with an air of angelical patience; "but how can I
be angry with a woman who has given me one of the best
husbands in the world? And has not her own avarice
been sufficiently punished by the ruin of her own hopes and
the loss of the property by which she set so much
store? Poor!" she cried.  "Dear Lady Jane, what care we
for poverty? I am used to it from childhood, and I am
often thankful that Miss Crawley's money has gone to
restore the splendour of the noble old family of which
I am so proud to be a member.  I am sure Sir Pitt will
make a much better use of it than Rawdon would."

All these speeches were reported to Sir Pitt by the
most faithful of wives, and increased the favourable
impression which Rebecca made; so much so that when,
on the third day after the funeral, the family party were
at dinner, Sir Pitt Crawley, carving fowls at the head of
the table, actually said to Mrs. Rawdon, "Ahem!  Rebecca,
may I give you a wing?"--a speech which made the little
woman's eyes sparkle with pleasure.

While Rebecca was prosecuting the above schemes and
hopes, and Pitt Crawley arranging the funeral ceremonial
and other matters connected with his future progress and
dignity, and Lady Jane busy with her nursery, as far as
her mother would let her, and the sun rising and setting,
and the clock-tower bell of the Hall ringing to dinner and
to prayers as usual, the body of the late owner of Queen's
Crawley lay in the apartment which he had occupied,
watched unceasingly by the professional attendants who
were engaged for that rite.  A woman or two, and three
or four undertaker's men, the best whom Southampton
could furnish, dressed in black, and of a proper stealthy
and tragical demeanour, had charge of the remains which
they watched turn about, having the housekeeper's room
for their place of rendezvous when off duty, where they
played at cards in privacy and drank their beer.

The members of the family and servants of the house
kept away from the gloomy spot, where the bones of the
descendant of an ancient line of knights and gentlemen
lay, awaiting their final consignment to the family crypt.
No regrets attended them, save those of the poor woman
who had hoped to be Sir Pitt's wife and widow and who
had fled in disgrace from the Hall over which she had so
nearly been a ruler.  Beyond her and a favourite old pointer
he had, and between whom and himself an attachment
subsisted during the period of his imbecility, the old man
had not a single friend to mourn him, having indeed,
during the whole course of his life, never taken the least
pains to secure one.  Could the best and kindest of us who
depart from the earth have an opportunity of revisiting
it, I suppose he or she (assuming that any Vanity Fair
feelings subsist in the sphere whither we are bound)
would have a pang of mortification at finding how soon
our survivors were consoled.  And so Sir Pitt was
forgotten--like the kindest and best of us--only a few
weeks sooner.

Those who will may follow his remains to the grave,
whither they were borne on the appointed day, in the most
becoming manner, the family in black coaches, with their
handkerchiefs up to their noses, ready for the tears which
did not come; the undertaker and his gentlemen in deep
tribulation; the select tenantry mourning out of
compliment to the new landlord; the neighbouring gentry's
carriages at three miles an hour, empty, and in profound
affliction; the parson speaking out the formula about "our
dear brother departed." As long as we have a man's body,
we play our Vanities upon it, surrounding it with
humbug and ceremonies, laying it in state, and packing it
up in gilt nails and velvet; and we finish our duty by
placing over it a stone, written all over with lies.  Bute's
curate, a smart young fellow from Oxford, and Sir Pitt
Crawley composed between them an appropriate Latin
epitaph for the late lamented Baronet, and the former
preached a classical sermon, exhorting the survivors not
to give way to grief and informing them in the most
respectful terms that they also would be one day called
upon to pass that gloomy and mysterious portal which had
just closed upon the remains of their lamented brother.
Then the tenantry mounted on horseback again, or stayed
and refreshed themselves at the Crawley Arms.  Then,
after a lunch in the servants' hall at Queen's Crawley,
the gentry's carriages wheeled off to their different
destinations:  then the undertaker's men, taking the ropes,
palls, velvets, ostrich feathers, and other mortuary
properties, clambered up on the roof of the hearse and rode
off to Southampton.  Their faces relapsed into a natural
expression as the horses, clearing the lodge-gates, got into
a brisker trot on the open road; and squads of them
might have been seen, speckling with black the
public-house entrances, with pewter-pots flashing in the
sunshine.  Sir Pitt's invalid chair was wheeled away into a
tool-house in the garden; the old pointer used to howl
sometimes at first, but these were the only accents of
grief which were heard in the Hall of which Sir Pitt
Crawley, Baronet, had been master for some threescore years.

As the birds were pretty plentiful, and partridge shooting
is as it were the duty of an English gentleman of
statesmanlike propensities, Sir Pitt Crawley, the first shock of
grief over, went out a little and partook of that diversion
in a white hat with crape round it.  The sight of those fields
of stubble and turnips, now his own, gave him many secret
joys.  Sometimes, and with an exquisite humility, he
took no gun, but went out with a peaceful bamboo cane;
Rawdon, his big brother, and the keepers blazing away at
his side.  Pitt's money and acres had a great effect upon
his brother.  The penniless Colonel became quite obsequious
and respectful to the head of his house, and despised
the milksop Pitt no longer.  Rawdon liste