he
Captain could not but own that the secreting of the
money had a very ugly look.

Whilst they were engaged in their conference, Rawdon
dispatched Captain Macmurdo's servant to Curzon Street,
with an order to the domestic there to give up a bag of
clothes of which the Colonel had great need.  And during
the man's absence, and with great labour and a Johnson's
Dictionary, which stood them in much stead, Rawdon
and his second composed a letter, which the latter
was to send to Lord Steyne.  Captain Macmurdo had the
honour of waiting upon the Marquis of Steyne, on the part
of Colonel Rawdon Crawley, and begged to intimate that
he was empowered by the Colonel to make any arrangements
for the meeting which, he had no doubt, it was his
Lordship's intention to demand, and which the circumstances
of the morning had rendered inevitable.  Captain
Macmurdo begged Lord Steyne, in the most polite
manner, to appoint a friend, with whom he (Captain M'M.)
might communicate, and desired that the meeting might
take place with as little delay as possible.

In a postscript the Captain stated that he had in his
possession a bank-note for a large amount, which
Colonel Crawley had reason to suppose was the property of
the Marquis of Steyne.  And he was anxious, on the
Colonel's behalf, to give up the note to its owner.

By the time this note was composed, the Captain's
servant returned from his mission to Colonel Crawley's
house in Curzon Street, but without the carpet-bag and
portmanteau, for which he had been sent, and with a
very puzzled and odd face.

"They won't give 'em up," said the man; "there's a
regular shinty in the house, and everything at sixes and
sevens.  The landlord's come in and took possession.  The
servants was a drinkin' up in the drawingroom.  They
said--they said you had gone off with the plate,
Colonel"--the man added after a pause--"One of the
servants is off already.  And Simpson, the man as was very
noisy and drunk indeed, says nothing shall go out of the
house until his wages is paid up."

The account of this little revolution in May Fair
astonished and gave a little gaiety to an otherwise very
triste conversation.  The two officers laughed at Rawdon's
discomfiture.

"I'm glad the little 'un isn't at home," Rawdon said,
biting his nails.  "You remember him, Mac, don't you, in
the Riding School? How he sat the kicker to be sure!
didn't he?"

"That he did, old boy," said the good-natured Captain.

Little Rawdon was then sitting, one of fifty gown boys,
in the Chapel of Whitefriars School, thinking, not about
the sermon, but about going home next Saturday, when
his father would certainly tip him and perhaps would
take him to the play.

"He's a regular trump, that boy," the father went on,
still musing about his son.  "I say, Mac, if anything goes
wrong--if I drop--I should like you to--to go and see
him, you know, and say that I was very fond of him, and
that.  And--dash it--old chap, give him these gold sleeve-
buttons:  it's all I've got." He covered his face with his
black hands, over which the tears rolled and made
furrows of white.  Mr. Macmurdo had also occasion to take
off his silk night-cap and rub it across his eyes.

"Go down and order some breakfast," he said to his
man in a loud cheerful voice.  "What'll you have, Crawley?
Some devilled kidneys and a herring--let's say.  And,
Clay, lay out some dressing things for the Colonel:  we
were always pretty much of a size, Rawdon, my boy, and
neither of us ride so light as we did when we first
entered the corps." With which, and leaving the Colonel to
dress himself, Macmurdo turned round towards the wall,
and resumed the perusal of Bell's Life, until such time as
his friend's toilette was complete and he was at liberty
to commence his own.

This, as he was about to meet a lord, Captain
Macmurdo performed with particular care.  He waxed his
mustachios into a state of brilliant polish and put on a
tight cravat and a trim buff waistcoat, so that all the
young officers in the mess-room, whither Crawley had
preceded his friend, complimented Mac on his appearance
at breakfast and asked if he was going to be married
that Sunday.



CHAPIER LV

In Which the Same Subject is Pursued

Becky did not rally from the state of stupor and confusion
in which the events of the previous night had plunged
her intrepid spirit until the bells of the Curzon Street
Chapels were ringing for afternoon service, and rising
from her bed she began to ply her own bell, in order to
summon the French maid who had left her some hours
before.

Mrs. Rawdon Crawley rang many times in vain; and
though, on the last occasion, she rang with such
vehemence as to pull down the bell-rope, Mademoiselle
Fifine did not make her appearance--no, not though her
mistress, in a great pet, and with the bell-rope in her hand,
came out to the landing-place with her hair over her
shoulders and screamed out repeatedly for her attendant.

The truth is, she had quitted the premises for many
hours, and upon that permission which is called French
leave among us After picking up the trinkets in the
drawing-room, Mademoiselle had ascended to her own
apartments, packed and corded her own boxes there,
tripped out and called a cab for herself, brought down
her trunks with her own hand, and without ever so much
as asking the aid of any of the other servants, who would
probably have refused it, as they hated her cordially,
and without wishing any one of them good-bye, had
made her exit from Curzon Street.

The game, in her opinion, was over in that little
domestic establishment.  Fifine went off in a cab, as we
have known more exalted persons of her nation to do
under similar circumstances:  but, more provident or
lucky than these, she secured not only her own property,
but some of her mistress's (if indeed that lady could be
said to have any property at all)--and not only carried
off the trinkets before alluded to, and some favourite
dresses on which she had long kept her eye, but four
richly gilt Louis Quatorze candlesticks, six gilt albums,
keepsakes, and Books of Beauty, a gold enamelled
snuff-box which had once belonged to Madame du Barri, and
the sweetest little inkstand and mother-of-pearl blotting
book, which Becky used when she composed her charming
little pink notes, had vanished from the premises in
Curzon Street together with Mademoiselle Fifine, and all
the silver laid on the table for the little festin which
Rawdon interrupted.  The plated ware Mademoiselle left
behind her was too cumbrous, probably for which
reason, no doubt, she also left the fire irons, the
chimney-glasses, and the rosewood cottage piano.

A lady very like her subsequently kept a milliner's
shop in the Rue du Helder at Paris, where she lived with
great credit and enjoyed the patronage of my Lord
Steyne.  This person always spoke of England as of the
most treacherous country in the world, and stated to her
young pupils that she had been affreusement vole by
natives of that island.  It was no doubt compassion for
her misfortunes which induced the Marquis of Steyne to
be so very kind to Madame de Saint-Amaranthe.  May
she flourish as she deserves--she appears no more in our
quarter of Vanity Fair.

Hearing a buzz and a stir below, and indignant at the
impudence of those servants who would not answer her
summons, Mrs. Crawley flung her morning robe round
her and descended majestically to the drawing-room,
whence the noise proceeded.

The cook was there with blackened face, seated on the
beautiful chintz sofa by the side of Mrs. Raggles, to whom
she was administering Maraschino.  The page with the
sugar-loaf buttons, who carried about Becky's pink
notes, and jumped about her little carriage with such
alacrity, was now engaged putting his fingers into a
cream dish; the footman was talking to Raggles, who
had a face full of perplexity and woe--and yet, though
the door was open, and Becky had been screaming a
half-dozen of times a few feet off, not one of her
attendants had obeyed her call.  "Have a little drop, do'ee
now, Mrs. Raggles," the cook was saying as Becky
entered, the white cashmere dressing-gown flouncing
around her.

"Simpson!  Trotter!" the mistress of the house cried in
great wrath.  "How dare you stay here when you heard
me call? How dare you sit down in my presence? Where's
my maid?" The page withdrew his fingers from his mouth
with a momentary terror, but the cook took off a glass
of Maraschino, of which Mrs. Raggles had had enough,
staring at Becky over the little gilt glass as she drained
its contents.  The liquor appeared to give the odious rebel
courage.

"YOUR sofy, indeed!" Mrs. Cook said.  "I'm a settin' on
Mrs. Raggles's sofy.  Don't you stir, Mrs. Raggles, Mum.
I'm a settin' on Mr. and Mrs. Raggles's sofy, which they
bought with honest money, and very dear it cost 'em,
too.  And I'm thinkin' if I set here until I'm paid my
wages, I shall set a precious long time, Mrs. Raggles;
and set I will, too--ha!  ha!" and with this she filled
herself another glass of the liquor and drank it with a more
hideously satirical air.

"Trotter!  Simpson!  turn that drunken wretch out,"
screamed Mrs. Crawley.

"I shawn't," said Trotter the footman; "turn out
yourself.  Pay our selleries, and turn me out too.  WE'LL
go fast enough."

"Are you all here to insult me?" cried Becky in a fury;
"when Colonel Crawley comes home I'll--"

At this the servants burst into a horse haw-haw, in
which, however, Raggles, who still kept a most melancholy countenance, did not join.  "He ain't a coming back,"
Mr. Trotter resumed.  "He sent for his things, and I
wouldn't let 'em go, although Mr. Raggles would; and I
don't b'lieve he's no more a Colonel than I am.  He's
hoff, and I suppose you're a goin' after him.  You're no
better than swindlers, both on you.  Don't be a bullyin'
ME.  I won't stand it.  Pay us our selleries, I say.  Pay us
our selleries." It was evident, from Mr. Trotter's flushed
countenance and defective intonation, that he, too, had
had recourse to vinous stimulus.

"Mr. Raggles," said Becky in a passion of vexation,
"you will not surely let me be insulted by that drunken
man?" "Hold your noise, Trotter; do now," said Simpson
the page.  He was affected by his mistress's deplorable
situation, and succeeded in preventing an outrageous
denial of the epithet "drunken" on the footman's part.

"Oh, M'am," said Raggles, "I never thought to live to
see this year day:  I've known the Crawley family ever
since I was born.  I lived butler with Miss Crawley for
thirty years; and I little thought one of that family was
a goin' to ruing me--yes, ruing me"--said the poor fellow
with tears in his eyes.  "Har you a goin' to pay me? You've
lived in this 'ouse four year.  You've 'ad my substance:
my plate and linning.  You ho me a milk and butter bill
of two 'undred pound, you must 'ave noo laid heggs for
your homlets, and cream for your spanil dog."

"She didn't care what her own flesh and blood had,"
interposed the cook.  "Many's the time, he'd have starved
but for me."

"He's a charaty-boy now, Cooky," said Mr. Trotter,
with a drunken "ha!  ha!"--and honest Raggles continued,
in a lamentable tone, an enumeration of his griefs.  All he
said was true.  Becky and her husband had ruined him.
He had bills coming due next week and no means to meet
them.  He would be sold up and turned out of his shop
and his house, because he had trusted to the Crawley
family.  His tears and lamentations made Becky more
peevish than ever.

"You all seem to be against me," she said bitterly.
"What do you want? I can't pay you on Sunday.  Come
back to-morrow and I'll pay you everything.  I thought
Colonel Crawley had settled with you.  He will to-morrow.
I declare to you upon my honour that he left home this
morning with fifteen hundred pounds in his pocket-book.
He has left me nothing.  Apply to him.  Give me a bonnet
and shawl and let me go out and find him.  There was a
difference between us this morning.  You all seem to
know it.  I promise you upon my word that you shall all
be paid.  He has got a good appointment.  Let me go out
and find him.''

This audacious statement caused Raggles and the other
personages present to look at one another with a wild
surprise, and with it Rebecca left them.  She went upstairs
and dressed herself this time without the aid of her French
maid.  She went into Rawdon's room, and there saw that
a trunk and bag were packed ready for removal, with a
pencil direction that they should be given when called
for; then she went into the Frenchwoman's garret;
everything was clean, and all the drawers emptied there.
She bethought herself of the trinkets which had been left on
the ground and felt certain that the woman had fled.
"Good Heavens!  was ever such ill luck as mine?" she
said; "to be so near, and to lose all.  Is it all too late?"
No; there was one chance more.

She dressed herself and went away unmolested this
time, but alone.  It was four o'clock.  She went swiftly
down the streets (she had no money to pay for a
carriage), and never stopped until she came to Sir Pitt
Crawley's door, in Great Gaunt Street.  Where was Lady
Jane Crawley? She was at church.  Becky was not sorry.
Sir Pitt was in his study, and had given orders not to be
disturbed--she must see him--she slipped by the sentinel
in livery at once, and was in Sir Pitt's room before the
astonished Baronet had even laid down the paper.

He turned red and started back from her with a look
of great alarm and horror.

"Do not look so," she said.  "I am not guilty, Pitt, dear
Pitt; you were my friend once.  Before God, I am not
guilty.  I seem so.  Everything is against me.  And oh!  at
such a moment!  just when all my hopes were about to be
realized:  just when happiness was in store for us."

"Is this true, what I see in the paper then?" Sir Pitt
said--a paragraph in which had greatly surprised him.

"It is true.  Lord Steyne told me on Friday night, the
night of that fatal ball.  He has been promised an
appointment any time these six months.  Mr. Martyr, the
Colonial Secretary, told him yesterday that it was made out.
That unlucky arrest ensued; that horrible meeting.  I was only
guilty of too much devotedness to Rawdon's service.  I
have received Lord Steyne alone a hundred times before.
I confess I had money of which Rawdon knew nothing.
Don't you know how careless he is of it, and could I dare
to confide it to him?" And so she went on with a
perfectly connected story, which she poured into the ears
of her perplexed kinsman.

It was to the following effect.  Becky owned, and with
prefect frankness, but deep contrition, that having
remarked Lord Steyne's partiality for her (at the mention
of which Pitt blushed), and being secure of her own
virtue, she had determined to turn the great peer's
attachment to the advantage of herself and her family.  "I
looked for a peerage for you, Pitt," she said (the brother-
in-law again turned red).  "We have talked about it.  Your
genius and Lord Steyne's interest made it more than
probable, had not this dreadful calamity come to put an
end to all our hopes.  But, first, I own that it was my
object to rescue my dear husband--him whom I love in
spite of all his ill usage and suspicions of me--to remove
him from the poverty and ruin which was impending over
us.  I saw Lord Steyne's partiality for me," she said,
casting down her eyes.  "I own that I did everything in
my power to make myself pleasing to him, and as far as
an honest woman may, to secure his--his esteem.  It was
only on Friday morning that the news arrived of the
death of the Governor of Coventry Island, and my Lord
instantly secured the appointment for my dear husband.
It was intended as a surprise for him--he was to see it in
the papers to-day.  Even after that horrid arrest took
place (the expenses of which Lord Steyne generously
said he would settle, so that I was in a manner prevented
from coming to my husband's assistance), my Lord was
laughing with me, and saying that my dearest Rawdon
would be consoled when he read of his appointment in
the paper, in that shocking spun--bailiff's house.  And
then--then he came home.  His suspicions were excited,
--the dreadful scene took place between my Lord and
my cruel, cruel Rawdon--and, O my God, what will
happen next? Pitt, dear Pitt!  pity me, and reconcile us!"
And as she spoke she flung herself down on her knees,
and bursting into tears, seized hold of Pitt's hand, which
she kissed passionately.

It was in this very attitude that Lady Jane, who,
returning from church, ran to her husband's room directly
she heard Mrs. Rawdon Crawley was closeted there,
found the Baronet and his sister-in-law.

"I am surprised that woman has the audacity to enter
this house," Lady Jane said, trembling in every limb
and turning quite pale.  (Her Ladyship had sent out her
maid directly after breakfast, who had communicated
with Raggles and Rawdon Crawley's household, who had
told her all, and a great deal more than they knew, of
that story, and many others besides).  "How dare Mrs.
Crawley to enter the house of--of an honest family?"

Sir Pitt started back, amazed at his wife's display of
vigour.  Becky still kept her kneeling posture and clung
to Sir Pitt's hand.

"Tell her that she does not know all:  Tell her that I
am innocent, dear Pitt," she whimpered out.

"Upon-my word, my love, I think you do Mrs. Crawley
injustice," Sir Pitt said; at which speech Rebecca was
vastly relieved.  "Indeed I believe her to be--"

"To be what?" cried out Lady Jane, her clear voice
thrilling and, her heart beating violently as she spoke.
"To be a wicked woman--a heartless mother, a false
wife? She never loved her dear little boy, who used to
fly here and tell me of her cruelty to him.  She never
came into a family but she strove to bring misery with
her and to weaken the most sacred affections with her
wicked flattery and falsehoods.  She has deceived her
husband, as she has deceived everybody; her soul is black
with vanity, worldliness, and all sorts of crime.  I tremble
when I touch her.  I keep my children out of her sight.

"Lady Jane!" cried Sir Pitt, starting up, "this is really
language--"

"I have been a true and faithful wife to you, Sir
Pitt," Lady Jane continued, intrepidly; "I have kept my
marriage vow as I made it to God and have been
obedient and gentle as a wife should.  But righteous
obedience has its limits, and I declare that I will not bear
that--that woman again under my roof; if she enters it,
I and my children will leave it.  She is not worthy to sit
down with Christian people.  You--you must choose, sir,
between her and me"; and with this my Lady swept out
of the room, fluttering with her own audacity, and leaving
Rebecca and Sir Pitt not a little astonished at it.

As for Becky, she was not hurt; nay, she was pleased.
"It was the diamond-clasp you gave me," she said to Sir
Pitt, reaching him out her hand; and before she left him
(for which event you may be sure my Lady Jane was
looking out from her dressing-room window in the upper
story) the Baronet had promised to go and seek out his
brother, and endeavour to bring about a reconciliation.

Rawdon found some of the young fellows of the regiment
seated in the mess-room at breakfast, and was
induced without much difficulty to partake of that meal,
and of the devilled legs of fowls and soda-water with
which these young gentlemen fortified themselves.  Then
they had a conversation befitting the day and their time
of life:  about the next pigeon-match at Battersea, with
relative bets upon Ross and Osbaldiston; about
Mademoiselle Ariane of the French Opera, and who had left
her, and how she was consoled by Panther Carr; and
about the fight between the Butcher and the Pet, and the
probabilities that it was a cross.  Young Tandyman, a
hero of seventeen, laboriously endeavouring to get up a
pair of mustachios, had seen the fight, and spoke in the
most scientific manner about the battle and the condition
of the men.  It was he who had driven the Butcher on to
the ground in his drag and passed the whole of the
previous night with him.  Had there not been foul play
he must have won it.  All the old files of the Ring were in
it; and Tandyman wouldn't pay; no, dammy, he wouldn't
pay.  It was but a year since the young Cornet, now so
knowing a hand in Cribb's parlour, had a still lingering
liking for toffy, and used to be birched at Eton.

So they went on talking about dancers, fights, drinking,
demireps, until Macmurdo came down and joined the
boys and the conversation.  He did not appear to think
that any especial reverence was due to their boyhood;
the old fellow cut in with stories, to the full as choice
as any the youngest rake present had to tell--nor did his
own grey hairs nor their smooth faces detain him.  Old
Mac was famous for his good stories.  He was not exactly
a lady's man; that is, men asked him to dine rather at
the houses of their mistresses than of their mothers.
There can scarcely be a life lower, perhaps, than his,
but he was quite contented with it, such as it was, and
led it in perfect good nature, simplicity, and modesty of
demeanour.

By the time Mac had finished a copious breakfast,
most of the others had concluded their meal.  Young Lord
Varinas was smoking an immense Meerschaum pipe,
while Captain Hugues was employed with a cigar:  that
violent little devil Tandyman, with his little bull-terrier
between his legs, was tossing for shillings with all his
might (that fellow was always at some game or other)
against Captain Deuceace; and Mac and Rawdon walked
off to the Club, neither, of course, having given any hint
of the business which was occupying their minds.  Both,
on the other hand, had joined pretty gaily in the
conversation, for why should they interrupt it? Feasting,
drinking, ribaldry, laughter, go on alongside of all sorts
of other occupations in Vanity Fair--the crowds were
pouring out of church as Rawdon and his friend passed
down St.  James's Street and entered into their Club.

The old bucks and habitues, who ordinarily stand
gaping and grinning out of the great front window of the
Club, had not arrived at their posts as yet--the
newspaper-room was almost empty.  One man was present
whom Rawdon did not know; another to whom he owed
a little score for whist, and whom, in consequence, he
did not care to meet; a third was reading the Royalist
(a periodical famous for its scandal and its attachment
to Church and King) Sunday paper at the table, and
looking up at Crawley with some interest, said, "Crawley,
I congratulate you."

"What do you mean?" said the Colonel.

"It's in the Observer and the Royalist too," said Mr.
Smith.

"What?" Rawdon cried, turning very red.  He thought
that the affair with Lord Steyne was already in the
public prints.  Smith looked up wondering and smiling
at the agitation which the Colonel exhibited as he took
up the paper and, trembling, began to read.

Mr. Smith and Mr. Brown (the gentleman with .whom
Rawdon had the outstanding whist account) had been
talking about the Colonel just before he came in.

"It is come just in the nick of time," said Smith.  "I
suppose Crawley had not a shilling in the world."

"It's a wind that blows everybody good," Mr. Brown
said.  "He can't go away without paying me a pony he
owes me."

"What's the salary?" asked Smith.

"Two or three thousand," answered the other.  "But
the climate's so infernal, they don't enjoy it long.
Liverseege died after eighteen months of it, and the
man before went off in six weeks, I hear."

"Some people say his brother is a very clever man.  I
always found him a d-- bore," Smith ejaculated.  "He
must have good interest, though.  He must have got the
Colonel the place."

"He!" said Brown.  with a sneer.  "Pooh.  It was Lord
Steyne got it.

"How do you mean?"

"A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband,"
answered the other enigmatically, and went to read his
papers.

Rawdon, for his part, read in the Royalist the following
astonishing paragraph:

GOVERNORSHIP OF COVENTRY ISLAND.--H.M.S.
Yellowjack, Commander Jaunders, has brought letters and
papers from Coventry Island.  H.  E.  Sir Thomas
Liverseege had fallen a victim to the prevailing fever at
Swampton.  His loss is deeply felt in the flourishing
colony.  We hear that the Governorship has been offered to
Colonel Rawdon Crawley, C.B., a distinguished Waterloo
officer.  We need not only men of acknowledged
bravery, but men of administrative talents to superintend
the affairs of our colonies, and we have no doubt
that the gentleman selected by the Colonial Office to
fill the lamented vacancy which has occurred at
Coventry Island is admirably calculated for the post which
he is about to occupy."

"Coventry Island!  Where was it? Who had appointed
him to the government? You must take me out as your
secretary, old boy," Captain Macmurdo said laughing;
and as Crawley and his friend sat wondering and
perplexed over the announcement, the Club waiter brought
in to the Colonel a card on which the name of Mr.
Wenham was engraved, who begged to see Colonel
Crawley.

The Colonel and his aide-de-camp went out to meet
the gentleman, rightly conjecturing that he was an
emissary of Lord Steyne.  "How d'ye do, Crawley? I am
glad to see you," said Mr. Wenham with a bland smile,
and grasping Crawley's hand with great cordiality.

"You come, I suppose, from-- "

"Exactly," said Mr. Wenham.

"Then this is my friend Captain Macmurdo, of the Life
Guards Green."

"Delighted to know Captain Macmurdo, I'm sure," Mr.
Wenham said and tendered another smile and shake of
the hand to the second, as he had done to the principal.
Mac put out one finger, armed with a buckskin glove,
and made a very frigid bow to Mr. Wenham over his
tight cravat.  He was, perhaps, discontented at being put
in communication with a pekin, and thought that Lord
Steyne should have sent him a Colonel at the very least.

"As Macmurdo acts for me, and knows what I mean,"
Crawley said, "I had better retire and leave you together."

"Of course," said Macmurdo.

"By no means, my dear Colonel," Mr. Wenham said;
"the interview which I had the honour of requesting was
with you personally, though the company of Captain
Macmurdo cannot fail to be also most pleasing.  In fact,
Captain, I hope that our conversation will lead to none
but the most agreeable results, very different from those
which my friend Colonel Crawley appears to anticipate."

"Humph!" said Captain Macmurdo.  Be hanged to these
civilians, he thought to himself, they are always for
arranging and speechifying.  Mr. Wenham took a chair
which was not offered to him--took a paper from his
pocket, and resumed--

"You have seen this gratifying announcement in the
papers this morning, Colonel? Government has secured
a most valuable servant, and you, if you accept office, as
I presume you will, an excellent appointment.  Three
thousand a year, delightful climate, excellent government-
house, all your own way in the Colony, and a certain
promotion.  I congratulate you with all my heart.  I
presume you know, gentlemen, to whom my friend is
indebted for this piece of patronage?"

"Hanged if I know," the Captain said; his principal
turned very red.

"To one of the most generous and kindest men in the
world, as he is one of the greatest--to my excellent
friend, the Marquis of Steyne."

"I'll see him d-- before I take his place," growled
out Rawdon.

"You are irritated against my noble friend," Mr.
Wenham calmly resumed; "and now, in the name of
common sense and justice, tell me why?"

"WHY?" cried Rawdon in surprise.

"Why? Dammy!" said the Captain, ringing his stick
on the ground.

"Dammy, indeed," said Mr. Wenham with the most
agreeable smile; "still, look at the matter as a man of
the world--as an honest man--and see if you have not
been in the wrong.  You come home from a journey, and
find--what?--my Lord Steyne supping at your house in
Curzon Street with Mrs. Crawley.  Is the circumstance
strange or novel? Has he not been a hundred times
before in the same position? Upon my honour and word
as a gentleman"--Mr. Wenham here put his hand on
his waistcoat with a parliamentary air--"I declare I think
that your suspicions are monstrous and utterly
unfounded, and that they injure an honourable gentleman
who has proved his good-will towards you by a thousand
benefactions--and a most spotless and innocent lady."

"You don't mean to say that--that Crawley's
mistaken?" said Mr. Macmurdo.

"I believe that Mrs. Crawley is as innocent as my
wife, Mrs. Wenham," Mr. Wenham said with great
energy.  "I believe that, misled by an infernal jealousy,
my friend here strikes a blow against not only an infirm
and old man of high station, his constant friend and
benefactor, but against his wife, his own dearest honour,
his son's future reputation, and his own prospects in
life."

"I will tell you what happened," Mr. Wenham
continued with great solemnity; "I was sent for this
morning by my Lord Steyne, and found him in a pitiable state,
as, I need hardly inform Colonel Crawley, any man of
age and infirmity would be after a personal conflict with
a man of your strength.  I say to your face; it was a
cruel advantage you took of that strength, Colonel
Crawley.  It was not only the body of my noble and
excellent friend which was wounded--his heart, sir, was
bleeding.  A man whom he had loaded with benefits and
regarded with affection had subjected him to the foulest
indignity.  What was this very appointment, which appears
in the journals of to-day, but a proof of his kindness to
you? When I saw his Lordship this morning I found him
in a state pitiable indeed to see, and as anxious as you
are to revenge the outrage committed upon him, by
blood.  You know he has given his proofs, I presume,
Colonel Crawley?"

"He has plenty of pluck," said the Colonel.  "Nobody
ever said he hadn't."

"His first order to me was to write a letter of
challenge, and to carry it to Colonel Crawley.  One or
other of us," he said, "must not survive the outrage
of last night."

Crawley nodded.  "You're coming to the point,
Wenham," he said.

"I tried my utmost to calm Lord Steyne.  Good God!
sir," I said, "how I regret that Mrs. Wenham and myself
had not accepted Mrs. Crawley's invitation to sup with
her!"

"She asked you to sup with her?" Captain Macmurdo
said.

"After the opera.  Here's the note of invitation--stop
--no, this is another paper--I thought I had h, but it's
of no consequence, and I pledge you my word to the
fact.  If we had come--and it was only one of Mrs.
Wenham's headaches which prevented us--she suffers
under them a good deal, especially in the spring--if we
had come, and you had returned home, there would have
been no quarrel, no insult, no suspicion--and so it is
positively because my poor wife has a headache that you
are to bring death down upon two men of honour and
plunge two of the most excellent and ancient families
in the kingdom into disgrace and sorrow."

Mr. Macmurdo looked at his principal with the air
of a man profoundly puzzled, and Rawdon felt with a
kind of rage that his prey was escaping him.  He did not
believe a word of the story, and yet, how discredit or
disprove it?

Mr. Wenham continued with the same fluent oratory,
which in his place in Parliament he had so often
practised--"I sat for an hour or more by Lord Steyne's
bedside, beseeching, imploring Lord Steyne to forego his
intention of demanding a meeting.  I pointed out to him
that the circumstances were after all suspicious--they
were suspicious.  I acknowledge it--any man in your
position might have been taken in--I said that a man
furious with jealousy is to all intents and purposes a
madman, and should be as such regarded--that a duel
between you must lead to the disgrace of all parties
concerned--that a man of his Lordship's exalted station had
no right in these days, when the most atrocious
revolutionary principles, and the most dangerous levelling
doctrines are preached among the vulgar, to create a
public scandal; and that, however innocent, the common
people would insist that he was guilty.  In fine, I
implored him not to send the challenge."

"I don't believe one word of the whole story," said
Rawdon, grinding his teeth.  "I believe it a d-- lie, and
that you're in it, Mr. Wenham.  If the challenge don't
come from him, by Jove it shall come from me."

Mr. Wenham turned deadly pale at this savage
interruption of the Colonel and looked towards the door.

But he found a champion in Captain Macmurdo.  That
gentleman rose up with an oath and rebuked Rawdon
for his language.  "You put the affair into my hands, and
you shall act as I think fit, by Jove, and not as you do.
You have no right to insult Mr. Wenham with this sort
of language; and dammy, Mr. Wenham, you deserve an
apology.  And as for a challenge to Lord Steyne, you
may get somebody else to carry it, I won't.  If my lord,
after being thrashed, chooses to sit still, dammy let him.
And as for the affair with--with Mrs. Crawley, my
belief is, there's nothing proved at all:  that your wife's
innocent, as innocent as Mr. Wenham says she is; and at
any rate that you would be a d--fool not to take the
place and hold your tongue."

"Captain Macmurdo, you speak like a man of sense,"
Mr. Wenham cried out, immensely relieved--"I forget
any words that Colonel Crawley has used in the
irritation of the moment."

"I thought you would," Rawdon said with a sneer.

"Shut your mouth, you old stoopid," the Captain said
good-naturedly.  "Mr. Wenham ain't a fighting man; and
quite right, too."

"This matter, in my belief," the Steyne emissary cried,
"ought to be buried in the most profound oblivion.  A
word concerning it should never pass these doors.  I
speak in the interest of my friend, as well as of Colonel
Crawley, who persists in considering me his enemy."

"I suppose Lord Steyne won't talk about it very
much," said Captain Macmurdo; "and I don't see why
our side should.  The affair ain't a very pretty one, any
way you take it, and the less said about it the better.
It's you are thrashed, and not us; and if you are satisfied,
why, I think, we should be."

Mr. Wenham took his hat, upon this, and Captain
Macmurdo following him to the door, shut it upon
himself and Lord Steyne's agent, leaving Rawdon chafing
within.  When the two were on the other side, Macmurdo
looked hard at the other ambassador and with an
expression of anything but respect on his round jolly face.

"You don't stick at a trifle, Mr. Wenham," he said.

"You flatter me, Captain Macmurdo," answered the
other with a smile.  "Upon my honour and conscience
now, Mrs. Crawley did ask us to sup after the opera."

"Of course; and Mrs. Wenham had one of her head-
aches.  I say, I've got a thousand-pound note here, which
I will give you if you will give me a receipt, please; and
I will put the note up in an envelope for Lord Steyne.
My man shan't fight him.  But we had rather not take
his money."

"It was all a mistake--all a mistake, my dear sir," the
other said with the utmost innocence of manner; and was
bowed down the Club steps by Captain Macmurdo, just
as Sir Pitt Crawley ascended them.  There was a slight
acquaintance between these two gentlemen, and the
Captain, going back with the Baronet to the room where the
latter's brother was, told Sir Pitt, in confidence, that he
had made the affair all right between Lord Steyne and
the Colonel.

Sir Pitt was well pleased, of course, at this intelligence,
and congratulated his brother warmly upon the peaceful
issue of the affair, making appropriate moral remarks
upon the evils of duelling and the unsatisfactory nature
of that sort of settlement of disputes.

And after this preface, he tried with all his eloquence
to effect a reconciliation between Rawdon and his wife.
He recapitulated the statements which Becky had made,
pointed out the probabilities of their truth, and asserted
his own firm belief in her innocence.

But Rawdon would not hear of it.  "She has kep money
concealed from me these ten years," he said "She swore,
last night only, she had none from Steyne.  She knew it
was all up, directly I found it.  If she's not guilty, Pitt,
she's as bad as guilty, and I'll never see her again--
never." His head sank down on his chest as he spoke
the words, and he looked quite broken and sad.

"Poor old boy," Macmurdo said, shaking his head.

Rawdon Crawley resisted for some time the idea of
taking the place which had been procured for him by so
odious a patron, and was also for removing the boy
from the school where Lord Steyne's interest had placed
him.  He was induced, however, to acquiesce in these
benefits by the entreaties of his brother and Macmurdo,
but mainly by the latter, pointing out to him what a
fury Steyne would be in to think that his enemy's
fortune was made through his means.

When the Marquis of Steyne came abroad after his
accident, the Colonial Secretary bowed up to him and
congratulated himself and the Service upon having made
so excellent an appointment.  These congratulations were
received with a degree of gratitude which may be
imagined on the part of Lord Steyne.

The secret of the rencontre between him and Colonel
Crawley was buried in the profoundest oblivion, as
Wenham said; that is, by the seconds and the principals.
But before that evening was over it was talked of at fifty
dinner-tables in Vanity Fair.  Little Cackleby himself
went to seven evening parties and told the story with
comments and emendations at each place.  How Mrs.
Washington White revelled in it!  The Bishopess of Ealing
was shocked beyond expression; the Bishop went and
wrote his name down in the visiting-book at Gaunt House
that very day.  Little Southdown was sorry; so you may
be sure was his sister Lady Jane, very sorry.  Lady
Southdown wrote it off to her other daughter at the Cape of
Good Hope.  It was town-talk for at least three days,
and was only kept out of the newspapers by the exertions
of Mr. Wagg, acting upon a hint from Mr. Wenham.

The bailiffs and brokers seized upon poor Raggles in
Curzon Street, and the late fair tenant of that poor little
mansion was in the meanwhile--where? Who cared!  Who
asked after a day or two? Was she guilty or not? We all
know how charitable the world is, and how the verdict
of Vanity Fair goes when there is a doubt.  Some people
said she had gone to Naples in pursuit of Lord Steyne,
whilst others averred that his Lordship quitted that city
and fled to Palermo on hearing of Becky's arrival; some
said she was living in Bierstadt, and had become a dame
d'honneur to the Queen of Bulgaria; some that she was
at Boulogne; and others, at a boarding-house at
Cheltenham.

Rawdon made her a tolerable annuity, and we may
be sure that she was a woman who could make a little
money go a great way, as the saying is.  He would have
paid his debts on leaving England, could he have got any
Insurance Office to take his life, but the climate of
Coventry Island was so bad that he could borrow no
money on the strength of his salary.  He remitted,
however, to his brother punctually, and wrote to his little
boy regularly every mail.  He kept Macmurdo in cigars
and sent over quantities of shells, cayenne pepper, hot
pickles, guava jelly, and colonial produce to Lady Jane.
He sent his brother home the Swamp Town Gazette,
in which the new Governor was praised with immense
enthusiasm; whereas the Swamp Town Sentinel, whose
wife was not asked to Government House, declared that
his Excellency was a tyrant, compared to whom Nero
was an enlightened philanthropist.  Little Rawdon used
to like to get the papers and read about his Excellency.

His mother never made any movement to see the child.
He went home to his aunt for Sundays and holidays; he
soon knew every bird's nest about Queen's Crawley, and
rode out with Sir Huddlestone's hounds, which he
admired so on his first well-remembered visit to
Hampshire.



CHAPTER LVI


Georgy is Made a Gentleman

Georgy Osborne was now fairly established in his
grandfather's mansion in Russell Square, occupant of his
father's room in the house and heir apparent of all the
splendours there.  The good looks, gallant bearing, and
gentlemanlike appearance of the boy won the grandsire's
heart for him.  Mr. Osborne was as proud of him as ever
he had been of the elder George.

The child had many more luxuries and indulgences than
had been awarded his father.  Osborne's commerce had
prospered greatly of late years.  His wealth and
importance in the City had very much increased.  He had
been glad enough in former days to put the elder George
to a good private school; and a commission in the army
for his son had been a source of no small pride to
him; for little George and his future prospects the old
man looked much higher.  He would make a gentleman
of the little chap, was Mr. Osborne's constant saying
regarding little Georgy.  He saw him in his mind's eye, a
collegian, a Parliament man, a Baronet, perhaps.  The
old man thought he would die contented if he could see
his grandson in a fair way to such honours.  He would
have none but a tip-top college man to educate him--
none of your quacks and pretenders--no, no.  A few years
before, he used to be savage, and inveigh against all
parsons, scholars, and the like declaring that they were
a pack of humbugs, and quacks that weren't fit to get
their living but by grinding Latin and Greek, and a set
of supercilious dogs that pretended to look down upon
British merchants and gentlemen, who could buy up half
a hundred of 'em.  He would mourn now, in a very
solemn manner, that his own education had been neglected,
and repeatedly point out, in pompous orations to Georgy,
the necessity and excellence of classical acquirements.

When they met at dinner the grandsire used to ask
the lad what he had been reading during the day, and
was greatly interested at the report the boy gave of his
own studies, pretending to understand little George
when he spoke regarding them.  He made a hundred
blunders and showed his ignorance many a time.  It did not
increase the respect which the child had for his senior.
A quick brain and a better education elsewhere showed
the boy very soon that his grandsire was a dullard, and
he began accordingly to command him and to look down
upon him; for his previous education, humble and
contracted as it had been, had made a much better
gentleman of Georgy than any plans of his grandfather could
make him.  He had been brought up by a kind, weak,
and tender woman, who had no pride about anything
but about him, and whose heart was so pure and whose
bearing was so meek and humble that she could not but
needs be a true lady.  She busied herself in gentle offices
and quiet duties; if she never said brilliant things, she
never spoke or thought unkind ones; guileless and artless,
loving and pure, indeed how could our poor little Amelia
be other than a real gentlewoman!

Young Georgy lorded over this soft and yielding
nature; and the contrast of its simplicity and delicacy with
the coarse pomposity of the dull old man with whom
he next came in contact made him lord over the latter
too.  If he had been a Prince Royal he could not have
been better brought up to think well of himself.

Whilst his mother was yearning after him at home, and
I do believe every hour of the day, and during most
hours of the sad lonely nights, thinking of him, this young
gentleman had a number of pleasures and consolations
administered to him, which made him for his part bear
the separation from Amelia very easily.  Little boys who
cry when they are going to school cry because they
are going to a very uncomfortable place.  It is only a
few who weep from sheer affection.  When you think
that the eyes of your childhood dried at the sight of a
piece of gingerbread, and that a plum cake was a
compensation for the agony of parting with your mamma
and sisters, oh my friend and brother, you need not be
too confident of your own fine feelings.

Well, then, Master George Osborne had every comfort
and luxury that a wealthy and lavish old grandfather
thought fit to provide.  The coachman was instructed to
purchase for him the handsomest pony which could be
bought for money, and on this George was taught to
ride, first at a riding-school, whence, after having
performed satisfactorily without stirrups, and over the
leaping-bar, he was conducted through the New Road to
Regent's Park, and then to Hyde Park, where he rode
in state with Martin the coachman behind him.  Old
Osborne, who took matters more easily in the City now,
where he left his affairs to his junior partners, would
often ride out with Miss O.  in the same fashionable direction.
As little Georgy came cantering up with his dandified
air and his heels down, his grandfather would nudge
the lad's aunt and say, "Look, Miss O." And he would
laugh, and his face would grow red with pleasure, as
he nodded out of the window to the boy, as the groom
saluted the carriage, and the footman saluted Master
George.  Here too his aunt, Mrs. Frederick Bullock
(whose chariot might daily be seen in the Ring, with
bullocks or emblazoned on the panels and harness, and
three pasty-faced little Bullocks, covered with cockades
and feathers, staring from the windows) Mrs. Frederick
Bullock, I say, flung glances of the bitterest hatred at
the little upstart as he rode by with his hand on his side
and his hat on one ear, as proud as a lord.

Though he was scarcely eleven years of age, Master
George wore straps and the most beautiful little boots
like a man.  He had gilt spurs, and a gold-headed whip,
and a fine pin in his handkerchief, and the neatest little
kid gloves which Lamb's Conduit Street could furnish.
His mother had given him a couple of neckcloths, and
carefully hemmed and made some little shirts for him;
but when her Eli came to see the widow, they were
replaced by much finer linen.  He had little jewelled buttons
in the lawn shirt fronts.  Her humble presents had been put
aside--I believe Miss Osborne had given them to the
coachman's boy.  Amelia tried to think she was pleased
at the change.  Indeed, she was happy and charmed to
see the boy looking so beautiful.

She had had a little black profile of him done for a
shilling, and this was hung up by the side of another
portrait over her bed.  One day the boy came on his
accustomed visit, galloping down the little street at
Brompton, and bringing, as usual, all the inhabitants to the
windows to admire his splendour, and with great eagerness
and a look of triumph in his face, he pulled a case
out of his great-coat--it was a natty white great-coat,
with a cape and a velvet collar--pulled out a red
morocco case, which he gave her.

"I bought it with my own money, Mamma," he said.
"I thought you'd like it."

Amelia opened the case, and giving a little cry of
delighted affection, seized the boy and embraced him a
hundred times.  It was a miniature-of himself, very prettily
done (though not half handsome enough, we may be
sure, the widow thought).  His grandfather had wished
to have a picture of him by an artist whose works,
exhibited in a shop-window, in Southampton Row, had
caught the old gentleman's eye; and George, who had
plenty of money, bethought him of asking the painter
how much a copy of the little portrait would cost, saying
that he would pay for it out of his own money and
that he wanted to give it to his mother.  The pleased
painter executed it for a small price, and old Osborne
himself, when he heard of the incident, growled out his
satisfaction and gave the boy twice as many sovereigns
as he paid for the miniature.

But what was the grandfather's pleasure compared to
Amelia's ecstacy? That proof of the boy's affection
charmed her so that she thought no child in the world
was like hers for goodness.  For long weeks after, the
thought of his love made her happy.  She slept better
with the picture under her pillow, and how many many
times did she kiss it and weep and pray over it!  A
small kindness from those she loved made that timid
heart grateful.  Since her parting with George she had had
no such joy and consolation.

At his new home Master George ruled like a lord;
at dinner he invited the ladies to drink wine with the
utmost coolness, and took off his champagne in a way
which charmed his old grandfather.  "Look at him," the
old man would say, nudging his neighbour with a
delighted purple face, "did you ever see such a chap?
Lord, Lord!  he'll be ordering a dressing-case next, and
razors to shave with; I'm blessed if he won't."

The antics of the lad did not, however, delight Mr.
Osborne's friends so much as they pleased the old
gentleman.  It gave Mr. Justice Coffin no pleasure to hear
Georgy cut into the conversation and spoil his stories.
Colonel Fogey was not interested in seeing the little boy
half tipsy.  Mr. Sergeant Toffy's lady felt no particular
gratitude, when, with a twist of his elbow, he tilted a
glass of port-wine over her yellow satin and laughed at
the disaster; nor was she better pleased, although old
Osborne was highly delighted, when Georgy "whopped"
her third boy (a young gentleman a year older than
Georgy, and by chance home for the holidays from Dr.
Tickleus's at Ealing School) in Russell Square.  George's
grandfather gave the boy a couple of sovereigns for that
feat and promised to reward him further for every boy
above his own size and age whom he whopped in a
similar manner.  It is difficult to say what good the old man
saw in these combats; he had a vague notion that
quarrelling made boys hardy, and that tyranny was a useful
accomplishment for them to learn.  English youth have
been so educated time out of mind, and we have
hundreds of thousands of apologists and admirers of
injustice, misery, and brutality, as perpetrated among
children.  Flushed with praise and victory over Master Toffy,
George wished naturally to pursue his conquests further,
and one day as he was strutting about in prodigiously
dandified new clothes, near St.  Pancras, and a young
baker's boy made sarcastic comments upon his appearance,
the youthful patrician pulled off his dandy jacket
with great spirit, and giving it in charge to the friend
who accompanied him (Master Todd, of Great Coram
Street, Russell Square, son of the junior partner of the
house of Osborne and Co.), George tried to whop the
little baker.  But the chances of war were unfavourable
this time, and the little baker whopped Georgy, who
came home with a rueful black eye and all his fine shirt
frill dabbled with the claret drawn from his own little
nose.  He told his grandfather that he had been in
combat with a giant, and frightened his poor mother at
Brompton with long, and by no means authentic,
accounts of the battle.

This young Todd, of Coram Street, Russell Square,
was Master George's great friend and admirer.  They both
had a taste for painting theatrical characters; for
hardbake and raspberry tarts; for sliding and skating in the
Regent's Park and the Serpentine, when the weather
permitted; for going to the play, whither they were often
conducted, by Mr. Osborne's orders, by Rowson, Master
George's appointed body-servant, with whom they sat in
great comfort in the pit.

In the company of this gentleman they visited all the
principal theatres of the metropolis; knew the names of
all the actors from Drury Lane to Sadler's Wells; and
performed, indeed, many of the plays to the Todd family
and their youthful friends, with West's famous characters,
on their pasteboard theatre.  Rowson, the footman, who
was of a generous disposition, would not unfrequently,
when in cash, treat his young master to oysters after
the play, and to a glass of rum-shrub for a night-cap.
We may be pretty certain that Mr. Rowson profited in
his turn by his young master's liberality and gratitude
for the pleasures to which the footman inducted him.

A famous tailor from the West End of the town--
Mr. Osborne would have none of your City or Holborn
bunglers, he said, for the boy (though a City tailor was
good enough for HIM)--was summoned to ornament little
George's person, and was told to spare no expense in so
doing.  So, Mr. Woolsey, of Conduit Street, gave a loose
to his imagination and sent the child home fancy trousers,
fancy waistcoats, and fancy jackets enough to furnish a
school of little dandies.  Georgy had little white
waistcoats for evening parties, and little cut velvet waistcoats
for dinners, and a dear little darling shawl dressing-gown,
for all the world like a little man.  He dressed for dinner
every day, "like a regular West End swell," as his
grandfather remarked; one of the domestics was affected to
his special service, attended him at his toilette,
answered his bell, and brought him his letters always on a
silver tray.

Georgy, after breakfast, would sit in the arm-chair in
the dining-room and read the Morning Post, just like a
grown-up man.  "How he DU dam and swear," the
servants would cry, delighted at his precocity.  Those who
remembered the Captain his father, declared Master
George was his Pa, every inch of him.  He made the house
lively by his activity, his imperiousness, his scolding, and
his good-nature.

George's education was confided to a neighbouring
scholar and private pedagogue who "prepared young
noblemen and gentlemen for the Universities, the senate,
and the learned professions:  whose system did not
embrace the degrading corporal severities still practised at
the ancient places of education, and in whose family the
pupils would find the elegances of refined society and
the confidence and affection of a home." It was in this
way that the Reverend Lawrence Veal of Hart Street,
Bloomsbury, and domestic Chaplain to the Earl of
Bareacres, strove with Mrs. Veal his wife to entice pupils.

By thus advertising and pushing sedulously, the
domestic Chaplain and his Lady generally succeeded in
having one or two scholars by them--who paid a high
figure and were thought to be in uncommonly comfortable
quarters.  There was a large West Indian, whom
nobody came to see, with a mahogany complexion, a woolly
head, and an exceedingly dandyfied appearance; there
was another hulking boy of three-and-twenty whose
education had been neglected and whom Mr. and Mrs. Veal
were to introduce into the polite world; there were two
sons of Colonel Bangles of the East India Company's
Service:  these four sat down to dinner at Mrs. Veal's
genteel board, when Georgy was introduced to her
establishment.

Georgy was, like some dozen other pupils, only a
day boy; he arrived in the morning under the
guardianship of his friend Mr. Rowson, and if it was fine,
would ride away in the afternoon on his pony, followed by
the groom.  The wealth of his grandfather was reported
in the school to be prodigious.  The Rev.  Mr. Veal used
to compliment Georgy upon it personally, warning him
that he was destined for a high station; that it became
him to prepare, by sedulity and docility in youth, for the
lofty duties to which he would be called in mature age;
that obedience in the child was the best preparation for
command in the man; and that he therefore begged George
would not bring toffee into the school and ruin the health
of the Masters Bangles, who had everything they wanted
at the elegant and abundant table of Mrs. Veal.

With respect to learning, "the Curriculum," as Mr.
Veal loved to call it, was of prodigious extent, and the
young gentlemen in Hart Street might learn a
something of every known science.  The Rev.  Mr. Veal had
an orrery, an electrifying machine, a turning lathe, a
theatre (in the wash-house), a chemical apparatus, and
what he called a select library of all the works of the
best authors of ancient and modern times and languages.
He took the boys to the British Museum and descanted
upon the antiquities and the specimens of natural history
there, so that audiences would gather round him as he
spoke, and all Bloomsbury highly admired him as a
prodigiously well-informed man.  And whenever he spoke
(which he did almost always), he took care to produce the
very finest and longest words of which the vocabulary
gave him the use, rightly judging that it was as cheap to
employ a handsome, large, and sonorous epithet, as to
use a little stingy one.

Thus he would say to George in school, "I observed
on my return home from taking the indulgence of an
evening's scientific conversation with my excellent friend
Doctor Bulders--a true archaeologian, gentlemen, a true
archaeologian--that the windows of your venerated
grandfather's almost princely mansion in Russell Square were
illuminated as if for the purposes of festivity.  Am I right
in my conjecture that Mr. Osborne entertained a society
of chosen spirits round his sumptuous board last night?"

Little Georgy, who had considerable humour, and used
to mimic Mr. Veal to his face with great spirit and
dexterity, would reply that Mr. V.  was quite correct
in his surmise.

"Then those friends who had the honour of partaking
of Mr. Osborne's hospitality, gentlemen, had no reason,
I will lay any wager, to complain of their repast.  I
myself have been more than once so favoured.  (By the way,
Master Osborne, you came a little late this morning, and
have been a defaulter in this respect more than once.)
I myself, I say, gentlemen, humble as I am, have been
found not unworthy to share Mr. Osborne's elegant
hospitality.  And though I have feasted with the great and
noble of the world--for I presume that I may call my
excellent friend and patron, the Right Honourable George
Earl of Bareacres, one of the number--yet I assure you
that the board of the British merchant was to the full
as richly served, and his reception as gratifying and
noble.  Mr. Bluck, sir, we will resume, if you please,
that passage of Eutropis, which was interrupted by the
late arrival of Master Osborne."

To this great man George's education was for some
time entrusted.  Amelia was bewildered by his phrases,
but thought him a prodigy of learning.  That poor widow
made friends of Mrs. Veal, for reasons of her own.  She
liked to be in the house and see Georgy coming to school
there.  She liked to be asked to Mrs. Veal's conversazioni,
which took place once a month (as you were informed on
pink cards, with AOHNH engraved on them), and where
the professor welcomed his pupils and their friends to weak
tea and scientific conversation.  Poor little Amelia never
missed one of these entertainments and thought them
delicious so long as she might have Georgy sitting by her.
And she would walk from Brompton in any weather,
and embrace Mrs. Veal with tearful gratitude for the
delightful evening she had passed, when, the company
having retired and Georgy gone off with Mr. Rowson, his
attendant, poor Mrs. Osborne put on her cloaks and
her shawls preparatory to walking home.

As for the learning which Georgy imbibed under this
valuable master of a hundred sciences, to judge from
the weekly reports which the lad took home to his
grandfather, his progress was remarkable.  The names of a
score or more of desirable branches of knowledge were
printed in a table, and the pupil's progress in each was
marked by the professor.  In Greek Georgy was
pronounced aristos, in Latin optimus, in French tres bien,
and so forth; and everybody had prizes for everything
at the end of the year.  Even Mr. Swartz, the wooly-
headed young gentleman, and half-brother to the
Honourable Mrs. Mac Mull, and Mr. Bluck, the neglected
young pupil of three-and-twenty from the agricultural
district, and that idle young scapegrace of a Master Todd
before mentioned, received little eighteen-penny books,
with "Athene" engraved on them, and a pompous Latin
inscription from the professor to his young friends.

The family of this Master Todd were hangers-on of
the house of Osborne.  The old gentleman had advanced
Todd from being a clerk to be a junior partner in his
establishment.

Mr. Osborne was the godfather of young Master Todd
(who in subsequent life wrote Mr. Osborne Todd on his
cards and became a man of decided fashion), while Miss
Osborne had accompanied Miss Maria Todd to the font,
and gave her protegee a prayer-book, a collection of
tracts, a volume of very low church poetry, or some
such memento of her goodness every year.  Miss O.  drove
the Todds out in her carriage now and then; when they
were ill, her footman, in large plush smalls and
waistcoat, brought jellies and delicacies from Russell Square to
Coram Street.  Coram Street trembled and looked up to
Russell Square indeed, and Mrs. Todd, who had a pretty
hand at cutting out paper trimmings for haunches of
mutton, and could make flowers, ducks, &c., out of turnips
and carrots in a very creditable manner, would go to "the
Square," as it was called, and assist in the preparations
incident to a great dinner, without even so much as
thinking of sitting down to the banquet.  If any guest failed at
the eleventh hour, Todd was asked to dine.  Mrs. Todd and
Maria came across in the evening, slipped in with a muffled
knock, and were in the drawing-room by the time Miss
Osborne and the ladies under her convoy reached that
apartment--and ready to fire off duets and sing until
the gentlemen came up.  Poor Maria Todd; poor young
lady!  How she had to work and thrum at these duets
and sonatas in the Street, before they appeared in public
in the Square!

Thus it seemed to be decreed by fate that Georgy
was to domineer over everybody with whom he came in
contact, and that friends, relatives, and domestics were
all to bow the knee before the little fellow.  It must
be owned that he accommodated himself very willingly
to this arrangement.  Most people do so.  And Georgy
liked to play the part of master and perhaps had a
natural aptitude for it.

In Russell Square everybody was afraid of Mr. Osborne,
and Mr. Osborne was afraid of Georgy.  The boy's
dashing manners, and offhand rattle about books and
learning, his likeness to his father (dead unreconciled in
Brussels yonder) awed the old gentleman and gave the
young boy the mastery.  The old man would start at
some hereditary feature or tone unconsciously used by
the little lad, and fancy that George's father was again
before him.  He tried by indulgence to the grandson to
make up for harshness to the elder George.  People were
surprised at his gentleness to the boy.  He growled and
swore at Miss Osborne as usual, and would smile when
George came down late for breakfast.

Miss Osborne, George's aunt, was a faded old spinster,
broken down by more than forty years of dulness and
coarse usage.  It was easy for a lad of spirit to master her.
And whenever George wanted anything from her, from the
jam-pots in her cupboards to the cracked and dry old
colours in her paint-box (the old paint-box which she
had had when she was a pupil of Mr. Smee and was
still almost young and blooming), Georgy took possession
of the object of his desire, which obtained, he took no
further notice of his aunt.

For his friends and cronies, he had a pompous old
schoolmaster, who flattered him, and a toady, his senior,
whom he could thrash.  It was dear Mrs. Todd's delight to
leave him with her youngest daughter, Rosa Jemima, a
darling child of eight years old.  The little pair looked so
well together, she would say (but not to the folks in "the
Square," we may be sure) "who knows what might
happen? Don't they make a pretty little couple?" the
fond mother thought.

The broken-spirited, old, maternal grandfather was
likewise subject to the little tyrant.  He could not help
respecting a lad who had such fine clothes and rode with
a groom behind him.  Georgy, on his side, was in the
constant habit of hearing coarse abuse and vulgar satire
levelled at John Sedley by his pitiless old enemy, Mr.
Osborne.  Osborne used to call the other the old pauper,
the old coal-man, the old bankrupt, and by many other
such names of brutal contumely.  How was little George
to respect a man so prostrate? A few months after he
was with his paternal grandfather, Mrs. Sedley died.
There had been little love between her and the child.
He did not care to show much grief.  He came down to
visit his mother in a fine new suit of mourning, and was
very angry that he could not go to a play upon which
he had set his heart.

The illness of that old lady had been the occupation
and perhaps the safeguard of Amelia.  What do men know
about women's martyrdoms? We should go mad had
we to endure the hundredth part of those daily pains
which are meekly borne by many women.  Ceaseless
slavery meeting with no reward; constant gentleness and
kindness met by cruelty as constant; love, labour, patience,
watchfulness, without even so much as the acknowledgement
of a good word; all this, how many of them have
to bear in quiet, and appear abroad with cheerful faces
as if they felt nothing.  Tender slaves that they are, they
must needs be hypocrites and weak.

From her chair Amelia's mother had taken to her bed,
which she had never left, and from which Mrs. Osborne
herself was never absent except when she ran to see
George.  The old lady grudged her even those rare visits;
she, who had been a kind, smiling, good-natured mother
once, in the days of her prosperity, but whom poverty
and infirmities had broken down.  Her illness or estrangement
did not affect Amelia.  They rather enabled her to
support the other calamity under which she was suffering,
and from the thoughts of which she was kept by the
ceaseless calls of the invalid.  Amelia bore her harshness
quite gently; smoothed the uneasy pillow; was always
ready with a soft answer to the watchful, querulous
voice; soothed the sufferer with words of hope, such as
her pious simple heart could best feel and utter, and
closed the eyes that had once looked so tenderly upon
her.

Then all her time and tenderness were devoted to the
consolation and comfort of the bereaved old father, who
was stunned by the blow which had befallen him, and
stood utterly alone in the world.  His wife, his honour,
his fortune, everything he loved best had fallen away
from him.  There was only Amelia to stand by and support
with her gentle arms the tottering, heart-broken old man.
We are not going to write the history:  it would be too
dreary and stupid.  I can see Vanity Fair yawning over it
d'avance.

One day as the young gentlemen were assembled
in the study at the Rev.  Mr. Veal's, and the domestic
chaplain to the Right Honourable the Earl of Bareacres
was spouting away as usual, a smart carriage drove up
to the door decorated with the statue of Athene, and two
gentlemen stepped out.  The young Masters Bangles rushed
to the window with a vague notion that their father
might have arrived from Bombay.  The great hulking
scholar of three-and-twenty, who was crying secretly over a
passage of Eutropius, flattened his neglected nose against
the panes and looked at the drag, as the laquais de place
sprang from the box and let out the persons in the carriage.

"It's a fat one and a thin one," Mr. Bluck said as a
thundering knock came to the door.

Everybody was interested, from the domestic chaplain
himself, who hoped he saw the fathers of some future
pupils, down to Master Georgy, glad of any pretext for
laying his book down.

The boy in the shabby livery with the faded copper
buttons, who always thrust himself into the tight coat
to open the door, came into the study and said, "Two
gentlemen want to see Master Osborne." The professor
had had a trifling altercation in the morning with that
young gentleman, owing to a difference about the
introduction of crackers in school-time; but his face
resumed its habitual expression of bland courtesy as he
said, "Master Osborne, I give you full permission to go
and see your carriage friends--to whom I beg you to
convey the respectful compliments of myself and Mrs.
Veal."

Georgy went into the reception-room and saw two
strangers, whom he looked at with his head up, in his
usual haughty manner.  One was fat, with mustachios,
and the other was lean and long, in a blue frock-coat,
with a brown face and a grizzled head.

"My God, how like he is!" said the long gentleman
with a start.  "Can you guess who we are, George?"

The boy's face flushed up, as it did usually when he
was moved, and his eyes brightened.  "I don't know the
other," he said, "but I should think you must be Major
Dobbin."

Indeed it was our old friend.  His voice trembled
with pleasure as he greeted the boy, and taking both the
other's hands in his own, drew the lad to him.

"Your mother has talked to you about me--has
she?" he said.

"That she has," Georgy answered, "hundreds and
hundreds of times."




CHAPTER LVII


Eothen

It was one of the many causes for personal pride
with which old Osborne chose to recreate himself
that Sedley, his ancient rival, enemy, and benefactor,
was in his last days so utterly defeated and humiliated
as to be forced to accept pecuniary obligations at the
hands of the man who had most injured and insulted
him.  The successful man of the world cursed the old
pauper and relieved him from time to time.  As he
furnished George with money for his mother, he gave
the boy to understand by hints, delivered in his brutal,
coarse way, that George's maternal grandfather was
but a wretched old bankrupt and dependant, and that
John Sedley might thank the man to whom he already
owed ever so much money for the aid which his generosity
now chose to administer.  George carried the pompous
supplies to his mother and the shattered old widower whom
it was now the main business of her life to tend and
comfort.  The little fellow patronized the feeble and
disappointed old man.

It may have shown a want of "proper pride" in
Amelia that she chose to accept these money benefits at
the hands of her father's enemy.  But proper pride and
this poor lady had never had much acquaintance together.
A disposition naturally simple and demanding protection;
a long course of poverty and humility, of daily privations,
and hard words, of kind offices and no returns, had been
her lot ever since womanhood almost, or since her
luckless marriage with George Osborne.  You who see your
betters bearing up under this shame every day, meekly
suffering under the slights of fortune, gentle and unpitied,
poor, and rather despised for their poverty, do you ever
step down from your prosperity and wash the feet of
these poor wearied beggars? The very thought of them is
odious and low.  "There must be classes--there must be
rich and poor," Dives says, smacking his claret (it is
well if he even sends the broken meat out to Lazarus
sitting under the window).  Very true; but think how
mysterious and often unaccountable it is--that lottery
of life which gives to this man the purple and fine linen
and sends to the other rags for garments and dogs for
comforters.

So I must own that, without much repining, on the
contrary with something akin to gratitude, Amelia took the
crumbs that her father-in-law let drop now and then,
and with them fed her own parent.  Directly she understood
it to be her duty, it was this young woman's nature
(ladies, she is but thirty still, and we choose to call her
a young woman even at that age) it was, I say, her
nature to sacrifice herself and to fling all that she had at
the feet of the beloved object.  During what long thankless
nights had she worked out her fingers for little Georgy
whilst at home with her; what buffets, scorns, privations,
poverties had she endured for father and mother!  And
in the midst of all these solitary resignations and unseen
sacrifices, she did not respect herself any more than the
world respected her, but I believe thought in her heart
that she was a poor-spirited, despicable little creature,
whose luck in life was only too good for her merits.  O
you poor women!  O you poor secret martyrs and victims,
whose life is a torture, who are stretched on racks in
your bedrooms, and who lay your heads down on the
block daily at the drawing-room table; every man who
watches your pains, or peers into those dark places where
the torture is administered to you, must pity you--and
--and thank God that he has a beard.  I recollect seeing,
years ago, at the prisons for idiots and madmen at
Bicetre, near Paris, a poor wretch bent down under
the bondage of his imprisonment and his personal
infirmity, to whom one of our party gave a halfpenny worth
of snuff in a cornet or "screw" of paper.  The kindness
was too much for the poor epileptic creature.  He cried
in an anguish of delight and gratitude:  if anybody gave
you and me a thousand a year, or saved our lives, we
could not be so affected.  And so, if you properly tyrannize
over a woman, you will find a h'p'orth of kindness act
upon her and bring tears into her eyes, as though you
were an angel benefiting her.

Some such boons as these were the best which Fortune
allotted to poor little Amelia.  Her life, begun not
unprosperously, had come down to this--to a mean prison
and a long, ignoble bondage.  Little George visited her
captivity sometimes and consoled it with feeble gleams
of encouragement.  Russell Square was the boundary of
her prison:  she might walk thither occasionally, but was
always back to sleep in her cell at night; to perform
cheerless duties; to watch by thankless sick-beds; to
suffer the harassment and tyranny of querulous
disappointed old age.  How many thousands of people are
there, women for the most part, who are doomed to endure
this long slavery?--who are hospital nurses without
wages--sisters of Charity, if you like, without the
romance and the sentiment of sacrifice--who strive, fast,
watch, and suffer, unpitied, and fade away ignobly and
unknown.

The hidden and awful Wisdom which apportions the
destinies of mankind is pleased so to humiliate and cast
down the tender, good, and wise, and to set up the selfish,
the foolish, or the wicked.  Oh, be humble, my brother,
in your prosperity!  Be gentle with those who are less
lucky, if not more deserving.  Think, what right have you
to be scornful, whose virtue is a deficiency of temptation,
whose success may be a chance, whose rank may be
an ancestor's accident, whose prosperity is very likely
a satire.

They buried Amelia's mother in the churchyard at
Brompton, upon just such a rainy, dark day as Amelia
recollected when first she had been there to marry George.
Her little boy sat by her side in pompous new sables.
She remembered the old pew-woman and clerk.  Her
thoughts were away in other times as the parson read.
But that she held George's hand in her own, perhaps she
would have liked to change places with....  Then, as
usual, she felt ashamed of her selfish thoughts and prayed
inwardly to be strengthened to do her duty.

So she determined with all her might and strength to
try and make her old father happy.  She slaved, toiled,
patched, and mended, sang and played backgammon, read
out the newspaper, cooked dishes, for old Sedley, walked
him out sedulously into Kensington Gardens or the Brompton
Lanes, listened to his stories with untiring smiles and
affectionate hypocrisy, or sat musing by his side and
communing with her own thoughts and reminiscences,
as the old man, feeble and querulous, sunned himself on
the garden benches and prattled about his wrongs or his
sorrows.  What sad, unsatisfactory thoughts those of the
widow were!  The children running up and down the
slopes and broad paths in the gardens reminded her of
George, who was taken from her; the first George was
taken from her; her selfish, guilty love, in both instances,
had been rebuked and bitterly chastised.  She strove to
think it was right that she should be so punished.  She
was such a miserable wicked sinner.  She was quite
alone in the world.

I know that the account of this kind of solitary
imprisonment is insufferably tedious, unless there is some
cheerful or humorous incident to enliven it--a tender gaoler,
for instance, or a waggish commandant of the fortress,
or a mouse to come out and play about Latude's beard
and whiskers, or a subterranean passage under the castle,
dug by Trenck with his nails and a toothpick:  the historian
has no such enlivening incident to relate in the narrative
of Amelia's captivity.  Fancy her, if you please, during this
period, very sad, but always ready to smile when spoken
to; in a very mean, poor, not to say vulgar position of
life; singing songs, making puddings, playing cards,
mending stockings, for her old father's benefit.  So, never
mind, whether she be a heroine or no; or you and I, however
old, scolding, and bankrupt--may we have in our last days
a kind soft shoulder on which to lean and a gentle hand
to soothe our gouty old pillows.

Old Sedley grew very fond of his daughter after his
wife's death, and Amelia had her consolation in doing her
duty by the old man.

But we are not going to leave these two people long in
such a low and ungenteel station of life.  Better days, as
far as worldly prosperity went, were in store for both.
Perhaps the ingenious reader has guessed who was the
stout gentleman who called upon Georgy at his school in
company with our old friend Major Dobbin.  It was
another old acquaintance returned to England, and at a time
when his presence was likely to be of great comfort to
his relatives there.

Major Dobbin having easily succeeded in getting leave
from his good-natured commandant to proceed to
Madras, and thence probably to Europe, on urgent private
affairs, never ceased travelling night and day until he
reached his journey's end, and had directed his march
with such celerity that he arrived at Madras in a high
fever.  His servants who accompanied him brought him
to the house of the friend with whom he had resolved to
stay until his departure for Europe in a state of delirium;
and it was thought for many, many days that he would
never travel farther than the burying-ground of the church
of St.  George's, where the troops should fire a salvo over
his grave, and where many a gallant officer lies far away
from his home.

Here, as the poor fellow lay tossing in his fever, the
people who watched him might have heard him raving
about Amelia.  The idea that he should never see her again
depressed him in his lucid hours.  He thought his last day
was come, and he made his solemn preparations for
departure, setting his affairs in this world in order and
leaving the little property of which he was possessed to
those whom he most desired to benefit.  The friend in
whose house he was located witnessed his testament.  He
desired to be buried with a little brown hair-chain which
he wore round his neck and which, if the truth must be
known, he had got from Amelia's maid at Brussels, when
the young widow's hair was cut off, during the fever
which prostrated her after the death of George Osborne
on the plateau at Mount St.  John.

He recovered, rallied, relapsed again, having undergone
such a process of blood-letting and calomel as
showed the strength of his original constitution.  He was
almost a skeleton when they put him on board the
Ramchunder East Indiaman, Captain Bragg, from Calcutta,
touching at Madras, and so weak and prostrate that his
friend who had tended him through his illness prophesied
that the honest Major would never survive the voyage,
and that he would pass some morning, shrouded in
flag and hammock, over the ship's side, and carrying
down to the sea with him the relic that he wore at his
heart.  But whether it was the sea air, or the hope which
sprung up in him afresh, from the day that the ship
spread her canvas and stood out of the roads towards
home, our friend began to amend, and he was quite
well (though as gaunt as a greyhound) before they
reached the Cape.  "Kirk will be disappointed of his
majority this time," he said with a smile; "he will
expect to find himself gazetted by the time the regiment
reaches home." For it must be premised that while the
Major was lying ill at Madras, having made such
prodigious haste to go thither, the gallant --th, which had
passed many years abroad, which after its return from
the West Indies had been baulked of its stay at home by
the Waterloo campaign, and had been ordered from
Flanders to India, had received orders home; and the Major
might have accompanied his comrades, had he chosen to
wait for their arrival at Madras.

Perhaps he was not inclined to put himself in his
exhausted state again under the guardianship of Glorvina.
"I think Miss O'Dowd would have done for me," he said
laughingly to a fellow-passenger, "if we had had her on
board, and when she had sunk me, she would have fallen
upon you, depend upon it, and carried you in as a prize
to Southampton, Jos, my boy."

For indeed it was no other than our stout friend
who was also a passenger on board the Ramchunder.  He
had passed ten years in Bengal.  Constant dinners, tiffins,
pale ale and claret, the prodigious labour of cutcherry,
and the refreshment of brandy-pawnee which he was
forced to take there, had their effect upon Waterloo Sedley.
A voyage to Europe was pronounced necessary for him--
and having served his full time in India and had fine
appointments which had enabled him to lay by a considerable
sum of money, he was free to come home and stay
with a good pension, or to return and resume that rank
in the service to which his seniority and his vast talents
entitled him.

He was rather thinner than when we last saw him,
but had gained in majesty and solemnity of demeanour.
He had resumed the mustachios to which his services at
Waterloo entitled him, and swaggered about on deck in a
magnificent velvet cap with a gold band and a profuse
ornamentation of pins and jewellery about his person.
He took breakfast in his cabin and dressed as solemnly to
appear on the quarter-deck as if he were going to turn out
for Bond Street, or the Course at Calcutta.  He brought a
native servant with him, who was his valet and pipe-
bearer and who wore the Sedley crest in silver on his
turban.  That oriental menial had a wretched life under
the tyranny of Jos Sedley.  Jos was as vain of his person
as a woman, and took as long a time at his toilette as
any fading beauty.  The youngsters among the
passengers, Young Chaffers of the 150th, and poor little
Ricketts, coming home after his third fever, used to draw
out Sedley at the cuddy-table and make him tell
prodigious stories about himself and his exploits against tigers
and Napoleon.  He was great when he visited the
Emperor's tomb at Longwood, when to these gentlemen and
the young officers of the ship, Major Dobbin not being by,
he described the whole battle of Waterloo and all but
announced that Napoleon never would have gone to Saint
Helena at all but for him, Jos Sedley.

After leaving St.  Helena he became very generous,
disposing of a great quantity of ship stores, claret,
preserved meats, and great casks packed with soda-water,
brought out for his private delectation.  There were no
ladies on board; the Major gave the pas of precedency
to the civilian, so that he was the first dignitary at
table, and treated by Captain Bragg and the officers of
the Ramchunder with the respect which his rank
warranted.  He disappeared rather in a panic during a two-
days' gale, in which he had the portholes of his cabin
battened down, and remained in his cot reading the
Washerwoman of Finchley Common, left on board the
Ramchunder by the Right Honourable the Lady Emily
Hornblower, wife of the Rev.  Silas Hornblower, when on
their passage out to the Cape, where the Reverend gentleman
was a missionary; but, for common reading, he had
brought a stock of novels and plays which he lent to the
rest of the ship, and rendered himself agreeable to all by
his kindness and condescension.

Many and many a night as the ship was cutting through
the roaring dark sea, the moon and stars shining
overhead and the bell singing out the watch, Mr. Sedley and
the Major would sit on the quarter-deck of the vessel
talking about home, as the Major smoked his cheroot and
the civilian puffed at the hookah which his servant
prepared for him.

In these conversations it was wonderful with what
perseverance and ingenuity Major Dobbin would manage
to bring the talk round to the subject of Amelia and her
little boy.  Jos, a little testy about his father's misfortunes
and unceremonious applications to him, was soothed
down by the Major, who pointed out the elder's ill
fortunes and old age.  He would not perhaps like to live with
the old couple, whose ways and hours might not agree
with those of a younger man, accustomed to different
society (Jos bowed at this compliment); but, the Major
pointed out, how advantageous it would be for Jos Sedley
to have a house of his own in London, and not a
mere bachelor's establishment as before; how his sister
Amelia would be the very person to preside over it; how
elegant, how gentle she was, and of what refined good
manners.  He recounted stories of the success which Mrs.
George Osborne had had in former days at Brussels, and
in London, where she was much admired by people of
very great fashion; and he then hinted how becoming it
would be for Jos to send Georgy to a good school and
make a man of him, for his mother and her parents
would be sure to spoil him.  In a word, this artful Major
made the civilian promise to take charge of Amelia and
her unprotected child.  He did not know as yet what
events had happened in the little Sedley family, and how
death had removed the mother, and riches had carried
off George from Amelia.  But the fact is that every day
and always, this love-smitten and middle-aged gentleman
was thinking about Mrs. Osborne, and his whole heart
was bent upon doing her good.  He coaxed, wheedled,
cajoled, and complimented Jos Sedley with a perseverance
and cordiality of which he was not aware himself,
very likely; but some men who have unmarried sisters
or daughters even, may remember how uncommonly
agreeable gentlemen are to the male relations when they
are courting the females; and perhaps this rogue of a
Dobbin was urged by a similar hypocrisy.

The truth is, when Major Dobbin came on board the
Ramchumder, very sick, and for the three days she lay
in the Madras Roads, he did not begin to rally, nor did
even the appearance and recognition of his old acquaintance,
Mr. Sedley, on board much cheer him, until after a
conversation which they had one day, as the Major was
laid languidly on the deck.  He said then he thought he
was doomed; he had left a little something to his godson
in his will, and he trusted Mrs. Osborne would remember
him kindly and be happy in the marriage she was
about to make.  "Married? not the least," Jos answered;
"he had heard from her:  she made no mention of the
marriage, and by the way, it was curious, she wrote to
say that Major Dobbin was going to be married, and
hoped that HE would be happy." What were the dates of
Sedley's letters from Europe? The civilian fetched them.
They were two months later than the Major's; and the
ship's surgeon congratulated himself upon the treatment
adopted by him towards his new patient, who had been
consigned to shipboard by the Madras practitioner with
very small hopes indeed; for, from that day, the very
day that he changed the draught, Major Dobbin began
to mend.  And thus it was that deserving officer, Captain
Kirk, was disappointed of his majority.

After they passed St.  Helena, Major Dobbin's gaiety
and strength was such as to astonish all his fellow
passengers.  He larked with the midshipmen, played single-
stick with the mates, ran up the shrouds like a boy, sang
a comic song one night to the amusement of the whole
party assembled over their grog after supper, and
rendered himself so gay, lively, and amiable that even
Captain Bragg, who thought there was nothing in his
passenger, and considered he was a poor-spirited feller at
first, was constrained to own that the Major was a
reserved but well-informed and meritorious officer.  "He
ain't got distangy manners, dammy," Bragg observed to
his first mate; "he wouldn't do at Government House,
Roper, where his Lordship and Lady William was as kind
to me, and shook hands with me before the whole
company, and asking me at dinner to take beer with him,
before the Commander-in-Chief himself; he ain't got
manners, but there's something about him--" And thus
Captain Bragg showed that he possessed discrimination
as a man, as well as ability as a commander.

But a calm taking place when the Ramchunder was
within ten days' sail of England, Dobbin became so
impatient and ill-humoured as to surprise those comrades
who had before admired his vivacity and good temper.
He did not recover until the breeze sprang up again, and
was in a highly excited state when the pilot came on
board.  Good God, how his heart beat as the two friendly
spires of Southampton came in sight.




CHAPTER LVIII


Our Friend the Major

Our Major had rendered himself so popular on board
the Ramchunder that when he and Mr. Sedley descended
into the welcome shore-boat which was to take them
from the ship, the whole crew, men and officers, the
great Captain Bragg himself leading off, gave three cheers
for Major Dobbin, who blushed very much and ducked
his head in token of thanks.  Jos, who very likely thought
the cheers were for himself, took off his gold-laced cap
and waved it majestically to his friends, and they were
pulled to shore and landed with great dignity at the pier,
whence they proceeded to the Royal George Hotel.

Although the sight of that magnificent round of beef,
and the silver tankard suggestive of real British home-
brewed ale and porter, which perennially greet the eyes
of the traveller returning from foreign parts who enters
the coffee-room of the George, are so invigorating and
delightful that a man entering such a comfortable snug
homely English inn might well like to stop some days
there, yet Dobbin began to talk about a post-chaise
instantly, and was no sooner at Southampton than he
wished to be on the road to London.  Jos, however, would
not hear of moving that evening.  Why was he to pass a
night in a post-chaise instead of a great large undulating
downy feather-bed which was there ready to replace
the horrid little narrow crib in which the portly Bengal
gentleman had been confined during the voyage? He
could not think of moving till his baggage was cleared,
or of travelling until he could do so with his chillum.  So
the Major was forced to wait over that night, and
dispatched a letter to his family announcing his arrival,
entreating from Jos a promise to write to his own
friends.  Jos promised, but didn't keep his promise.  The
Captain, the surgeon, and one or two passengers came
and dined with our two gentlemen at the inn, Jos exerting
himself in a sumptuous way in ordering the dinner
and promising to go to town the next day with the Major.
The landlord said it did his eyes good to see Mr. Sedley
take off his first pint of porter.  If I had time and dared
to enter into digressions, I would write a chapter about
that first pint of porter drunk upon English ground.  Ah,
how good it is!  It is worth-while to leave home for a
year, just to enjoy that one draught.

Major Dobbin made his appearance the next morning
very neatly shaved and dressed, according to his wont.
Indeed, it was so early in the morning that nobody was
up in the house except that wonderful Boots of an inn
who never seems to want sleep; and the Major could
hear the snores of the various inmates of the house roaring
through the corridors as he creaked about in those
dim passages.  Then the sleepless Boots went shirking
round from door to door, gathering up at each the
Bluchers, Wellingtons, Oxonians, which stood outside.  Then
Jos's native servant arose and began to get ready his
master's ponderous dressing apparatus and prepare his
hookah; then the maidservants got up, and meeting the
dark man in the passages, shrieked, and mistook him for
the devil.  He and Dobbin stumbled over their pails in
the passages as they were scouring the decks of the
Royal George.  When the first unshorn waiter appeared
and unbarred the door of the inn, the Major thought that
the time for departure was arrived, and ordered a post-
chaise to be fetched instantly, that they might set off.

He then directed his steps to Mr. Sedley's room and
opened the curtains of the great large family bed wherein
Mr. Jos was snoring.  "Come, up!  Sedley," the Major
said, "it's time to be off; the chaise will be at the door in
half an hour."

Jos growled from under the counterpane to know
what the time was; but when he at last extorted from the
blushing Major (who never told fibs, however they might
be to his advantage) what was the real hour of the
morning, he broke out into a volley of bad language, which
we will not repeat here, but by which he gave Dobbin to
understand that he would jeopardy his soul if he got up
at that moment, that the Major might go and be hanged,
that he would not travel with Dobbin, and that it was
most unkind and ungentlemanlike to disturb a man out
of his sleep in that way; on which the discomfited Major
was obliged to retreat, leaving Jos to resume his
interrupted slumbers.

The chaise came up presently, and the Major would
wait no longer.

If he had been an English nobleman travelling on a
pleasure tour, or a newspaper courier bearing dispatches
(government messages are generally carried much more
quietly), he could not have travelled more quickly.  The
post-boys wondered at the fees he flung amongst them.
How happy and green the country looked as the chaise
whirled rapidly from mile-stone to mile-stone, through
neat country towns where landlords came out to
welcome him with smiles and bows; by pretty roadside inns,
where the signs hung on the elms, and horses and
waggoners were drinking under the chequered shadow of the
trees; by old halls and parks; rustic hamlets clustered
round ancient grey churches--and through the charming
friendly English landscape.  Is there any in the world
like it? To a traveller returning home it looks so kind--
it seems to shake hands with you as you pass through it.
Well, Major Dobbin passed through all this from
Southampton to London, and without noting much beyond the
milestones along the road.  You see he was so eager to
see his parents at Camberwell.

He grudged the time lost between Piccadilly and his
old haunt at the Slaughters', whither he drove faithfully.
Long years had passed since he saw it last, since he and
George, as young men, had enjoyed many a feast, and
held many a revel there.  He had now passed into the
stage of old-fellow-hood.  His hair was grizzled, and many
a passion and feeling of his youth had grown grey in that
interval.  There, however, stood the old waiter at the
door, in the same greasy black suit, with the same
double chin and flaccid face, with the same huge bunch of
seals at his fob, rattling his money in his pockets as
before, and receiving the Major as if he had gone away
only a week ago.  "Put the Major's things in twenty-three,
that's his room," John said, exhibiting not the least
surprise.  "Roast fowl for your dinner, I suppose.  You ain't
got married? They said you was married--the Scotch
surgeon of yours was here.  No, it was Captain Humby of
the thirty-third, as was quartered with the --th in Injee.
Like any warm water? ~What do you come in a chay for--
ain't the coach good enough?" And with this, the faithful
waiter, who knew and remembered every officer who
used the house, and with whom ten years were but as
yesterday, led the way up to Dobbin's old room, where
stood the great moreen bed, and the shabby carpet, a
thought more dingy, and all the old black furniture
covered with faded chintz, just as the Major recollected
them in his youth.

He remembered George pacing up and down the room,
and biting his nails, and swearing that the Governor must
come round, and that if he didn't, he didn't care a straw,
on the day before he was married.  He could fancy him
walking in, banging the door of Dobbin's room, and his
own hard by--

"You ain't got young," John said, calmly surveying his
friend of former days.

Dobbin laughed.  "Ten years and a fever don't make a
man young, John," he said.  "It is you that are always
young--no, you are always old."

"What became of Captain Osborne's widow?" John
said.  "Fine young fellow that.  Lord, how he used to
spend his money.  He never came back after that day he
was marched from here.  He owes me three pound at this
minute.  Look here, I have it in my book.  'April 10,
1815, Captain Osborne:  '3pounds.' I wonder whether his
father would pay me," and so saying, John of the Slaughters'
pulled out the very morocco pocket-book in which
he had noted his loan to the Captain, upon a greasy
faded page still extant, with many other scrawled
memoranda regarding the bygone frequenters of the house.

Having inducted his customer into the room, John
retired with perfect calmness; and Major Dobbin, not
without a blush and a grin at his own absurdity, chose out of
his kit the very smartest and most becoming civil
costume he possessed, and laughed at his own tanned face
and grey hair, as he surveyed them in the dreary little
toilet-glass on the dressing-table.

"I'm glad old John didn't forget me," he thought.
"She'll know me, too, I hope." And he sallied out of the
inn, bending his steps once more in the direction of
Brompton.

Every minute incident of his last meeting with Amelia
was present to the constant man's mind as he walked
towards her house.  The arch and the Achilles statue were
up since he had last been in Piccadilly; a hundred
changes had occurred which his eye and mind vaguely
noted.  He began to tremble as he walked up the lane
from Brompton, that well-remembered lane leading to
the street where she lived.  Was she going to be married
or not? If he were to meet her with the little boy--Good
God, what should he do? He saw a woman coming to him
with a child of five years old--was that she? He began
to shake at the mere possibility.  When he came up to
the row of houses, at last, where she lived, and to the
gate, he caught hold of it and paused.  He might have
heard the thumping of his own heart.  "May God Almighty
bless her, whatever has happened," he thought to
himself.  "Psha!  she may be gone from here," he said
and went in through the gate.

The window of the parlour which she used to occupy
was open, and there were no inmates in the room.  The
Major thought he recognized the piano, though, with the
picture over it, as it used to be in former days, and his
perturbations were renewed.  Mr. Clapp's brass plate was
still on the door, at the knocker of which Dobbin
performed a summons.

A buxom-looking lass of sixteen, with bright eyes and
purple cheeks, came to answer the knock and looked
hard at the Major as he leant back against the little
porch.

He was as pale as a ghost and could hardly falter out
the words--"Does Mrs. Osborne live here?"

She looked him hard in the face for a moment--and
then turning white too--said, "Lord bless me--it's
Major Dobbin." She held out both her hands shaking--
"Don't you remember me?" she said.  "I used to call you
Major Sugarplums." On which, and I believe it was for
the first time that he ever so conducted himself in his
life, the Major took the girl in his arms and kissed her.
She began to laugh and cry hysterically, and calling out
"Ma, Pa!" with all her voice, brought up those worthy
people, who had already been surveying the Major from
the casement of the ornamental kitchen, and were
astonished to find their daughter in the little passage in
the embrace of a great tall man in a blue frock-coat and
white duck trousers.

"I'm an old friend," he said--not without blushing
though.  "Don't you remember me, Mrs. Clapp, and those
good cakes you used to make for tea? Don't you recollect
me, Clapp? I'm George's godfather, and just come
back from India." A great shaking of hands ensued--
Mrs. Clapp was greatly affected and delighted; she called
upon heaven to interpose a vast many times in that
passage.

The landlord and landlady of the house led the worthy
Major into the Sedleys' room (whereof he remembered
every single article of furniture, from the old brass
ornamented piano, once a natty little instrument, Stothard
maker, to the screens and the alabaster miniature tombstone,
in the midst of which ticked Mr. Sedley's gold
watch), and there, as he sat down in the lodger's vacant
arm-chair, the father, the mother, and the daughter,
with a thousand ejaculatory breaks in the narrative,
informed Major Dobbin of what we know already, but of
particulars in Amelia's history of which he was not aware
--namely of Mrs. Sedley's death, of George's reconcilement
with his grandfather Osborne, of the way in which
the widow took on at leaving him, and of other particulars
of her life.  Twice or thrice he was going to ask
about the marriage question, but his heart failed him.
He did not care to lay it bare to these people.  Finally,
he was informed that Mrs. O.  was gone to walk with her
pa in Kensington Gardens, whither she always went with
the old gentleman (who was very weak and peevish now,
and led her a sad life, though she behaved to him like an
angel, to be sure), of a fine afternoon, after dinner.

"I'm very much pressed for time," the Major said,
"and have business to-night of importance.  I should like
to see Mrs. Osborne tho'.  Suppose Miss Polly would
come with me and show me the way?"

Miss Polly was charmed and astonished at this
proposal.  She knew the way.  She would show Major
Dobbin.  She had often been with Mr. Sedley when Mrs. O.
was gone--was gone Russell Square way--and knew the
bench where he liked to sit.  She bounced away to her
apartment and appeared presently in her best bonnet
and her mamma's yellow shawl and large pebble brooch,
of which she assumed the loan in order to make herself
a worthy companion for the Major.

That officer, then, in his blue frock-coat and buckskin
gloves, gave the young lady his arm, and they walked
away very gaily.  He was glad to have a friend at hand
for the scene which he dreaded somehow.  He asked a
thousand more questions from his companion about
Amelia:  his kind heart grieved to think that she should
have had to part with her son.  How did she bear it? Did
she see him often? Was Mr. Sedley pretty comfortable
now in a w