other mortuary properties, clambered up on | beyond the palings into the village, descendthe roof of the hearse, and rode off to South- ing upon the cottages, with Lady Southampton. Their faces relapsed into a natu- down's medicine and tracts for the sick peoral expression as the horses, clearing the ple there. Lady Southdown drove out in a lodge-gates, got into a brisker trot on the pony-chaise, when Rebecca would take her open road; and squads of them might have place by the dowager's side, and listen to been seen, speckling with black the public- her solemn talk with the utmost interest. house entrances, with pewter-pots flashing She sang Handel and Haydn to the family in the sunshine. Sir Pitt's invalid-chair of evenings, and engaged in a large piece of was wheeled away into a tool-house in the worsted work, as if she had been born to the garden: the old pointer used to howl some-business, and as if this kind of life was to times at first, but these were the only accents of grief which were heard in the Hall of which Sir Pitt Crawley, baronet, had been master for some three-score years. As the birds were pretty plentiful, and partridge-shooting is as it were the duty of an English gentleman of statesman-like propensities, Sir Pitt Crawley, the first shock of grief over, went out a little and partook of that diversion in a white hat with a crape round it. The sight of those fields of stubble and turnips, now his own, give him many secret joys. Sometimes, and with an exquisite humility, he took no gun, but went out with a peaceful bamboo cane; Rawdon, his big brother, and the keepers blazing away at his side. Pitt's money and acres had a great effect upon his brother. The penniless colonel became quite obsequious and respectful to the head of his house, and despised the milk-sop Pitt no longer. Rawdon listened with sympathy to his senior's prospects of planting and draining: gave his advice about the stables and cattle, rode over to Mudbury to look at a mare which he thought would carry Lady Jane, and offered to break her. The rebellious dragoon was quite humbled and subdued, and became a most creditable younger brother. He had constant bulletins from Miss Briggs in London respecting little Rawdon, who was left behind there who sent messages of his own. "I am very well," he wrote. "I hope you are very well. I hope mamma is very well. The pony is very well. Grey takes me to ride in the Park. I can canter. I met the little boy who rode before. He cried when he cantered. I do not cry." Rawdon read these letters to his brother, and Lady Jane, who was delighted with them. The baronet promised to take charge of the lad at school; and his kind-hearted wife gave Rebecca a bank-note, begging her to buy a present with it for her little nephew. One day followed another, and the ladies of the house passed their life in those calm pursuits and amusements which satisfy country ladies. Bells rang to meals, and to prayers. The young ladies took exercise on the piano-forte every morning after breakfast, Rebecca giving them the benefit of her instruction. Then they put on thick shoes and walked in the park and shrubberies, or continue with her until she should sink to the grave in a polite old age, leaving regrets and a great quantity of Consols behind her— as if there were not cares and duns, schemes, shifts, and poverty, waiting outside the park gates, to pounce upon her when she issued into the world again. "It isn't difficult to be a country gentleman's wife," Rebecca thought. "I think I could be a good woman if I had five thousand a year. I could dawdle about in the nursery, and count the apricots on the wall. I could water plants in a green-house, and pick off dead leaves from the geraniums. I could ask old women about their rheumatisms, and order half-a-crown's worth of soup for the poor. I shouldn't miss it much, out of five thousand a year. I could even drive out ten miles to dine at a neighbor's, and dress in the fashions of the year before last. I could go to church and keep awake in the great family pew or go to sleep behind the curtains, and with my vail down, if I only had practice. I could pay every body, if I had but the money. This is what the conjurors here pride themselves upon doing. They look down with pity upon us miserable sinners who have none. They think themselves generous if they give our children a five-pound note, and us contemptible if we are without one." And who knows but Rebecca was right in her speculationsand that it was only a question of money and fortune which made the difference between her and an honest woman? If you take temptations into account, who is to say that he is better than his neighbor? A comfortable career of prosperity, if it does not make people honest, at least keeps them so. An alderman coming from a turtle feast will not step out of his carriage to steal a leg of mutton; but put him to starve, and see if he will not purloin a loaf. Becky consoled herself by so balancing the chances and equalizing the distribution of good and evil in the world. The old haunts, the old fields and woods, the copses, ponds and gardens, the rooms of the old house where she had spent a couple of years, seven years ago, were all carefully revisited by her. She had been young there,, or comparatively so, for she forgot the time when she ever was young-but she remembered her thoughts and feelings seven years back, and contrasted them with those which "How happy you will be to see your darling little boy again," Lady Crawley said, taking leave of her kinswoman. "O, so happy!" said Rebecca, throwing up the green eyes. She was immensely happy to be free of the place, and yet loth to go. Queen's Crawley was abominably stupid; and yet the air there was somehow purer than that which she had been accustomed to breathe. Every body had been dull, but had been kind in their way. “It is all the influence of a long course of Three per Cents.," Becky said to herself, and was right, very likely. she had at present, now that she had seen the world, and lived with great people, and raised herself far beyond her original humble station. "I have passed beyond it because I have brains," Becky thought, "and almost all the rest of the world are fools. I could not go back, and consort with those people now, whom I used to meet in my father's studio. Lords come up to my door with stars and garters, instead of poor artists with screws of tobacco in their pockets. I have a gentleman for my husband, and an earl's daughter for my sister in the very house where I was little better than a servant a few years ago But am I much better to do now in the However, the London lamps flashed joyworld than I was when I was the poor fully as the stage rolled into Piccadilly, and painter's daughter, and wheedled the grocer Briggs had made a beautiful fire in Curzonround the corner for sugar and tea? Sup-street, and little Rawdon was up to welcome pose I had married Francis, who was so back his papa and mamma. fond of me-I couldn't have been much poorer than I am now. Heigho! I wish I could exchange my position in society, and all my relations, for a snug sum in the Three per cent. Consols;" for so it was that Becky felt the vanity of human affairs, and it was in those securities that she would have liked to cast anchor. It may, perhaps, have struck her that to have been honest and humble, to have done her duty, and to have marched straightforward on her way, would have brought her as near happiness as that path by which she was striving to attain it. But just as the children at Queen's Crawley went round the room where the body of their father lay -if ever Becky had these thoughts, she was accustomed to walk round them, and not look in. She eluded them, and despised them or at least she was committed to the other path, from which retreat was now impossible. And for my part I believe that remorse is the least active of all a man's moral senses-the very easiest to be deadened when wakened; and in some never wakened at all. We grieve at being found out, and at the idea of shame or punishment; but the mere sense of wrong makes very few people unhappy in Vanity Fair. So Rebecca, during her stay at Queen's Crawley, made as many friends of the Mammon of Unrighteousness as she could possibly bring under control. Lady Jane and her husband bade her farewell, with the warmest demonstrations of good will. They looked forward with pleasure to the time when the family-house in Gaunt-street being repaired and beautified, they were to meet again in London. Lady Southdown made her up a packet of medicine, and sent a letter by her to the Rev. Lawrence Grills, exhorting that gentleman to save the brand who "honored" the letter from the burning., Pitt accompanied them with four horses in the carriage to Mudbury, having sent on their baggage in a cart previously, accompanied with loads of game. CHAPTER XLII. WHICH TREATS OF THE OSBORNE FAMILY. CONSIDERABLE time has elapsed since we have seen our respectable friend, old Mr. Osborne of Russell-square. He has not been the happiest of mortals since last we met him. Events have occurred which have not improved his temper, and in more instances than one he has not been allowed to have his own way. To be thwarted in his reasonable desire was always very in jurious to the old gentleman; and resistance became doubly exasperating when gout, age, loneliness, and the force of many disappointments combined to weigh him down. His stiff black hair began to grow quite white soon after his son's death; his face grew redder; his hands trembled more and more as he poured out his glass of port wine. He led his clerks a dire life in the city: his family at home were not much happier. I doubt if Rebecca, whom we have seen piously praying for Consols, would have exchanged her poverty and the daredevil excitement and chances of her life, for Osborne's money and the humdrum gloom which enveloped him. He had proposed for Miss Swartz, but had been rejected scornfully by the partisans of that lady, who married her to a young sprig of Scotch nobility. He was a man to have married a woman out of low life, and bullied her dreadfully afterward: but no person presented herself suitable to his taste; and instead, he tyrannized over his unmarried daughter at home. She had a fine carriage and fine horses, and sate at the head of a table loaded with the grandest plate. had a check-book, a prize footman to follow her when she walked, unlimited credit, and bows and compliments from all the tradesmen, and all the appurtenances of an heiress; but she spent a woful time. The little char She ity-girls at the Foundling, the sweeperess at square, where the business took place. The the crossing, the poorest under-kitchen maid"nobs of the West End" were invited, in the servants'-hall, was happy compared and many of them signed the book. Mr. to that unfortunate and now middle-aged young lady. Mango and Lady Mary Mango were there, with the dear young Gwendoline and Guinever Mango as bridesmaids; Colonel Bludyer of the Dragoon Guards (eldest son of the house of Bludyer Brothers, Mincinglane), another cousin of the bridegroom, and the Honorable Mrs. Bludyer; the Honorable George Boulter, Lord Levant's son, and his lady, Miss Mango that was; Lord Viscount Castletoddy; Honorable James McMull and Mrs. McMull (formerly Miss Swartz), and a host of fashionables, who have all married into Lombard-street, and done a great deal to ennoble Cornhill. Frederic Bullock, Esq., of the house of Bullock, Hulker, and Bullock, had married Maria Osborne, not without a great deal of difficulty and grumbling on Mr. Bullock's part. George being dead, and cut out of his father's will, Frederic insisted that the half of the old gentleman's property should be settled upon his Maria, and indeed, for a long time, refused "to come to the scratch" (it was Mr. Frederic's own expression) on any other terms. Osborne said Fred. had agreed to take his daughter with twenty thousand, and he should bind himself to no The young couple had a house near more. "Fred. might take it, and welcome, Berkeley-square, and a small villa at Roeor leave it, and go and be hanged." Fred., hampton, among the banking colony there. whose hopes had been raised when George Fred. was considered to have made rather a had been disinherited, thought himself in- mésalliance by the ladies of his family, famously swindled by the old merchant, whose grandfather had been in a Charity and for some time made as if he would School, and who were allied through the break off the match altogether. Osborne husbands with some of the best blood in withdrew his account from Bullock and England. And Maria was bound, by supeHulker's, went on Change with a horse- rior pride and great care in the composition whip, which he swore he would lay across of her visiting-book, to make up for the dethe back of a certain scoundrel that should be nameless, and demeaned himself in his usual violent manner. Jane Osborne condoled with her sister Maria during this family feud. "I always told you, Maria, that it was your money he loved, and not you," she said soothingly. "He selected me and my money at any rate he didn't choose you and yours," replied Maria, tossing up her head. 66 fects of birth; and felt it her duty to see her father and sister as little as possible. That she should utterly break with the old man, who had still so many scores of thousand pounds to give away, is absurd to suppose. Fred. Bullock would never allow her to do that. But she was still young and incapable of hiding her feelings: and by inviting her papa and sister to her thirdrate parties, and behaving very coldly to them when they came, and by avoiding Russell-square, and indiscreetly begging her father to quit that odious vulgar place; she did more harm than all Frederic's diplomacy could repair, and periled her chance of her inheritance like a giddy, heedless creature as she was. The rupture was, however, only temporary. Fred.'s father and senior partners counseled him to take Maria, even with the twenty thousand settled, half down, and half at the death of Mr. Osborne, with the chances of the further division of the property. So he knuckled down," again to use his own phrase; and sent old Hulker "So Russell-square is not good enough with peaceable overtures to Osborne. It for Mrs. Maria, hay?" said the old gentlewas his father, he said, who would not hear man, ttling up the carriage-windows, as he of the match, and had made the difficulties; and his daughter drove away one night from he was most anxious to keep the engage- Mrs. Frederic Bullock's, after dinner. "So ment. The excuse was sulkily accepted by she invites her father and sister to a second Mr. Osborne. Hulker and Bullock were a day's dinner (if those sides, or ontrys, as she high family of the city aristocracy, and con- calls 'em, wern't served yesterday, I'm nected with the "nobs" at the West End. d-d), and to meet city folks and littery men, It was something for the old man to be able and keeps the earls, and the ladies, and the to say, " My son, sir, of the house of Hulker, honorables to herself. Honorables? Damn Bullock, & Co., sir; my daughter's cousin, honorables. I am a plain British merchant, Lady Mary Mango, sir, daughter of the I am: and could buy the beggarly hounds Right Hon. the Earl of Castlemouldy." In over and over. Lords, indeed!-why, at his imagination he saw his house peopled by one of her swarreys I saw one of 'em speak the "nobs." So he forgave young Bullock, to a dam fiddler-a fellar I despise. And and consented that the marriage should take they won't come to Russell-square, won't place. they? Why, I'll lay my life I've got a betIt was a grand affair-the bridegroom's ter glass of wine, and pay a better figure for relatives giving the breakfast, their habita- it, and can show a handsomer service of siltions being near St. George's Hanover-ver, and can lay a better dinner on my ma hogany than ever they see on theirs-the grand piano, and ventured to play a few cringing, sneaking, stuck-up fools. Drive on notes on it, it sounded with a mournful sadquick, James; I want to get back to Russell-ness, startling the dismal echoes of the square-ha, ha!" and he sank back into the corner with a furious laugh. With such reflections on his own superior merits, it was the custom of the old gentleman not unfrequently to console himself. Jane Osborne could not but concur in these opinions respecting her sister's conduct; and when Mrs. Frederic's first-born, Frederic Augustus Howard Stanley Devereux Bullock, was born, old Osborne, who was invited to the christening and to be godfather, contented himself with sending the child a gold cup, with twenty guineas inside it for the nurse. "That's more than any of your lords will give, I'll warrant," he said, and refused to attend at the ceremony. The splendor of the gift, however, caused great satisfaction to the house of Bullock. Maria thought that her father was very much pleased with her, and Frederic argued the best for his little son and heir. One can fancy the pangs with which Miss Osborne in her solitude in Russell-square read the "Morning Post," where her sister's name occurred every now and then, in the articles headed 66 Fashionable Réunions," and where she had an opportunity of reading a description of Mrs. F. Bullock's costume, when presented at the drawing-room by Lady Frederica Bullock. Jane's own life, as we have said, admitted of no such grandeur. It was an awful existence. She had to get up of black winter's mornings to make breakfast for her scowling old father, who would have turned the whole house out of doors if his tea had not been ready at halfpast eight. She remained silent opposite to him, listening to the urn hissing, and sitting in tremor while the parent read his paper, and consumed his accustomed portion of muffins and tea. At half-past nine he rose and went to the city, and she was almost free till dinner-time, to make visitations in the kitchen and to scold the servants: to drive abroad and descend upon the tradesmen, who were prodigiously respectful to leave her cards and her papa's at the great glum, respectable houses of their city friends; or to sit alone in the large drawing-room, expecting visitors; and working at a huge piece of worsted by the fire, on the sofa, hard by the great Iphigenia clock, which ticked and tolled with mournful loudness in the dreary room. The great glass over the mantelpiece, faced by the other great console glass at the opposite end of the room, increased and multiplied between them the brown Holland bag in which the chandelier hung; until you saw these brown Holland bags fading away in endless perspectives, and this apartment of Miss Osborne's seemed the center of a system of drawing-rooms. When she removed the cordovan leather from the house. George's picture was gone, and laid up-stairs in a lumber-room in the garret; and though there was a consciousness of him, and father and daughter often instinctively knew that they were thinking of him, no mention was ever made of the brave and once darling son. At five o'clock Mr. Osborne came back to his dinner, which he and his daughter took in silence (seldom broken, except when he swore and was savage, if the cooking was not to his liking), or which they shared twice in a month with a party of dismal friends of Osborne's rank and age. Old Dr. Gulp and his lady, from Bloomsbury-square: old Mr. Frowser, the attorney, from Bedford-row, a very great man, and from his business, hand-in-glove with the "nobs at the West End :" old Colonel Livermore of the Bombay Army, and Mrs. Livermore, from Upper Bedford-place: old Serjeant Toffy, and Mrs. Toffy; and sometimes old Sir Thomas Coffin and Lady Coffin, from Bedford-square. Sir Thomas was celebrated as a hanging judge, and the particular tawny port was produced when he dined with Mr. Osborne. These people and their like gave the pompous Russell-square merchant pompous dinners back again. They had solemn rubburs of whist, when they went up stairs after drinking, and their carriages were called at half-past ten. Many rich people, whom we poor devils are in the habit of envying, lead contentedly an existence like that above described. Jane Osborne scarcely ever met a man under sixty, and almost the only bachelor who appeared in their society was Mr. Smirk, the celebrated lady's doctor. I can't say that nothing had occurred to disturb the monotony of this awful existence: the fact is, there had been a secret in poor Jane's life which had made her father more savage and morose than even nature, pride, and over-feeding had made him. This secret was connected with Miss Wirt, who had a cousin, an artist, Mr. Smee, very celebrated since as a portrait painter and R.A., but who once was glad enough to give drawing-lessons to ladies of fashion. Mr. Smee has forgotten where Russell-square is now, but he was glad enough to visit it in the year 1818, when Miss Osborne had instruction from him. Smee (formerly a pupil of Sharpe, of Frith-street, a dissolute, irregular, and unsuccessful man, but a man with great knowledge of his art), being the cousin of Miss Wirt, we say, and introduced by her to Miss Osborne, whose hand and heart were still free after various incomplete love affairs, felt a great attachment for this lady, and, it is believed, inspired one in her bosom. Miss Wirt was the confidante of this intrigue. I know not whether she used to leave the room where the master and his pupil were painting, in order to give them an opportunity for exchanging those vows and sentiments which can not be uttered advantageously in the presence of a third party: I know not whether she hoped that, should her cousin succeed in carrying off the rich merchant's daughter, he would give Miss Wirt a portion of the wealth, which she had enabled him to win-all that is certain is, that Mr. Osborne got some hint of the transaction, came back to the city abruptly, and entered the drawing room with his bamboo cane; found the painter, the pupil, and the companion all looking exceedingly pale there; turned the former out of doors with menaces that he would break every bone in his skin, and half an hour afterward dismissed Miss Wirt likewise, kicking her trunks down stairs, trampling on her band-boxes, and shaking his fist at her hackney coach, as it bore her away. Jane Osborne kept her bed-room for many days. She was not allowed to have a companion afterward. Her father swore to her that she should not have a shilling of his money if she made any match without his concurrence; and as he wanted a woman to keep his house, he did not choose that she should marry so that she was obliged to give up all projects with which Cupid had any share. During her papa's life, then, she resigned herself to the manner of existence here described, and was content to be an old maid. Her sister, meanwhile, was having children with finer names every year -and the intercourse between the two grew fainter continually. "Jane and I do not move in the same sphere of life," Mrs. Bullock said. "I regard her as a sister, of course"-which means-what does it mean when a lady says that she regards Jane as a sister? affairs; how she was living with her father and mother: how poor they were: how they wondered what men, and such men as their brother and dear Captain Osborne, could find in such an insignificant little chit: how she was still, as heretofore, a nambypamby, milk-and-water, affected creaturebut how the boy was really the noblest little boy ever seen-for the hearts of all women warm toward young children, and the sourest spinster is kind to them. One day, after great entreaties on the part of the Misses Dobbin, Amelia allowed little George to go and pass a day with them at Denmark Hill-a part of which day she spent herself in writing to the major in India. She congratulated him on the happy news which his sisters had just conveyed to her. She prayed for his prosperity and that of the bride he had chosen. She thanked him for a thousand thousand kind offices and proofs of steadfast friendship to her in her affliction. She told him the last news about little Georgy, and how he was gone to spend that very day with his sisters in the country. She underlined the letter a great deal, and she signed herself affectionately his friend, Amelia Osborne. She forgot to send any message of kindness to Lady O'Dowd, as her wont was-and did not mention Glorvina by name, and only in italics, as the major's bride, for whom she begged blessings. But the news of the marriage removed the reserve which she had kept up toward him. She was glad to be able to own and feel how warmly and gratefully she regarded him--and as for the idea of being jealous of Glorvina (Glorvina, indeed!), Amelia would have scouted it, if an angel from Heaven had hinted it to her. That night, when Georgy came back in the pony-carriage in which he rejoiced, and in which he was driven by Sir William Dobbin's old coachman, he had round his neck a fine gold chain and watch. He said an old It has been described how the Misses lady, not pretty, had given it him, who cried Dobbin lived with their father at a fine villa and kissed him a great deal. But he didn't at Denmark Hill, where there were beauti-like her. He liked grapes very much. And ful graperies and peach-trees which delight-he only liked his mamma. Amelia shrunk ed little Georgy Osborne. The Misses Dob- and started: the timid soul felt a presentibin, who drove often to Brompton to see our ment of terror, when she heard that the dear Amelia, came sometimes to Russell- relations of the child's father had seen him. square too, to pay a visit to their old acquaintance, Miss Osborne. I believe it was in consequence of the commands of their brother, the major, in India (for whom their papa had a prodigious respect), that they paid attention to Mrs. George; for the major, the godfather and guardian of Amelia's little boy, still hoped that the child's grandfather might be induced to relent toward him, and acknowledge him for the sake of his son. The Misses Dobbin kept Miss Osborne acquainted with the state of Amelia's Miss Osborne came back to give her father his dinner. He had made a good speculation in the city, and was rather in a good humor that day, and chanced to remark the agitation under which she labored. "What's the matter, Miss Osborne ?" he deigned to say. The woman burst into tears. "O, sir," she said, "I've seen little little George. He is as beautiful as an angel—and so like him!" The old man opposite to her did not say a word, but flushed up, and began to tremble in every limb. |