lingwood never saw a vacant place in his estate but he took an acorn out of his pocket and popped it in; so deal with your compliments through life. An acorn costs nothing; but it may sprout into a prodigious bit of timber. In a word, during Rawdon Crawley's prosperity, he was only obeyed with sulky acquiescence; when his disgrace came, there was nobody to help or pity him. Whereas, when Mrs. Bute took the command at Miss Crawley's house, the garrison there were charmed to act under such a leader, expecting all sorts of promotion from her promises, her generosity, and her kind words. That he would consider himself beaten, after one defeat, and make no attempt to regain the position he had lost, Mrs. Bute Crawley never allowed herself to suppose. She knew Rebecca to be too clever and spirited, and desperate a woman to submit without a struggle; and felt that she must prepare for that combat, and be incessantly watchful against assault, or mine, or surprise. In the first place, though she held the town, was she sure of the principal inhabitant? Would Miss Crawley herself hold out; and had she not a secret longing to welcome back the ousted adversary? The old lady liked Rawdon, and Rebecca, who amused her. Mrs. Bute could not disguise from herself the fact that none of her party could so contribute to the pleasures of the town-bred lady. "My girls' singing, after that little odious governess's, I know is unbearable," the candid rector's wife owned to herself. "She always used to go to sleep when Martha and Louisa played their duets. Jim's stiff college manners and poor dear Bute's talk about his dogs and horses always annoyed her. If I took her to the Rectory, she would grow angry with us all, and fly, I know she would; and might fall into that horrid Rawdon's clutches again, and be the victim of that little viper of a Sharp. Meanwhile, it is clear to me that she is exceedingly unwell, and can not move for some weeks, at any rate; during which we must think of some plan to protect her from the arts of those unprincipled people." uged her patient with draughts every two hours. When any body entered the room, she uttered a shshshsh so sibilant and ominous, that it frightened the poor old lady in her bed, from which she could not look without seeing Mrs. Bute's beady eyes eagerly fixed on her, as the latter sat steadfast in the arm-chair by the bed-side. They seemed to lighten in the dark (for she kept the curtains closed) as she moved about the room on velvet paws like a cat. There Miss Crawley lay for days-ever so many days— Mrs. Bute reading books of devotion to her; for nights, long nights, during which she had to hear the watchman sing, the nightlight sputter; visited at midnight, the last thing, by the stealthy apothecary; and then left to look at Mrs. Bute's twinkling eyes, or the flicks of yellow that the rushlight threw on the dreary darkened ceiling. Hygeia herself would have fallen sick under such a regimen; and how much more this poor old nervous victim? It has been said that when she was in health and good spirits, this venerable inhabitant of Vanity Fair had as free notions about religion and morals as Monsieur de Voltaire himself could desire; but when illness overtook her, it was aggravated by the most dreadful terrors of death, and an utter cowardice took possession of the prostrate old sinner. Sick-bed homilies and pious reflections are, to be sure, out of place in mere storybooks, and we are not going (after the fashion of some novelists of the present day) to cajole the public into a sermon, when it is only a comedy that the reader pays his money to witness. But, without preaching, the truth may surely be borne in mind, that the bustle, and triumph and laughter, and gayety which Vanity Fair exhibits in public, do not always pursue the performer into private life, and that the most dreary depression of spirits and dismal repentences sometimes overcome him. Recollection of the best ordained banquets will scarcely cheer sick epicures. Reminiscences of the most becoming dresses and brilliant ball triumphs will go very little way to console faded beauties. Perhaps statesmen, at a particular period of existence, are not much gratiIn the very best of moments, if any body fied at thinking over the most triumphant told Miss Crawley that she was, or looked divisions; and the success or the pleasure ill, the trembling old lady sent off for her of yesterday become of very small account doctor; and I dare say she was very unwell when a certain (albeit uncertain) morrow is after the sudden family event, which might in view, about which all of us must some day serve to shake stronger nerves than hers. or other be speculating. O brother wearers At least, Mrs. Bute thought it was her of motley! Are there not moments when duty to inform the physician, and the apoth- one grows sick of grinning and tumbling, and ecary, and the dame-de-compagnie, and the the jingling of cap and bells? This, dear domestics, that Miss Crawley was in a most friends and companions, is my amiable obcritical state, and that they were to act ac- ject-to walk with you through the Fair, to cordingly. She had the street laid knee-examine the shops and the shows there; deep with straw; and the knocker put by and that we should all come home after the with Mr. Bowls's plate. She insisted that flare, and the noise, and the gayety, and be the doctor should call twice a day; and del-perfectly miserable in private. If that poor man of mine had a head on Rebecca, too, being now a relative, came his shoulders," Mrs. Bute Crawley thought in for the fullest share of Mrs. Bute's kind to herself, "how useful he might be, under inquiries. This indefatigable pursuer of present circumstances, to this unhappy old truth (having given strict orders that the lady! He might make her repent of her door was to be denied to all emissaries or letshocking free-thinking ways; he might urge ters from Rawdon), took Miss Crawley's her to do her duty, and cast off that odious carriage, and drove to her old friend Miss reprobate who has disgraced himself and his Pinkerton, at Minerva House, Chiswick family; and he might induce her to do jus- Mall, to whom she announced the dreadful tice to my dear girls and the two boys, who intelligence of Captain Rawdon's seduction require and deserve, I am sure, every as- by Miss Sharp, and from whom she got all sistance which their relatives can give them." the particulars she could regarding the exAnd, as the hatred of vice is always a governess's birth and early history. The progress toward virtue, Mrs. Bute Crawley friend of the Lexicographer had plenty of endeavored to instil into her sister-in-law a information to give. Miss Jemima was proper abhorrence for all Rawdon Crawley's made to fetch the drawing-master's receipts manifold sins; of which his uncle's wife and letters. This one was from a spungingbrought forward such a catalogue as indeed house: that entreated an advance: another would have served to condemn a whole reg- was full of gratitude for Rebecca's reception iment of young officers. If a man has com- by the ladies of Chiswick: and the last docmitted wrong in life, I don't know any mo- ument from the unlucky artist's pen was ralist more anxious to point his errors out to that in which, from his dying bed, he recthe world than his own relations; so Mrs. omended his orphan child to Miss PinkerBute showed a perfect family interest and ton's protection. There were juvenile letknowledge of Rawdon's history. She had ters and petitions from Rebecca, too, in the all the particulars of that ugly quarrel with collection, imploring aid for her father, or Captain Firebrace, in which Rawdon, wrong declaring her own gratitude. Perhaps in from the beginning, ended in shooting the Vanity Fair there are no better satires than captain. She knew how the unhappy Lord letters. Take a bundle of your dear friend's Dovedale, whose mamma had taken a house of ten years back-your dear friend whom at Oxford, so that he might be educated you hate now. Look at a file of your sisthere, and who had never touched a card in ter's: how you clung to each other till you his life till he came to London, was perverted quarreled about the twenty pound legacy! by Rawdon at the Cocoa Tree, made help- Get down the round-hand scrawls of your lessly tipsy by this abominable seducer and son, who has half broken your heart with perverter of youth, and fleeced of four thou- selfish undutifulness since; or a parcel of sand pounds. She described with the most your own, breathing endless ardor and love vivid minuteness the agonies of the country eternal, which were sent back by your misfamilies whom he had ruined-the sons tress when she married the nabob-your whom he had plunged into dishonor and mistress, for whom you now care no more poverty-the daughters whom he had in- than for Queen Elizabeth. Vows, love, veigled into perdition. She knew the poor promises, confidence, gratitude, how queertradesmen who were bankrupt by his ex- ly they read after a while! There ought to travagance the mean shifts and rogueries with which he had ministered to it-the astounding falsehoods by which he had imposed upon the most generous of aunts, and the ingratitude and ridicule by which he had repaid her sacrifices. She imparted these stories gradually to Miss Crawley; gave her the whole benefit of them; felt it to be her bounden duty as a Christian woman and mother of a family to do so; had not the smallest remorse or compunction for the victim whom her tongue was immolating; nay, very likely thought her act was quite meritorious, and plumed herself upon her resolute manner of performing it. Yes, if a man's character is to be abused, say what you will, there's nobody like a relation to do the business. And one is bound to own, regarding this unfortunate wretch of a Rawdon Crawley, that the mere truth was enough to condemn him, and that all inventions of scandal were quite superfluous pains on his friends' parts. be a law in Vanity Fair ordering the destruction of every written document (except receipted tradesmen's bills), after a certain brief and proper interval. Those quacks and misanthropes who advertise indelible Japan ink, should be made to perish along with their wicked discoveries. The best ink for Vanity Fair use would be one that faded utterly in a couple of days, and left the paper clean and blank, so that you might write on it to somebody else. From Miss Pinkerton's the indefatigable Mrs. Bute followed the track of Sharp and his daughter back to the lodgings in Greekstreet, which the defunct painter had occupied; and where portraits of the landlady in white satin, and of the husband in brass buttous, done by Sharp in lieu of a quarter's rent, still decorated the parlor walls. Mrs. Stokes was a communicative person, and quickly told all she knew about Mr. Sharp; how dissolute and poor he was; how goodnatured and amusing; how he was always self." "Your devotion, it must be confessed, is admirable," Mr. Clump says, with a low bow; "but-" hunted by bailiffs and duns; how, to the discomfort: I never refuse to sacrifice mylandlady's horror, though she never could abide the woman, he did not marry his wife till a short time before her death; and what a queer little wild vixen his daughter was; how she kept them all laughing with her fun and mimicry; how she used to fetch the gin from the public-house, and was known in all the studios in the quarter-in brief, Mrs. Bute got such a full account of her new niece's parentage, education, and behavior, as would scarcely have pleased Rebecca, had the latter known that such inquiries were being made concerning her. Of all these industrious researches Miss Crawley had the full benefit. Mrs. Rawdon Crawley was the daughter of an operagirl. She had danced herself. She had been a model to the painters. She was brought up as became her mother's daughter. She drank gin with her father, &c., &c. It was a lost woman who was married to a lost man; and the moral to be inferred from Mrs. Bute's tale was, that the knavery of the pair was irremediable, and that no properly conducted person should ever notice them again. These were the materials which prudent Mrs. Bute gathered together in Park Lane, the provisions and ammunition, as it were, with which she fortified the house against the siege which she knew that Rawdon and his wife would lay to Miss Crawley. But if a fault may be found with her arrangements, it is this, that she was too eager: she managed rather too well; undoubtedly she made Miss Crawley more ill than was necessary; and though the old invalid succumbed to her authority, it was so harassing and severe, that the victim would be inclined to escape at the very first chance which fell in her way. Managing women, the ornaments of their sex-women who order every thing for every body, and know so much better than any person concerned what is good for their neighbors, don't sometimes speculate upon the possibility of a domestic revolt, or upon other extreme consequences resulting from their overstrained authority. Thus, for instance, Mrs. Bute, with the best intentions, no doubt, in the world, and wearing herself to death as she did by foregoing sleep, dinner, fresh air, for the sake of her invalid sister-in-law, carried her conviction of the old lady's illness so far that she almost managed her into her coffin. She pointed out her sacrifices and their results one day to the constant apothecary, Mr. Clump. "I am sure, my dear Mr. Clump," she said, "no efforts of mine have been wanting to restore our dear invalid, whom the ingratitude of her nephew has laid on the bed of sickness. I never shrink from personal "I have scarcely closed my eyes since my arrival: I give up sleep, health, every comfort, to my sense of duty. When my poor James was in the small-pox, did I allow any hireling to nurse him? No." 66 You did what became an excellent mother, my dear madam-the best of mothers; but " "As the mother of a family and the wife of an English clergyman, I humbly trust that my principles are good," Mrs. Bute said, with a happy solemnity of conviction; "and as long as nature supports me, never, never, Mr. Clump, will I desert the post of duty. Others may bring that gray head with sorrow to the bed of sickness" (here Mrs. Bute, waving her hand, pointed to one of old Miss Crawley's coffee-colored fronts, which was perched on a stand in the dressing-room), "but I will never quit it. Ah, Mr. Clump! I fear, I know that that couch needs spiritual as well as medical consolation." "What I was going to observe, my dear madam," here the resolute Clump once more interposed with a bland air-"what I was going to observe when you gave utterance to sentiments which do you so much honor, was that I think you alarm yourself needlessly about our kind friend, and sacrifice your own health too prodigally in her favor." "I would lay down my life for my duty, or for any member of my husband's family," Mrs. Bute interposed. (6 Yes, madam, if need were; but we don't want Mrs. Bute Crawley to be a martyr," Clump said gallantly. "Dr. Squills and myself have both considered Miss Crawley's case with every anxiety and care, as you may suppose. We see her low-spirited and nervous; family events have agitated her." "Her nephew will come to perdition," Mrs. Crawley cried. "Have agitated her: and you arrived like a guardian angel, my dear madam, a positive guardian angel, I assure you, to soothe her under the pressure of calamity. But Dr. Squills and I were thinking that our amiable friend is not in such a state as renders confinement to her bed necessary. She is depressed, but this confinement perhaps adds to her depression. She should have change, fresh air, gayety; the most delightful remedies in the pharmacopoeia," Mr. Clump said, grinning and showing his handsome teeth. "Persuade her to rise, dear madam; drag her from her couch and her low spirits; insist upon her taking little drives. They will restore the roses, too, to your cheeks, if 1 may so speak to Mrs. Bute Crawley." "The sight of her horrid nephew casual- made to her, and Mrs. Bute saw that she ly in the park, where I am told the wretch drives with the brazen partner of his crimes," Mrs. Bute said (letting the cat of selfishness out of the bag of secrecy), "would cause her such a shock, that we should have to bring her back to bed again. She must not go out, Mr. Clump. She shall not go out as long as I remain to watch over her. And as for my health, what matters it? I give it cheerfully, sir. I sacrifice it at the altar of my duty." must get her patient into cheerful spirits and health before she could hope to attain the pious object which she had in view. Whither to take her was the next puzzle. The only place where she is not likely to meet those odious Rawdons is at church, and that won't amuse her, Mrs. Bute justly felt. "We must go and visit our beautiful suburbs of London," she then thought. "I hear they are the most picturesque in the world" and so she had a sudden interest "Upon my word, madam," Mr. Clump for Hampstead, and Hornsey, and found now said bluntly, "I won't answer for her that Dulwich had great charms for her, and life if she remains locked up in that dark getting her victim into her carriage, drove room. She is so nervous that we may lose her to those rustic spots, beguiling the little her any day; and if you wish Captain Craw-journeys with conversations about Rawdon ley to be her heir, I warn you frankly, madam, that you are doing your very best to serve him." "Gracious mercy! is her life in danger?" Mrs. Bute cried. "Why, why, Mr. Clump, did you not inform me sooner?" The night before, Mr. Clump and Dr. Squills had had a consultation (over a bottle of wine at the house of Sir Lapin Warren, whose lady was about to present him with a thirteenth blessing), regarding Miss Crawley and her case. "What a little harpy that woman from Hampshire is, Clump," Squills remarked, "that has seized upon old Tilly Crawley. Devilish good Madeira." and his wife, and telling every story to the old lady which could add to her indignation against this pair of reprobates. Perhaps Mrs. Bute pulled the string unnecessarily tight. For though she worked up Miss Crawley to a proper dislike of her disobedient nephew, the invalid had a great hatred and secret terror of her victimizer, and panted to escape from her. After a brief space, she rebelled against Highgate and Hornsey utterly. She would go into the park. Mrs. Bute knew they would meet the abominable Rawdon there, and she was right. One day in the ring, Rawdon's stanhope came in sight; Rebecca was seated by him. In the enemy's equipage Miss Crawley occupied her usual place, with Mrs. Bute on her left, the poodle and Miss Briggs on the back seat. was a nervous moment, and Rebecca's "Green eyes, fair skin, pretty figure, fa- heart beat quick as she recognized the carmous frontal development," Squills remark-riage; and as the two vehicles crossed each ed. "There is something about her; and Crawley was a fool, Squills." "A d- fool--always was," the apothecary replied. 66 What a fool Rawdon Crawley has been," Clump replied, "to go and marry a governess! There was something about the girl, too." "Of course the old girl will fling him over," said the physician, and after a pause added, "She'll cut up well, I suppose." "Cut up," says Clump with a grin; "I wouldn't have her cut up for two hundred a year." “That Hampshire woman will kill her in two months, Clump, my boy, if she stops about her," Dr. Squills said. "Old woman; full feeder; nervous subject; palpitation of the heart; pressure on the brain; apoplexy; off she goes. Get her up, Squills; get her out; or I wouldn't give many weeks' purchase for your two hundred a year." And it was acting upon this hint that the worthy apothecary spoke with so much candor to Mrs. Bute Crawley. It other in the line, she clasped her hands, and looked toward the spinster with a face of agonized attachment and devotion. Rawdon himself trembled, and his face grew purple behind his dyed mustaches. Only old Briggs was moved in the other carriage, and cast her great eyes nervously toward her old friends. Miss Crawley's bonnet was resolutely turned toward the Serpentine. Mrs. Bute happened to be in ecstacies with the poodle, and was calling him a little darling, and a sweet little zoggy, and a pretty pet. The carriages moved on, each in his line. 66 wife. Done, by Jove," Rawdon said to his "Try once more, Rawdon," Rebecca answered. "Could not you lock your wheels into theirs, dearest ?" Rawdon had not the heart for that manœuvre. When the carriages met again, Having the old lady under her hand; in he stood up in his stanhope; he raised his bed, with nobody near, Mrs. Bute had made hand ready to doff his hat; he looked with more than one assault upon her, to induce all his eyes. But this time Miss Crawley's her to alter her will. But Miss Craw-face was not turned away; she and Mrs. ley's usual terrors regarding death increased Bute looked him full in the face, and cut greatly when such dismal propositions were their nephew pitilessly. He sank back in his seat with an oath, and striking out of the ring, dashed away desperately homeward. was, and raise up this kneeling Esther and make a queen of her: besides, her sadness and beauty touched him as much as her submission, and so he cheered her, and raised her up and forgave her, so to speak. All her hopes and feelings, which were dy It was a gallant and decided triumph for Mrs. Bute. But she felt the danger of many such meetings, as she saw the evident nervousness of Miss Crawley; and she determined that it was most necessary for her dearing and withering, this her sun having been friend's health, that they should leave town for a while, and recommended Brighton very strongly. CHAPTER XX. IN WHICH CAPTAIN DOBBIN ACTS AS THE MESSENGER OF HYMEN. removed from her, bloomed again and at once, its light being restored. You would scarcely have recognized the beaming little face upon Amelia's pillow that night as the one that was laid there the night before, so wan, so lifeless, so careless of all round about. The honest Irish maid-servant, delighted with the change, asked leave to kiss the face that had grown all of a sudden so rosy. WITHOUT knowing how, Captain William Amelia put her arms round the girl's neck Dobbin found himself the great promoter, and kissed her with all her heart, like a child. arranger, and manager of the match between She was little more. She had that night a George Osborne and Amelia. But for him sweet, refreshing sleep, like one-and what it never would have taken place: he could a spring of inexpressible happiness as she not but confess as much to himself, and woke in the morning sunshine! smiled rather bitterly as he thought that he "He will be here again to-day," Amelia of all men in the world should be the per- thought. "He is the greatest and best of son upon whom the care of this marriage men." And the fact is, that George thought had fallen. But though indeed the conduct- he was one of the generousest creatures ing of this negotiation was about as painful alive and that he was making a tremena task as could be set to him, yet when he dous sacrifice in marrying this young creahad a duty to perform, Captain Dobbin was ture. accustomed to go through it without many words, or much hesitation; and, having made up his mind completely, that if Miss Sedley was balked of her husband she would die of the disappointment, he was determined to use all his best endeavors to keep her alive. I forbear to enter into minute particulars of the interview between George and Amelia, when the former was brought back to the feet (or should we venture to say the arms?) of his young mistress by the intervention of his friend, honest William. A much harder heart than George's would have melted at the sight of that sweet face, so sadly ravaged by grief and despair, and at the simple, tender accents in which she told her little broken-hearted story: but as she did not faint when her mother, trembling, brought Osborne to her; and as she only gave relief to her overcharged grief, by laying her head on her lover's shoulder, and there weeping for a while the most tender, copious, and refreshing tears-old Mrs. Sedley, too, greatly relieved, thought it was best to leave the young persons to themselves; and so quitted Emmy crying over George's hand, and kissing it humbly, as if it were her supreme chief and master, and as if she were quite a guilty and unworthy person needing every favor and grace from him. This prostration, and sweet, unrepining obedience, exquisitely touched and flattered George Osborne. He saw a slave before him in that simple, yielding, faithful creature, and his soul within him thrilled secretly somehow at the knowledge of his power. He would be generous-minded, sultan as he While she and Osborne were having their delightful téte-à-tête above stairs, old Mrs. Sedley and Captain Dobbin were conversing below upon the state of affairs, and the chances and future arrangements of the young people. Mrs. Sedley having brought the two lovers together, and left them embracing each other with all their might, like a true woman, was of opinion that no power on earth would induce Mr. Sedley to consent to the match between his daughter and the son of a man who had so shamefully, wickedly, and monstrously treated him. And she told a long story about happier days and their earlier splendors, when Osborne lived in a very humble way in the New Road, and his wife was too glad to receive some of Jos's little baby things, with which Mrs. Sedley accommodated her at the birth of one of Osborne's own children. The fiendish ingratitude of that man, she was sure, had broken Mr. S.'s heart: and as for a marriage, he would never, never, never, never consent. "They must run away together, ma'am," Dobbin said, laughing, "and follow the example of Captain Rawdon Crawley, and Miss Emmy's friend, the little governess." Was it possible? Well, she never! Mrs. Sedley was all excitement about this news. She wished that Blenkinsop were here to hear it: Blenkinsop always mistrusted that Miss Sharp. What an escape Jos had had! and she described the already well-known love-passages between Rebecca and the collector of Boggley Wollah. It was not, however, Mr. Sedley's wrath |