Book: Vanity Fair

W >> William Makepeace Thackary >> Vanity Fair




"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 which Dobbin
feared, so much as that of the other parent concerned,
and he owned that he had a very considerable doubt
and anxiety respecting the behaviour of the black-browed
old tyrant of a Russia merchant in Russell Square. He
has forbidden the match peremptorily, Dobbin thought.
He knew what a savage determined man Osborne was, and
how he stuck by his word. The only chance George has
of reconcilement," argued his friend, "is by distinguishing
himself in the coming campaign. If he dies they both go
together. If he fails in distinction--what then? He has
some money from his mother, I have heard enough to
purchase his majority--or he must sell out and go and
dig in Canada, or rough it in a cottage in the country."
With such a partner Dobbin thought he would not mind
Siberia--and, strange to say, this absurd and utterly
imprudent young fellow never for a moment considered that
the want of means to keep a nice carriage and horses,
and of an income which should enable its possessors to
entertain their friends genteelly, ought to operate as bars
to the union of George and Miss Sedley.

It was these weighty considerations which made him
think too that the marriage should take place as quickly
as possible. Was he anxious himself, I wonder, to have it
over.?--as people, when death has occurred, like to press
forward the funeral, or when a parting is resolved upon,
hasten it. It is certain that Mr. Dobbin, having taken the
matter in hand, was most extraordinarily eager in the
conduct of it. He urged on George the necessity of immediate
action: he showed the chances of reconciliation with
his father, which a favourable mention of his name in the
Gazette must bring about. If need were he would go himself
and brave both the fathers in the business. At all
events, he besought George to go through with it before
the orders came, which everybody expected, for the
departure of the regiment from England on foreign service.

Bent upon these hymeneal projects, and with the applause
and consent of Mrs. Sedley, who did not care to
break the matter personally to her husband, Mr. Dobbin
went to seek John Sedley at his house of call in the City,
the Tapioca Coffee-house, where, since his own offices
were shut up, and fate had overtaken him, the poor
broken-down old gentleman used to betake himself daily,
and write letters and receive them, and tie them up into
mysterious bundles, several of which he carried in the
flaps of his coat. I don't know anything more dismal than
that business and bustle and mystery of a ruined man: those
letters from the wealthy which he shows you: those worn
greasy documents promising support and offering
condolence which he places wistfully before you, and on
which he builds his hopes of restoration and future fortune.
My beloved reader has no doubt in the course of
his experience been waylaid by many such a luckless
companion. He takes you into the corner; he has his bundle
of papers out of his gaping coat pocket; and the tape off,
and the string in his mouth, and the favourite letters
selected and laid before you; and who does not know the
sad eager half-crazy look which he fixes on you with his
hopeless eyes?

Changed into a man of this sort, Dobbin found the
once florid, jovial, and prosperous John Sedley. His
coat, that used to be so glossy and trim, was white at the
seams, and the buttons showed the copper. His face had
fallen in, and was unshorn; his frill and neckcloth hung
limp under his bagging waistcoat. When he used to treat
the boys in old days at a coffee-house, he would shout
and laugh louder than anybody there, and have all the
waiters skipping round him; it was quite painful to see
how humble and civil he was to John of the Tapioca, a
blear-eyed old attendant in dingy stockings and cracked
pumps, whose business it was to serve glasses of wafers,
and bumpers of ink in pewter, and slices of paper to the
frequenters of this dreary house of entertainment, where
nothing else seemed to be consumed. As for William
Dobbin, whom he had tipped repeatedly in his youth, and
who had been the old gentleman's butt on a thousand
occasions, old Sedley gave his hand to him in a very
hesitating humble manner now, and called him "Sir." A
feeling of shame and remorse took possession of William
Dobbin as the broken old man so received and addressed
him, as if he himself had been somehow guilty of the
misfortunes which had brought Sedley so low.

"I am very glad to see you, Captain Dobbin, sir," says
he, after a skulking look or two at his visitor (whose lanky
figure and military appearance caused some excitement
likewise to twinkle in the blear eyes of the waiter in the
cracked dancing pumps, and awakened the old lady in
black, who dozed among the mouldy old coffee-cups in the
bar). "How is the worthy alderman, and my lady, your
excellent mother, sir?" He looked round at the waiter as
he said, "My lady," as much as to say, "Hark ye, John, I
have friends still, and persons of rank and reputation,
too." "Are you come to do anything in my way, sir? My
young friends Dale and Spiggot do all my business for me
now, until my new offices are ready; for I'm only here
temporarily, you know, Captain. What can we do for you.
sir? Will you like to take anything?"

Dobbin, with a great deal of hesitation and stuttering,
protested that he was not in the least hungry or thirsty;
that he had no business to transact; that he only came
to ask if Mr. Sedley was well, and to shake hands with
an old friend; and, he added, with a desperate perversion
of truth, "My mother is very well--that is, she's been very
unwell, and is only waiting for the first fine day to go out
and call upon Mrs. Sedley. How is Mrs. Sedley, sir? I
hope she's quite well." And here he paused, reflecting on
his own consummate hypocrisy; for the day was as fine,
and the sunshine as bright as it ever is in Coffin Court,
where the Tapioca Coffee-house is situated: and Mr.
Dobbin remembered that he had seen Mrs. Sedley himself
only an hour before, having driven Osborne down to Fulham
in his gig, and left him there tete-a-tete with Miss Amelia.

"My wife will be very happy to see her ladyship,"
Sedley replied, pulling out his papers. "I've a very kind
letter here from your father, sir, and beg my respectful
compliments to him. Lady D. will find us in rather a
smaller house than we were accustomed to receive our
friends in; but it's snug, and the change of air does good
to my daughter, who was suffering in town rather--you
remember little Emmy, sir?--yes, suffering a good deal."
The old gentleman's eyes were wandering as he spoke, and
he was thinking of something else, as he sate thrumming
on his papers and fumbling at the worn red tape.

"You're a military man," he went on; "I ask you, Bill
Dobbin, could any man ever have speculated upon the
return of that Corsican scoundrel from Elba? When the
allied sovereigns were here last year, and we gave 'em
that dinner in the City, sir, and we saw the Temple of
Concord, and the fireworks, and the Chinese bridge in
St. James's Park, could any sensible man suppose that
peace wasn't really concluded, after we'd actually sung Te
Deum for it, sir? I ask you, William, could I suppose that
the Emperor of Austria was a damned traitor--a traitor,
and nothing more? I don't mince words--a double-faced
infernal traitor and schemer, who meant to have his son-
in-law back all along. And I say that the escape of Boney
from Elba was a damned imposition and plot, sir, in
which half the powers of Europe were concerned, to
bring the funds down, and to ruin this country. That's
why I'm here, William. That's why my name's in the
Gazette. Why, sir?--because I trusted the Emperor of
Russia and the Prince Regent. Look here. Look at my
papers. Look what the funds were on the 1st of March
--what the French fives were when I bought for the
count. And what they're at now. There was collusion, sir,
or that villain never would have escaped. Where was the
English Commissioner who allowed him to get away? He
ought to be shot, sir--brought to a court-martial, and
shot, by Jove."

"We're going to hunt Boney out, sir," Dobbin said,
rather alarmed at the fury of the old man, the veins of
whose forehead began to swell, and who sate drumming
his papers with his clenched fist. "We are going to hunt
him out, sir--the Duke's in Belgium already, and we
expect marching orders every day."

"Give him no quarter. Bring back the villain's head, sir.
Shoot the coward down, sir," Sedley roared. "I'd enlist
myself, by--; but I'm a broken old man--ruined by
that damned scoundrel--and by a parcel of swindling
thieves in this country whom I made, sir, and who are
rolling in their carriages now," he added, with a break in
his voice.

Dobbin was not a little affected by the sight of this once
kind old friend, crazed almost with misfortune and raving
with senile anger. Pity the fallen gentleman: you to whom
money and fair repute are the chiefest good; and so,
surely, are they in Vanity Fair.

"Yes," he continued, "there are some vipers that you
warm, and they sting you afterwards. There are some
beggars that you put on horseback, and they're the first
to ride you down. You know whom I mean, William
Dobbin, my boy. I mean a purse-proud villain in Russell
Square, whom I knew without a shilling, and whom I
pray and hope to see a beggar as he was when I
befriended him."

"I have heard something of this, sir, from my friend
George," Dobbin said, anxious to come to his point. "The
quarrel between you and his father has cut him up a great
deal, sir. Indeed, I'm the bearer of a message from him."

"O, THAT'S your errand, is it?" cried the old man,
jumping up. "What! perhaps he condoles with me, does he?
Very kind of him, the stiff-backed prig, with his dandified
airs and West End swagger. He's hankering about my
house, is he still? If my son had the courage of a man,
he'd shoot him. He's as big a villain as his father. I won't
have his name mentioned in my house. I curse the day
that ever I let him into it; and I'd rather see my daughter
dead at my feet than married to him."

"His father's harshness is not George's fault, sir. Your
daughter's love for him is as much your doing as his. Who
are you, that you are to play with two young people's
affections and break their hearts at your will?"

"Recollect it's not his father that breaks the match off,"
old Sedley cried out. "It's I that forbid it. That family and
mine are separated for ever. I'm fallen low, but not so
low as that: no, no. And so you may tell the whole race--
son, and father and sisters, and all."

"It's my belief, sir, that you have not the power or the
right to separate those two," Dobbin answered in a low
voice; "and that if you don't give your daughter your
consent it will be her duty to marry without it. There's no
reason she should die or live miserably because you
are wrong-headed. To my thinking, she's just as much
married as if the banns had been read in all the churches in
London. And what better answer can there be to Osborne's
charges against you, as charges there are, than
that his son claims to enter your family and marry your
daughter?"

A light of something like satisfaction seemed to break
over old Sedley as this point was put to him: but he still
persisted that with his consent the marriage between
Amelia and George should never take place.

"We must do it without," Dobbin said, smiling, and told
Mr. Sedley, as he had told Mrs. Sedley in the day, before,
the story of Rebecca's elopement with Captain Crawley. It
evidently amused the old gentleman. "You're terrible
fellows, you Captains," said he, tying up his papers; and his
face wore something like a smile upon it, to the astonishment
of the blear-eyed waiter who now entered, and had
never seen such an expression upon Sedley's countenance
since he had used the dismal coffee-house.

The idea of hitting his enemy Osborne such a blow
soothed, perhaps, the old gentleman: and, their colloquy
presently ending, he and Dobbin parted pretty good friends.

"My sisters say she has diamonds as big as pigeons'
eggs," George said, laughing. "How they must set off her
complexion! A perfect illumination it must be when her
jewels are on her neck. Her jet-black hair is as curly as
Sambo's. I dare say she wore a nose ring when she went
to court; and with a plume of feathers in her top-knot
she would look a perfect Belle Sauvage."

George, in conversation with Amelia, was rallying the
appearance of a young lady of whom his father and sisters
had lately made the acquaintance, and who was an object
of vast respect to the Russell Square family. She was reported
to have I don't know how many plantations in the
West Indies; a deal of money in the funds; and three
stars to her name in the East India stockholders' list. She
had a mansion in Surrey, and a house in Portland Place.
The name of the rich West India heiress had been mentioned
with applause in the Morning Post. Mrs. Haggistoun,
Colonel Haggistoun's widow, her relative, "chaperoned"
her, and kept her house. She was just from school, where
she had completed her education, and George and his
sisters had met her at an evening party at old Hulker's
house, Devonshire Place (Hulker, Bullock, and Co. were
long the correspondents of her house in the West Indies),
and the girls had made the most cordial advances to her,
which the heiress had received with great good humour.
An orphan in her position--with her money--so interesting!
the Misses Osborne said. They were full of their new
friend when they returned from the Hulker ball to Miss
Wirt, their companion; they had made arrangements for
continually meeting, and had the carriage and drove to see
her the very next day. Mrs. Haggistoun, Colonel Haggistoun's
widow, a relation of Lord Binkie, and always talking
of him, struck the dear unsophisticated girls as rather
haughty, and too much inclined to talk about her great
relations: but Rhoda was everything they could wish--
the frankest, kindest, most agreeable creature--wanting a
little polish, but so good-natured. The girls Christian-
named each other at once.

"You should have seen her dress for court, Emmy,"
Osborne cried, laughing. "She came to my sisters to show
it off, before she was presented in state by my Lady
Binkie, the Haggistoun's kinswoman. She's related to every
one, that Haggistoun. Her diamonds blazed out like
Vauxhall on the night we were there. (Do you remember
Vauxhall, Emmy, and Jos singing to his dearest diddle
diddle darling?) Diamonds and mahogany, my dear!
think what an advantageous contrast--and the white
feathers in her hair--I mean in her wool. She had
earrings like chandeliers; you might have lighted 'em
up, by Jove--and a yellow satin train that streeled after
her like the tail of a cornet."

"How old is she?" asked Emmy, to whom George was
rattling away regarding this dark paragon, on the morning
of their reunion--rattling away as no other man in the
world surely could.

"Why the Black Princess, though she has only just left
school, must be two or three and twenty. And you should
see the hand she writes! Mrs. Colonel Haggistoun usually
writes her letters, but in a moment of confidence, she put
pen to paper for my sisters; she spelt satin satting, and
Saint James's, Saint Jams."

"Why, surely it must be Miss Swartz, the parlour
boarder," Emmy said, remembering that good-natured
young mulatto girl, who had been so hysterically affected
when Amelia left Miss Pinkerton's academy

"The very name," George said. "Her father was a German
Jew--a slave-owner they say--connected with the
Cannibal Islands in some way or other. He died last year,
and Miss Pinkerton has finished her education. She can
play two pieces on the piano; she knows three songs;
she can write when Mrs. Haggistoun is by to spell for her;
and Jane and Maria already have got to love her as a
sister."

"I wish they would have loved me," said Emmy, wistfully.
"They were always very cold to me."

"My dear child, they would have loved you if you had
had two hundred thousand pounds," George replied. "That
is the way in which they have been brought up. Ours is
a ready-money society. We live among bankers and City
big-wigs, and be hanged to them, and every man, as he
talks to you, is jingling his guineas in his pocket. There is
that jackass Fred Bullock is going to marry Maria--
there's Goldmore, the East India Director, there's Dipley,
in the tallow trade--OUR trade," George said, with an
uneasy laugh and a blush. "Curse the whole pack of money-
grubbing vulgarians! I fall asleep at their great heavy
dinners. I feel ashamed in my father's great stupid
parties. I've been accustomed to live with gentlemen, and
men of the world and fashion, Emmy, not with a parcel
of turtle-fed tradesmen. Dear little woman, you are the only
person of our set who ever looked, or thought, or spoke
like a lady: and you do it because you're an angel and
can't help it. Don't remonstrate. You are the only lady.
Didn't Miss Crawley remark it, who has lived in the
best company in Europe? And as for Crawley, of the Life
Guards, hang it, he's a fine fellow: and I like him for
marrying the girl he had chosen."

Amelia admired Mr. Crawley very much, too, for this;
and trusted Rebecca would be happy with him, and hoped
(with a laugh) Jos would be consoled. And so the pair
went on prattling, as in quite early days. Amelia's
confidence being perfectly restored to her, though she
expressed a great deal of pretty jealousy about Miss Swartz,
and professed to be dreadfully frightened--like a hypocrite
as she was--lest George should forget her for the
heiress and her money and her estates in Saint Kitt's. But
the fact is, she was a great deal too happy to have fears
or doubts or misgivings of any sort: and having George
at her side again, was not afraid of any heiress or beauty,
or indeed of any sort of danger.

When Captain Dobbin came back in the afternoon to
these people--which he did with a great deal of sympathy
for them--it did his heart good to see how Amelia had
grown young again--how she laughed, and chirped, and
sang familiar old songs at the piano, which were only
interrupted by the bell from without proclaiming Mr.
Sedley's return from the City, before whom George received a
signal to retreat.

Beyond the first smile of recognition--and even that was
an hypocrisy, for she thought his arrival rather provoking
--Miss Sedley did not once notice Dobbin during his
visit. But he was content, so that he saw her happy; and
thankful to have been the means of making her so.




CHAPTER XXI


A Quarrel About an Heiress

Love may be felt for any young lady endowed with such
qualities as Miss Swartz possessed; and a great dream of
ambition entered into old Mr. Osborne's soul, which she
was to realize. He encouraged, with the utmost enthusiasm
and friendliness, his daughters' amiable attachment to the
young heiress, and protested that it gave him the sincerest
pleasure as a father to see the love of his girls so well disposed.

"You won't find," he would say to Miss Rhoda, "that
splendour and rank to which you are accustomed at the
West End, my dear Miss, at our humble mansion in Russell
Square. My daughters are plain, disinterested girls, but
their hearts are in the right place, and they've conceived
an attachment for you which does them honour--I say,
which does them honour. I'm a plain, simple, humble
British merchant--an honest one, as my respected friends
Hulker and Bullock will vouch, who were the correspondents
of your late lamented father. You'll find us a
united, simple, happy, and I think I may say respected,
family--a plain table, a plain people, but a warm welcome,
my dear Miss Rhoda--Rhoda, let me say, for my
heart warms to you, it does really. I'm a frank man, and
I like you. A glass of Champagne! Hicks, Champagne to
Miss Swartz."

There is little doubt that old Osborne believed all he
said, and that the girls were quite earnest in their
protestations of affection for Miss Swartz. People in Vanity
Fair fasten on to rich folks quite naturally. If the simplest
people are disposed to look not a little kindly on
great Prosperity (for I defy any member of the British
public to say that the notion of Wealth has not something
awful and pleasing to him; and you, if you are told that
the man next you at dinner has got half a million, not to
look at him with a certain interest)--if the simple look
benevolently on money, how much more do your old
worldlings regard it! Their affections rush out to meet and
welcome money. Their kind sentiments awaken spontaneously towards the interesting possessors of it. I know
some respectable people who don't consider themselves
at liberty to indulge in friendship for any individual who
has not a certain competency, or place in society. They
give a loose to their feelings on proper occasions. And
the proof is, that the major part of the Osborne family,
who had not, in fifteen years, been able to get up a
hearty regard for Amelia Sedley, became as fond of Miss
Swartz in the course of a single evening as the most
romantic advocate of friendship at first sight could desire.

What a match for George she'd be (the sisters and
Miss Wirt agreed), and how much better than that
insignificant little Amelia! Such a dashing young fellow as
he is, with his good looks, rank, and accomplishments,
would be the very husband for her. Visions of balls in
Portland Place, presentations at Court, and introductions
to half the peerage, filled the minds of the young ladies;
who talked of nothing but George and his grand
acquaintances to their beloved new friend.

Old Osborne thought she would be a great match, too,
for his son. He should leave the army; he should go into
Parliament; he should cut a figure in the fashion and in
the state. His blood boiled with honest British exultation,
as he saw the name of Osborne ennobled in the person
of his son, and thought that he might be the progenitor of
a glorious line of baronets. He worked in the City and on
'Change, until he knew everything relating to the fortune
of the heiress, how her money was placed, and where her
estates lay. Young Fred Bullock, one of his chief informants,
would have liked to make a bid for her himself
(it was so the young banker expressed it), only he was
booked to Maria Osborne. But not being able to secure
her as a wife, the disinterested Fred quite approved of her
as a sister-in-law. "Let George cut in directly and win
her," was his advice. "Strike while the iron's hot, you
know--while she's fresh to the town: in a few weeks
some d-- fellow from the West End will come in with a
title and a rotten rent-roll and cut all us City men out, as
Lord Fitzrufus did last year with Miss Grogram, who was
actually engaged to Podder, of Podder & Brown's. The
sooner it is done the better, Mr. Osborne; them's my
sentiments," the wag said; though, when Osborne had left
the bank parlour, Mr. Bullock remembered Amelia, and
what a pretty girl she was, and how attached to George
Osborne; and he gave up at least ten seconds of his
valuable time to regretting the misfortune which had
befallen that unlucky young woman.

While thus George Osborne's good feelings, and his
good friend and genius, Dobbin, were carrying back the
truant to Amelia's feet, George's parent and sisters were
arranging this splendid match for him, which they never
dreamed he would resist.

When the elder Osborne gave what he called "a hint,"
there was no possibility for the most obtuse to mistake
his meaning. He called kicking a footman downstairs a
hint to the latter to leave his service. With his usual
frankness and delicacy he told Mrs. Haggistoun that he
would give her a cheque for five thousand pounds on the
day his son was married to her ward; and called that
proposal a hint, and considered it a very dexterous piece
of diplomacy. He gave George finally such another hint
regarding the heiress; and ordered him to marry her out
of hand, as he would have ordered his butler to draw a
cork, or his clerk to write a letter.

This imperative hint disturbed George a good deal. He
was in the very first enthusiasm and delight of his second
courtship of Amelia, which was inexpressibly sweet
to him. The contrast of her manners and appearance with
those of the heiress, made the idea of a union with the
latter appear doubly ludicrous and odious. Carriages and
opera-boxes, thought he; fancy being seen in them by the
side of such a mahogany charmer as that! Add to all
that the junior Osborne was quite as obstinate as the
senior: when he wanted a thing, quite as firm in his
resolution to get it; and quite as violent when angered,
as his father in his most stern moments.

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