Vanity Fair
"Non, Madame," said the boy; but she must have known, from his accent,
of what country he was, for she answered him with a slight foreign
tone. "You have nevare played--will you do me a littl' favor?"
"What is it?" said Georgy, blushing again. Mr. Kirsch was at work for
his part at the rouge et noir and did not see his young master.
"Play this for me, if you please; put it on any number, any number."
And she took from her bosom a purse, and out of it a gold piece, the
only coin there, and she put it into George's hand. The boy laughed
and did as he was bid.
The number came up sure enough. There is a power that arranges that,
they say, for beginners.
"Thank you," said she, pulling the money towards her, "thank you. What
is your name?"
"My name's Osborne," said Georgy, and was fingering in his own pockets
for dollars, and just about to make a trial, when the Major, in his
uniform, and Jos, en Marquis, from the Court ball, made their
appearance. Other people, finding the entertainment stupid and
preferring the fun at the Stadthaus, had quitted the Palace ball
earlier; but it is probable the Major and Jos had gone home and found
the boy's absence, for the former instantly went up to him and, taking
him by the shoulder, pulled him briskly back from the place of
temptation. Then, looking round the room, he saw Kirsch employed as we
have said, and going up to him, asked how he dared to bring Mr. George
to such a place.
"Laissez-moi tranquille," said Mr. Kirsch, very much excited by play
and wine. "Il faut s'amuser, parbleu. Je ne suis pas au service de
Monsieur."
Seeing his condition the Major did not choose to argue with the man,
but contented himself with drawing away George and asking Jos if he
would come away. He was standing close by the lady in the mask, who
was playing with pretty good luck now, and looking on much interested
at the game.
"Hadn't you better come, Jos," the Major said, "with George and me?"
"I'll stop and go home with that rascal, Kirsch," Jos said; and for the
same reason of modesty, which he thought ought to be preserved before
the boy, Dobbin did not care to remonstrate with Jos, but left him and
walked home with Georgy.
"Did you play?" asked the Major when they were out and on their way
home.
The boy said "No."
"Give me your word of honour as a gentleman that you never will."
"Why?" said the boy; "it seems very good fun." And, in a very eloquent
and impressive manner, the Major showed him why he shouldn't, and would
have enforced his precepts by the example of Georgy's own father, had
he liked to say anything that should reflect on the other's memory.
When he had housed him, he went to bed and saw his light, in the little
room outside of Amelia's, presently disappear. Amelia's followed half
an hour afterwards. I don't know what made the Major note it so
accurately.
Jos, however, remained behind over the play-table; he was no gambler,
but not averse to the little excitement of the sport now and then, and
he had some Napoleons chinking in the embroidered pockets of his court
waistcoat. He put down one over the fair shoulder of the little
gambler before him, and they won. She made a little movement to make
room for him by her side, and just took the skirt of her gown from a
vacant chair there.
"Come and give me good luck," she said, still in a foreign accent,
quite different from that frank and perfectly English "Thank you," with
which she had saluted Georgy's coup in her favour. The portly
gentleman, looking round to see that nobody of rank observed him, sat
down; he muttered--"Ah, really, well now, God bless my soul. I'm very
fortunate; I'm sure to give you good fortune," and other words of
compliment and confusion. "Do you play much?" the foreign mask said.
"I put a Nap or two down," said Jos with a superb air, flinging down a
gold piece.
"Yes; ay nap after dinner," said the mask archly. But Jos looking
frightened, she continued, in her pretty French accent, "You do not
play to win. No more do I. I play to forget, but I cannot. I cannot
forget old times, monsieur. Your little nephew is the image of his
father; and you--you are not changed--but yes, you are. Everybody
changes, everybody forgets; nobody has any heart."
"Good God, who is it?" asked Jos in a flutter.
"Can't you guess, Joseph Sedley?" said the little woman in a sad voice,
and undoing her mask, she looked at him. "You have forgotten me."
"Good heavens! Mrs. Crawley!" gasped out Jos.
"Rebecca," said the other, putting her hand on his; but she followed
the game still, all the time she was looking at him.
"I am stopping at the Elephant," she continued. "Ask for Madame de
Raudon. I saw my dear Amelia to-day; how pretty she looked, and how
happy! So do you! Everybody but me, who am wretched, Joseph Sedley."
And she put her money over from the red to the black, as if by a chance
movement of her hand, and while she was wiping her eyes with a
pocket-handkerchief fringed with torn lace.
The red came up again, and she lost the whole of that stake. "Come
away," she said. "Come with me a little--we are old friends, are we
not, dear Mr. Sedley?"
And Mr. Kirsch having lost all his money by this time, followed his
master out into the moonlight, where the illuminations were winking out
and the transparency over our mission was scarcely visible.
CHAPTER LXIV
A Vagabond Chapter
We must pass over a part of Mrs. Rebecca Crawley's biography with that
lightness and delicacy which the world demands--the moral world, that
has, perhaps, no particular objection to vice, but an insuperable
repugnance to hearing vice called by its proper name. There are things
we do and know perfectly well in Vanity Fair, though we never speak of
them: as the Ahrimanians worship the devil, but don't mention him:
and a polite public will no more bear to read an authentic description
of vice than a truly refined English or American female will permit the
word breeches to be pronounced in her chaste hearing. And yet, madam,
both are walking the world before our faces every day, without much
shocking us. If you were to blush every time they went by, what
complexions you would have! It is only when their naughty names are
called out that your modesty has any occasion to show alarm or sense of
outrage, and it has been the wish of the present writer, all through
this story, deferentially to submit to the fashion at present
prevailing, and only to hint at the existence of wickedness in a light,
easy, and agreeable manner, so that nobody's fine feelings may be
offended. I defy any one to say that our Becky, who has certainly some
vices, has not been presented to the public in a perfectly genteel and
inoffensive manner. In describing this Siren, singing and smiling,
coaxing and cajoling, the author, with modest pride, asks his readers
all round, has he once forgotten the laws of politeness, and showed the
monster's hideous tail above water? No! Those who like may peep down
under waves that are pretty transparent and see it writhing and
twirling, diabolically hideous and slimy, flapping amongst bones, or
curling round corpses; but above the waterline, I ask, has not
everything been proper, agreeable, and decorous, and has any the most
squeamish immoralist in Vanity Fair a right to cry fie? When, however,
the Siren disappears and dives below, down among the dead men, the
water of course grows turbid over her, and it is labour lost to look
into it ever so curiously. They look pretty enough when they sit upon
a rock, twanging their harps and combing their hair, and sing, and
beckon to you to come and hold the looking-glass; but when they sink
into their native element, depend on it, those mermaids are about no
good, and we had best not examine the fiendish marine cannibals,
revelling and feasting on their wretched pickled victims. And so, when
Becky is out of the way, be sure that she is not particularly well
employed, and that the less that is said about her doings is in fact
the better.
If we were to give a full account of her proceedings during a couple of
years that followed after the Curzon Street catastrophe, there might be
some reason for people to say this book was improper. The actions of
very vain, heartless, pleasure-seeking people are very often improper
(as are many of yours, my friend with the grave face and spotless
reputation--but that is merely by the way); and what are those of a
woman without faith--or love--or character? And I am inclined to think
that there was a period in Mrs. Becky's life when she was seized, not by
remorse, but by a kind of despair, and absolutely neglected her person
and did not even care for her reputation.
This abattement and degradation did not take place all at once; it was
brought about by degrees, after her calamity, and after many struggles
to keep up--as a man who goes overboard hangs on to a spar whilst any
hope is left, and then flings it away and goes down, when he finds that
struggling is in vain.
She lingered about London whilst her husband was making preparations
for his departure to his seat of government, and it is believed made
more than one attempt to see her brother-in-law, Sir Pitt Crawley, and
to work upon his feelings, which she had almost enlisted in her favour.
As Sir Pitt and Mr. Wenham were walking down to the House of Commons,
the latter spied Mrs. Rawdon in a black veil, and lurking near the
palace of the legislature. She sneaked away when her eyes met those of
Wenham, and indeed never succeeded in her designs upon the Baronet.
Probably Lady Jane interposed. I have heard that she quite astonished
her husband by the spirit which she exhibited in this quarrel, and her
determination to disown Mrs. Becky. Of her own movement, she invited
Rawdon to come and stop in Gaunt Street until his departure for
Coventry Island, knowing that with him for a guard Mrs. Becky would not
try to force her door; and she looked curiously at the superscriptions
of all the letters which arrived for Sir Pitt, lest he and his
sister-in-law should be corresponding. Not but that Rebecca could have
written had she a mind, but she did not try to see or to write to Pitt
at his own house, and after one or two attempts consented to his demand
that the correspondence regarding her conjugal differences should be
carried on by lawyers only.
The fact was that Pitt's mind had been poisoned against her. A short
time after Lord Steyne's accident Wenham had been with the Baronet and
given him such a biography of Mrs. Becky as had astonished the member
for Queen's Crawley. He knew everything regarding her: who her father
was; in what year her mother danced at the opera; what had been her
previous history; and what her conduct during her married life--as I
have no doubt that the greater part of the story was false and dictated
by interested malevolence, it shall not be repeated here. But Becky
was left with a sad sad reputation in the esteem of a country gentleman
and relative who had been once rather partial to her.
The revenues of the Governor of Coventry Island are not large. A part
of them were set aside by his Excellency for the payment of certain
outstanding debts and liabilities, the charges incident on his high
situation required considerable expense; finally, it was found that he
could not spare to his wife more than three hundred pounds a year,
which he proposed to pay to her on an undertaking that she would never
trouble him. Otherwise, scandal, separation, Doctors' Commons would
ensue. But it was Mr. Wenham's business, Lord Steyne's business,
Rawdon's, everybody's--to get her out of the country, and hush up a
most disagreeable affair.
She was probably so much occupied in arranging these affairs of