Vanity Fair
persiffled him until this young British Lion felt quite uneasy; nor
could he muster sufficient presence of mind to find a pretext for
backing out of this most delectable conversation.
"I thought you liked the City families pretty well," he said, haughtily.
"Last year you mean, when I was fresh from that horrid vulgar school?
Of course I did. Doesn't every girl like to come home for the
holidays? And how was I to know any better? But oh, Mr. Osborne, what
a difference eighteen months' experience makes! eighteen months spent,
pardon me for saying so, with gentlemen. As for dear Amelia, she, I
grant you, is a pearl, and would be charming anywhere. There now, I
see you are beginning to be in a good humour; but oh these queer odd
City people! And Mr. Jos--how is that wonderful Mr. Joseph?"
"It seems to me you didn't dislike that wonderful Mr. Joseph last
year," Osborne said kindly.
"How severe of you! Well, entre nous, I didn't break my heart about
him; yet if he had asked me to do what you mean by your looks (and very
expressive and kind they are, too), I wouldn't have said no."
Mr. Osborne gave a look as much as to say, "Indeed, how very obliging!"
"What an honour to have had you for a brother-in-law, you are thinking?
To be sister-in-law to George Osborne, Esquire, son of John Osborne,
Esquire, son of--what was your grandpapa, Mr. Osborne? Well, don't be
angry. You can't help your pedigree, and I quite agree with you that I
would have married Mr. Joe Sedley; for could a poor penniless girl do
better? Now you know the whole secret. I'm frank and open;
considering all things, it was very kind of you to allude to the
circumstance--very kind and polite. Amelia dear, Mr. Osborne and I
were talking about your poor brother Joseph. How is he?"
Thus was George utterly routed. Not that Rebecca was in the right; but
she had managed most successfully to put him in the wrong. And he now
shamefully fled, feeling, if he stayed another minute, that he would
have been made to look foolish in the presence of Amelia.
Though Rebecca had had the better of him, George was above the meanness
of talebearing or revenge upon a lady--only he could not help cleverly
confiding to Captain Crawley, next day, some notions of his regarding
Miss Rebecca--that she was a sharp one, a dangerous one, a desperate
flirt, &c.; in all of which opinions Crawley agreed laughingly, and
with every one of which Miss Rebecca was made acquainted before
twenty-four hours were over. They added to her original regard for Mr.
Osborne. Her woman's instinct had told her that it was George who had
interrupted the success of her first love-passage, and she esteemed him
accordingly.
"I only just warn you," he said to Rawdon Crawley, with a knowing
look--he had bought the horse, and lost some score of guineas after
dinner, "I just warn you--I know women, and counsel you to be on the
look-out."
"Thank you, my boy," said Crawley, with a look of peculiar gratitude.
"You're wide awake, I see." And George went off, thinking Crawley was
quite right.
He told Amelia of what he had done, and how he had counselled Rawdon
Crawley--a devilish good, straightforward fellow--to be on his guard
against that little sly, scheming Rebecca.
"Against whom?" Amelia cried.
"Your friend the governess.--Don't look so astonished."
"O George, what have you done?" Amelia said. For her woman's eyes,
which Love had made sharp-sighted, had in one instant discovered a
secret which was invisible to Miss Crawley, to poor virgin Briggs, and
above all, to the stupid peepers of that young whiskered prig,
Lieutenant Osborne.
For as Rebecca was shawling her in an upper apartment, where these two
friends had an opportunity for a little of that secret talking and
conspiring which form the delight of female life, Amelia, coming up to
Rebecca, and taking her two little hands in hers, said, "Rebecca, I see
it all."
Rebecca kissed her.
And regarding this delightful secret, not one syllable more was said by
either of the young women. But it was destined to come out before long.
Some short period after the above events, and Miss Rebecca Sharp still
remaining at her patroness's house in Park Lane, one more hatchment
might have been seen in Great Gaunt Street, figuring amongst the many
which usually ornament that dismal quarter. It was over Sir Pitt
Crawley's house; but it did not indicate the worthy baronet's demise.
It was a feminine hatchment, and indeed a few years back had served as
a funeral compliment to Sir Pitt's old mother, the late dowager Lady
Crawley. Its period of service over, the hatchment had come down from
the front of the house, and lived in retirement somewhere in the back
premises of Sir Pitt's mansion. It reappeared now for poor Rose Dawson.
Sir Pitt was a widower again. The arms quartered on the shield along
with his own were not, to be sure, poor Rose's. She had no arms. But
the cherubs painted on the scutcheon answered as well for her as for
Sir Pitt's mother, and Resurgam was written under the coat, flanked by
the Crawley Dove and Serpent. Arms and Hatchments, Resurgam.--Here is
an opportunity for moralising!
Mr. Crawley had tended that otherwise friendless bedside. She went out
of the world strengthened by such words and comfort as he could give
her. For many years his was the only kindness she ever knew; the only
friendship that solaced in any way that feeble, lonely soul. Her heart
was dead long before her body. She had sold it to become Sir Pitt
Crawley's wife. Mothers and daughters are making the same bargain
every day in Vanity Fair.
When the demise took place, her husband was in London attending to some
of his innumerable schemes, and busy with his endless lawyers. He had
found time, nevertheless, to call often in Park Lane, and to despatch
many notes to Rebecca, entreating her, enjoining her, commanding her to
return to her young pupils in the country, who were now utterly without
companionship during their mother's illness. But Miss Crawley would
not hear of her departure; for though there was no lady of fashion in
London who would desert her friends more complacently as soon as she
was tired of their society, and though few tired of them sooner, yet as
long as her engoument lasted her attachment was prodigious, and she
clung still with the greatest energy to Rebecca.
The news of Lady Crawley's death provoked no more grief or comment than
might have been expected in Miss Crawley's family circle. "I suppose I
must put off my party for the 3rd," Miss Crawley said; and added, after
a pause, "I hope my brother will have the decency not to marry again."
"What a confounded rage Pitt will be in if he does," Rawdon remarked,
with his usual regard for his elder brother. Rebecca said nothing. She
seemed by far the gravest and most impressed of the family. She left
the room before Rawdon went away that day; but they met by chance
below, as he was going away after taking leave, and had a parley
together.
On the morrow, as Rebecca was gazing from the window, she startled Miss
Crawley, who was placidly occupied with a French novel, by crying out
in an alarmed tone, "Here's Sir Pitt, Ma'am!" and the Baronet's knock
followed this announcement.
"My dear, I can't see him. I won't see him. Tell Bowls not at home,
or go downstairs and say I'm too ill to receive any one. My nerves
really won't bear my brother at this moment," cried out Miss Crawley,
and resumed the novel.
"She's too ill to see you, sir," Rebecca said, tripping down to Sir
Pitt, who was preparing to ascend.
"So much the better," Sir Pitt answered. "I want to see YOU, Miss
Becky. Come along a me into the parlour," and they entered that
apartment together.
"I wawnt you back at Queen's Crawley, Miss," the baronet said, fixing
his eyes upon her, and taking off his black gloves and his hat with its
great crape hat-band. His eyes had such a strange look, and fixed upon
her so steadfastly, that Rebecca Sharp began almost to tremble.
"I hope to come soon," she said in a low voice, "as soon as Miss
Crawley is better--and return to--to the dear children."
"You've said so these three months, Becky," replied Sir Pitt, "and
still you go hanging on to my sister, who'll fling you off like an old
shoe, when she's wore you out. I tell you I want you. I'm going back
to the Vuneral. Will you come back? Yes or no?"
"I daren't--I don't think--it would be right--to be alone--with you,
sir," Becky said, seemingly in great agitation.
"I say agin, I want you," Sir Pitt said, thumping the table. "I can't
git on without you. I didn't see what it was till you went away. The
house all goes wrong. It's not the same place. All my accounts has
got muddled agin. You MUST come back. Do come back. Dear Becky, do
come."
"Come--as what, sir?" Rebecca gasped out.
"Come as Lady Crawley, if you like," the Baronet said, grasping his
crape hat. "There! will that zatusfy you? Come back and be my wife.
Your vit vor't. Birth be hanged. You're as good a lady as ever I see.
You've got more brains in your little vinger than any baronet's wife in
the county. Will you come? Yes or no?"
"Oh, Sir Pitt!" Rebecca said, very much moved.
"Say yes, Becky," Sir Pitt continued. "I'm an old man, but a good'n.
I'm good for twenty years. I'll make you happy, zee if I don't. You
shall do what you like; spend what you like; and 'ave it all your own
way. I'll make you a zettlement. I'll do everything reglar. Look
year!" and the old man fell down on his knees and leered at her like a
satyr.
Rebecca started back a picture of consternation. In the course of this
history we have never seen her lose her presence of mind; but she did
now, and wept some of the most genuine tears that ever fell from her
eyes.
"Oh, Sir Pitt!" she said. "Oh, sir--I--I'm married ALREADY."
CHAPTER XV
In Which Rebecca's Husband Appears for a Short Time
Every reader of a sentimental turn (and we desire no other) must have
been pleased with the tableau with which the last act of our little
drama concluded; for what can be prettier than an image of Love on his
knees before Beauty?
But when Love heard that awful confession from Beauty that she was
married already, he bounced up from his attitude of humility on the
carpet, uttering exclamations which caused poor little Beauty to be
more frightened than she was when she made her avowal. "Married;
you're joking," the Baronet cried, after the first explosion of rage
and wonder. "You're making vun of me, Becky. Who'd ever go to marry
you without a shilling to your vortune?"
"Married! married!" Rebecca said, in an agony of tears--her voice
choking with emotion, her handkerchief up to her ready eyes, fainting
against the mantelpiece a figure of woe fit to melt the most obdurate
heart. "O Sir Pitt, dear Sir Pitt, do not think me ungrateful for all
your goodness to me. It is only your generosity that has extorted my
secret."
"Generosity be hanged!" Sir Pitt roared out. "Who is it tu, then,
you're married? Where was it?"
"Let me come back with you to the country, sir! Let me watch over you
as faithfully as ever! Don't, don't separate me from dear Queen's
Crawley!"
"The feller has left you, has he?" the Baronet said, beginning, as he
fancied, to comprehend. "Well, Becky--come back if you like. You can't
eat your cake and have it. Any ways I made you a vair offer. Coom
back as governess--you shall have it all your own way." She held out
one hand. She cried fit to break her heart; her ringlets fell over her
face, and over the marble mantelpiece where she laid it.
"So the rascal ran off, eh?" Sir Pitt said, with a hideous attempt at
consolation. "Never mind, Becky, I'LL take care of 'ee."