Vanity Fair
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 comet."
"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.
On the first day when his father formally gave him the hint that he was
to place his affections at Miss Swartz's feet, George temporised with
the old gentleman. "You should have thought of the matter sooner,
sir," he said. "It can't be done now, when we're expecting every day to
go on foreign service. Wait till my return, if I do return"; and then