Vanity Fair
And presently the voices of the two speakers were hushed, or were
replaced by the gentle but unromantic music of the nose; and save when
the church bells tolled the hour and the watchman called it, all was
silent at the house of John Sedley, Esquire, of Russell Square, and the
Stock Exchange.
When morning came, the good-natured Mrs. Sedley no longer thought of
executing her threats with regard to Miss Sharp; for though nothing is
more keen, nor more common, nor more justifiable, than maternal
jealousy, yet she could not bring herself to suppose that the little,
humble, grateful, gentle governess would dare to look up to such a
magnificent personage as the Collector of Boggley Wollah. The petition,
too, for an extension of the young lady's leave of absence had already
been despatched, and it would be difficult to find a pretext for
abruptly dismissing her.
And as if all things conspired in favour of the gentle Rebecca, the
very elements (although she was not inclined at first to acknowledge
their action in her behalf) interposed to aid her. For on the evening
appointed for the Vauxhall party, George Osborne having come to dinner,
and the elders of the house having departed, according to invitation,
to dine with Alderman Balls at Highbury Barn, there came on such a
thunder-storm as only happens on Vauxhall nights, and as obliged the
young people, perforce, to remain at home. Mr. Osborne did not seem in
the least disappointed at this occurrence. He and Joseph Sedley drank a
fitting quantity of port-wine, tete-a-tete, in the dining-room, during
the drinking of which Sedley told a number of his best Indian stories;
for he was extremely talkative in man's society; and afterwards Miss
Amelia Sedley did the honours of the drawing-room; and these four young
persons passed such a comfortable evening together, that they declared
they were rather glad of the thunder-storm than otherwise, which had
caused them to put off their visit to Vauxhall.
Osborne was Sedley's godson, and had been one of the family any time
these three-and-twenty years. At six weeks old, he had received from
John Sedley a present of a silver cup; at six months old, a coral with
gold whistle and bells; from his youth upwards he was "tipped"
regularly by the old gentleman at Christmas: and on going back to
school, he remembered perfectly well being thrashed by Joseph Sedley,
when the latter was a big, swaggering hobbadyhoy, and George an
impudent urchin of ten years old. In a word, George was as familiar
with the family as such daily acts of kindness and intercourse could
make him.
"Do you remember, Sedley, what a fury you were in, when I cut off the
tassels of your Hessian boots, and how Miss--hem!--how Amelia rescued
me from a beating, by falling down on her knees and crying out to her
brother Jos, not to beat little George?"
Jos remembered this remarkable circumstance perfectly well, but vowed
that he had totally forgotten it.
"Well, do you remember coming down in a gig to Dr. Swishtail's to see
me, before you went to India, and giving me half a guinea and a pat on
the head? I always had an idea that you were at least seven feet high,
and was quite astonished at your return from India to find you no
taller than myself."
"How good of Mr. Sedley to go to your school and give you the money!"
exclaimed Rebecca, in accents of extreme delight.
"Yes, and after I had cut the tassels of his boots too. Boys never
forget those tips at school, nor the givers."
"I delight in Hessian boots," said Rebecca. Jos Sedley, who admired
his own legs prodigiously, and always wore this ornamental chaussure,
was extremely pleased at this remark, though he drew his legs under his
chair as it was made.
"Miss Sharp!" said George Osborne, "you who are so clever an artist,
you must make a grand historical picture of the scene of the boots.
Sedley shall be represented in buckskins, and holding one of the
injured boots in one hand; by the other he shall have hold of my
shirt-frill. Amelia shall be kneeling near him, with her little hands
up; and the picture shall have a grand allegorical title, as the
frontispieces have in the Medulla and the spelling-book."
"I shan't have time to do it here," said Rebecca. "I'll do it
when--when I'm gone." And she dropped her voice, and looked so sad and
piteous, that everybody felt how cruel her lot was, and how sorry they
would be to part with her.
"O that you could stay longer, dear Rebecca," said Amelia.
"Why?" answered the other, still more sadly. "That I may be only the
more unhap--unwilling to lose you?" And she turned away her head.
Amelia began to give way to that natural infirmity of tears which, we
have said, was one of the defects of this silly little thing. George
Osborne looked at the two young women with a touched curiosity; and
Joseph Sedley heaved something very like a sigh out of his big chest,
as he cast his eyes down towards his favourite Hessian boots.
"Let us have some music, Miss Sedley--Amelia," said George, who felt at
that moment an extraordinary, almost irresistible impulse to seize the
above-mentioned young woman in his arms, and to kiss her in the face of
the company; and she looked at him for a moment, and if I should say
that they fell in love with each other at that single instant of time,
I should perhaps be telling an untruth, for the fact is that these two
young people had been bred up by their parents for this very purpose,
and their banns had, as it were, been read in their respective families
any time these ten years. They went off to the piano, which was
situated, as pianos usually are, in the back drawing-room; and as it
was rather dark, Miss Amelia, in the most unaffected way in the world,
put her hand into Mr. Osborne's, who, of course, could see the way
among the chairs and ottomans a great deal better than she could. But
this arrangement left Mr. Joseph Sedley tete-a-tete with Rebecca, at
the drawing-room table, where the latter was occupied in knitting a
green silk purse.
"There is no need to ask family secrets," said Miss Sharp. "Those two
have told theirs."
"As soon as he gets his company," said Joseph, "I believe the affair is
settled. George Osborne is a capital fellow."
"And your sister the dearest creature in the world," said Rebecca.
"Happy the man who wins her!" With this, Miss Sharp gave a great sigh.
When two unmarried persons get together, and talk upon such delicate
subjects as the present, a great deal of confidence and intimacy is
presently established between them. There is no need of giving a
special report of the conversation which now took place between Mr.
Sedley and the young lady; for the conversation, as may be judged from
the foregoing specimen, was not especially witty or eloquent; it seldom
is in private societies, or anywhere except in very high-flown and
ingenious novels. As there was music in the next room, the talk was
carried on, of course, in a low and becoming tone, though, for the
matter of that, the couple in the next apartment would not have been
disturbed had the talking been ever so loud, so occupied were they with
their own pursuits.
Almost for the first time in his life, Mr. Sedley found himself
talking, without the least timidity or hesitation, to a person of the
other sex. Miss Rebecca asked him a great number of questions about
India, which gave him an opportunity of narrating many interesting
anecdotes about that country and himself. He described the balls at
Government House, and the manner in which they kept themselves cool in
the hot weather, with punkahs, tatties, and other contrivances; and he
was very witty regarding the number of Scotchmen whom Lord Minto, the
Governor-General, patronised; and then he described a tiger-hunt; and
the manner in which the mahout of his elephant had been pulled off his
seat by one of the infuriated animals. How delighted Miss Rebecca was
at the Government balls, and how she laughed at the stories of the
Scotch aides-de-camp, and called Mr. Sedley a sad wicked satirical
creature; and how frightened she was at the story of the elephant! "For
your mother's sake, dear Mr. Sedley," she said, "for the sake of all
your friends, promise NEVER to go on one of those horrid expeditions."
"Pooh, pooh, Miss Sharp," said he, pulling up his shirt-collars; "the
danger makes the sport only the pleasanter." He had never been but once
at a tiger-hunt, when the accident in question occurred, and when he
was half killed--not by the tiger, but by the fright. And as he talked
on, he grew quite bold, and actually had the audacity to ask Miss
Rebecca for whom she was knitting the green silk purse? He was quite
surprised and delighted at his own graceful familiar manner.
"For any one who wants a purse," replied Miss Rebecca, looking at him
in the most gentle winning way. Sedley was going to make one of the
most eloquent speeches possible, and had begun--"O Miss Sharp, how--"
when some song which was performed in the other room came to an end,
and caused him to hear his own voice so distinctly that he stopped,
blushed, and blew his nose in great agitation.
"Did you ever hear anything like your brother's eloquence?" whispered
Mr. Osborne to Amelia. "Why, your friend has worked miracles."
"The more the better," said Miss Amelia; who, like almost all women who
are worth a pin, was a match-maker in her heart, and would have been
delighted that Joseph should carry back a wife to India. She had, too,
in the course of this few days' constant intercourse, warmed into a
most tender friendship for Rebecca, and discovered a million of virtues
and amiable qualities in her which she had not perceived when they were
at Chiswick together. For the affection of young ladies is of as rapid
growth as Jack's bean-stalk, and reaches up to the sky in a night. It
is no blame to them that after marriage this Sehnsucht nach der Liebe
subsides. It is what sentimentalists, who deal in very big words, call
a yearning after the Ideal, and simply means that women are commonly
not satisfied until they have husbands and children on whom they may
centre affections, which are spent elsewhere, as it were, in small
change.
Having expended her little store of songs, or having stayed long enough
in the back drawing-room, it now appeared proper to Miss Amelia to ask
her friend to sing. "You would not have listened to me," she said to
Mr. Osborne (though she knew she was telling a fib), "had you heard
Rebecca first."
"I give Miss Sharp warning, though," said Osborne, "that, right or
wrong, I consider Miss Amelia Sedley the first singer in the world."
"You shall hear," said Amelia; and Joseph Sedley was actually polite
enough to carry the candles to the piano. Osborne hinted that he should
like quite as well to sit in the dark; but Miss Sedley, laughing,
declined to bear him company any farther, and the two accordingly
followed Mr. Joseph. Rebecca sang far better than her friend (though
of course Osborne was free to keep his opinion), and exerted herself to
the utmost, and, indeed, to the wonder of Amelia, who had never known
her perform so well. She sang a French song, which Joseph did not
understand in the least, and which George confessed he did not
understand, and then a number of those simple ballads which were the
fashion forty years ago, and in which British tars, our King, poor
Susan, blue-eyed Mary, and the like, were the principal themes. They
are not, it is said, very brilliant, in a musical point of view, but
contain numberless good-natured, simple appeals to the affections,
which people understood better than the milk-and-water lagrime,
sospiri, and felicita of the eternal Donizettian music with which we
are favoured now-a-days.