Vanity Fair (18 page)

"My dear, you are a perfect trouvaille," Miss Crawley would say. "I
wish you could come to me in London, but I couldn't make a butt of
you as I do of poor Briggs no, no, you little sly creature; you are
too clever—Isn't she, Firkin?"

Mrs. Firkin (who was dressing the very small remnant of hair which
remained on Miss Crawley's pate), flung up her head and said, "I
think Miss is very clever," with the most killing sarcastic air. In
fact, Mrs. Firkin had that natural jealousy which is one of the main
principles of every honest woman.

After rebuffing Sir Huddleston Fuddleston, Miss Crawley ordered that
Rawdon Crawley should lead her in to dinner every day, and that
Becky should follow with her cushion—or else she would have Becky's
arm and Rawdon with the pillow. "We must sit together," she said.
"We're the only three Christians in the county, my love"—in which
case, it must be confessed, that religion was at a very low ebb in
the county of Hants.

Besides being such a fine religionist, Miss Crawley was, as we have
said, an Ultra-liberal in opinions, and always took occasion to
express these in the most candid manner.

"What is birth, my dear!" she would say to Rebecca—"Look at my
brother Pitt; look at the Huddlestons, who have been here since
Henry II; look at poor Bute at the parsonage—is any one of them
equal to you in intelligence or breeding? Equal to you—they are not
even equal to poor dear Briggs, my companion, or Bowls, my butler.
You, my love, are a little paragon—positively a little jewel—You
have more brains than half the shire—if merit had its reward you
ought to be a Duchess—no, there ought to be no duchesses at all—
but you ought to have no superior, and I consider you, my love, as
my equal in every respect; and—will you put some coals on the fire,
my dear; and will you pick this dress of mine, and alter it, you who
can do it so well?" So this old philanthropist used to make her
equal run of her errands, execute her millinery, and read her to
sleep with French novels, every night.

At this time, as some old readers may recollect, the genteel world
had been thrown into a considerable state of excitement by two
events, which, as the papers say, might give employment to the
gentlemen of the long robe. Ensign Shafton had run away with Lady
Barbara Fitzurse, the Earl of Bruin's daughter and heiress; and poor
Vere Vane, a gentleman who, up to forty, had maintained a most
respectable character and reared a numerous family, suddenly and
outrageously left his home, for the sake of Mrs. Rougemont, the
actress, who was sixty-five years of age.

"That was the most beautiful part of dear Lord Nelson's character,"
Miss Crawley said. "He went to the deuce for a woman. There must
be good in a man who will do that. I adore all impudent matches.—
What I like best, is for a nobleman to marry a miller's daughter, as
Lord Flowerdale did—it makes all the women so angry—I wish some
great man would run away with you, my dear; I'm sure you're pretty
enough."

"Two post-boys!—Oh, it would be delightful!" Rebecca owned.

"And what I like next best, is for a poor fellow to run away with a
rich girl. I have set my heart on Rawdon running away with some
one."

"A rich some one, or a poor some one?"

"Why, you goose! Rawdon has not a shilling but what I give him. He
is crible de dettes—he must repair his fortunes, and succeed in the
world."

"Is he very clever?" Rebecca asked.

"Clever, my love?—not an idea in the world beyond his horses, and
his regiment, and his hunting, and his play; but he must succeed—
he's so delightfully wicked. Don't you know he has hit a man, and
shot an injured father through the hat only? He's adored in his
regiment; and all the young men at Wattier's and the Cocoa-Tree
swear by him."

When Miss Rebecca Sharp wrote to her beloved friend the account of
the little ball at Queen's Crawley, and the manner in which, for the
first time, Captain Crawley had distinguished her, she did not,
strange to relate, give an altogether accurate account of the
transaction. The Captain had distinguished her a great number of
times before. The Captain had met her in a half-score of walks.
The Captain had lighted upon her in a half-hundred of corridors and
passages. The Captain had hung over her piano twenty times of an
evening (my Lady was now upstairs, being ill, and nobody heeded her)
as Miss Sharp sang. The Captain had written her notes (the best
that the great blundering dragoon could devise and spell; but
dulness gets on as well as any other quality with women). But when
he put the first of the notes into the leaves of the song she was
singing, the little governess, rising and looking him steadily in
the face, took up the triangular missive daintily, and waved it
about as if it were a cocked hat, and she, advancing to the enemy,
popped the note into the fire, and made him a very low curtsey, and
went back to her place, and began to sing away again more merrily
than ever.

"What's that?" said Miss Crawley, interrupted in her after-dinner
doze by the stoppage of the music.

"It's a false note," Miss Sharp said with a laugh; and Rawdon
Crawley fumed with rage and mortification.

Seeing the evident partiality of Miss Crawley for the new governess,
how good it was of Mrs. Bute Crawley not to be jealous, and to
welcome the young lady to the Rectory, and not only her, but Rawdon
Crawley, her husband's rival in the Old Maid's five per cents! They
became very fond of each other's society, Mrs. Crawley and her
nephew. He gave up hunting; he declined entertainments at
Fuddleston: he would not dine with the mess of the depot at Mudbury:
his great pleasure was to stroll over to Crawley parsonage—whither
Miss Crawley came too; and as their mamma was ill, why not the
children with Miss Sharp? So the children (little dears!) came with
Miss Sharp; and of an evening some of the party would walk back
together. Not Miss Crawley—she preferred her carriage—but the
walk over the Rectory fields, and in at the little park wicket, and
through the dark plantation, and up the checkered avenue to Queen's
Crawley, was charming in the moonlight to two such lovers of the
picturesque as the Captain and Miss Rebecca.

"O those stars, those stars!" Miss Rebecca would say, turning her
twinkling green eyes up towards them. "I feel myself almost a
spirit when I gaze upon them."

"O—ah—Gad—yes, so do I exactly, Miss Sharp," the other enthusiast
replied. "You don't mind my cigar, do you, Miss Sharp?" Miss Sharp
loved the smell of a cigar out of doors beyond everything in the
world—and she just tasted one too, in the prettiest way possible,
and gave a little puff, and a little scream, and a little giggle,
and restored the delicacy to the Captain, who twirled his moustache,
and straightway puffed it into a blaze that glowed quite red in the
dark plantation, and swore—"Jove—aw—Gad—aw—it's the finest
segaw I ever smoked in the world aw," for his intellect and
conversation were alike brilliant and becoming to a heavy young
dragoon.

Old Sir Pitt, who was taking his pipe and beer, and talking to John
Horrocks about a "ship" that was to be killed, espied the pair so
occupied from his study-window, and with dreadful oaths swore that
if it wasn't for Miss Crawley, he'd take Rawdon and bundle un out of
doors, like a rogue as he was.

"He be a bad'n, sure enough," Mr. Horrocks remarked; "and his man
Flethers is wuss, and have made such a row in the housekeeper's room
about the dinners and hale, as no lord would make—but I think Miss
Sharp's a match for'n, Sir Pitt," he added, after a pause.

And so, in truth, she was—for father and son too.

Quite a Sentimental Chapter

We must now take leave of Arcadia, and those amiable people
practising the rural virtues there, and travel back to London, to
inquire what has become of Miss Amelia "We don't care a fig for
her," writes some unknown correspondent with a pretty little
handwriting and a pink seal to her note. "She is fade and insipid,"
and adds some more kind remarks in this strain, which I should never
have repeated at all, but that they are in truth prodigiously
complimentary to the young lady whom they concern.

Has the beloved reader, in his experience of society, never heard
similar remarks by good-natured female friends; who always wonder
what you CAN see in Miss Smith that is so fascinating; or what COULD
induce Major Jones to propose for that silly insignificant simpering
Miss Thompson, who has nothing but her wax-doll face to recommend
her? What is there in a pair of pink cheeks and blue eyes forsooth?
these dear Moralists ask, and hint wisely that the gifts of genius,
the accomplishments of the mind, the mastery of Mangnall's
Questions, and a ladylike knowledge of botany and geology, the knack
of making poetry, the power of rattling sonatas in the Herz-manner,
and so forth, are far more valuable endowments for a female, than
those fugitive charms which a few years will inevitably tarnish. It
is quite edifying to hear women speculate upon the worthlessness and
the duration of beauty.

But though virtue is a much finer thing, and those hapless creatures
who suffer under the misfortune of good looks ought to be
continually put in mind of the fate which awaits them; and though,
very likely, the heroic female character which ladies admire is a
more glorious and beautiful object than the kind, fresh, smiling,
artless, tender little domestic goddess, whom men are inclined to
worship—yet the latter and inferior sort of women must have this
consolation—that the men do admire them after all; and that, in
spite of all our kind friends' warnings and protests, we go on in
our desperate error and folly, and shall to the end of the chapter.
Indeed, for my own part, though I have been repeatedly told by
persons for whom I have the greatest respect, that Miss Brown is an
insignificant chit, and Mrs. White has nothing but her petit minois
chiffonne, and Mrs. Black has not a word to say for herself; yet I
know that I have had the most delightful conversations with Mrs.
Black (of course, my dear Madam, they are inviolable): I see all the
men in a cluster round Mrs. White's chair: all the young fellows
battling to dance with Miss Brown; and so I am tempted to think that
to be despised by her sex is a very great compliment to a woman.

The young ladies in Amelia's society did this for her very
satisfactorily. For instance, there was scarcely any point upon
which the Misses Osborne, George's sisters, and the Mesdemoiselles
Dobbin agreed so well as in their estimate of her very trifling
merits: and their wonder that their brothers could find any charms
in her. "We are kind to her," the Misses Osborne said, a pair of
fine black-browed young ladies who had had the best of governesses,
masters, and milliners; and they treated her with such extreme
kindness and condescension, and patronised her so insufferably, that
the poor little thing was in fact perfectly dumb in their presence,
and to all outward appearance as stupid as they thought her. She
made efforts to like them, as in duty bound, and as sisters of her
future husband. She passed "long mornings" with them—the most
dreary and serious of forenoons. She drove out solemnly in their
great family coach with them, and Miss Wirt their governess, that
raw-boned Vestal. They took her to the ancient concerts by way of a
treat, and to the oratorio, and to St. Paul's to see the charity
children, where in such terror was she of her friends, she almost
did not dare be affected by the hymn the children sang. Their house
was comfortable; their papa's table rich and handsome; their society
solemn and genteel; their self-respect prodigious; they had the best
pew at the Foundling: all their habits were pompous and orderly, and
all their amusements intolerably dull and decorous. After every one
of her visits (and oh how glad she was when they were over!) Miss
Osborne and Miss Maria Osborne, and Miss Wirt, the vestal governess,
asked each other with increased wonder, "What could George find in
that creature?"

How is this? some carping reader exclaims. How is it that Amelia,
who had such a number of friends at school, and was so beloved
there, comes out into the world and is spurned by her discriminating
sex? My dear sir, there were no men at Miss Pinkerton's
establishment except the old dancing-master; and you would not have
had the girls fall out about HIM? When George, their handsome
brother, ran off directly after breakfast, and dined from home half-
a-dozen times a week, no wonder the neglected sisters felt a little
vexation. When young Bullock (of the firm of Hulker, Bullock & Co.,
Bankers, Lombard Street), who had been making up to Miss Maria the
last two seasons, actually asked Amelia to dance the cotillon, could
you expect that the former young lady should be pleased? And yet she
said she was, like an artless forgiving creature. "I'm so delighted
you like dear Amelia," she said quite eagerly to Mr. Bullock after
the dance. "She's engaged to my brother George; there's not much in
her, but she's the best-natured and most unaffected young creature:
at home we're all so fond of her." Dear girl! who can calculate the
depth of affection expressed in that enthusiastic SO?

Miss Wirt and these two affectionate young women so earnestly and
frequently impressed upon George Osborne's mind the enormity of the
sacrifice he was making, and his romantic generosity in throwing
himself away upon Amelia, that I'm not sure but that he really
thought he was one of the most deserving characters in the British
army, and gave himself up to be loved with a good deal of easy
resignation.

Somehow, although he left home every morning, as was stated, and
dined abroad six days in the week, when his sisters believed the
infatuated youth to be at Miss Sedley's apron-strings: he was NOT
always with Amelia, whilst the world supposed him at her feet.
Certain it is that on more occasions than one, when Captain Dobbin
called to look for his friend, Miss Osborne (who was very attentive
to the Captain, and anxious to hear his military stories, and to
know about the health of his dear Mamma), would laughingly point to
the opposite side of the square, and say, "Oh, you must go to the
Sedleys' to ask for George; WE never see him from morning till
night." At which kind of speech the Captain would laugh in rather an
absurd constrained manner, and turn off the conversation, like a
consummate man of the world, to some topic of general interest, such
as the Opera, the Prince's last ball at Carlton House, or the
weather—that blessing to society.