Vanity Fair (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

by William Makepeace Thackeray

  The old haunts, the old fields and woods, the copses, ponds, and gardens, the rooms of the old house where she had spent a couple of years seven years ago, were all carefully revisited by her. She had been young there, or comparatively so, for she forgot the time when she ever was young—but she remembered her thoughts and feelings seven years back, and contrasted them with those which she had at present, now that she had seen the world and lived with great people, and raised herself far beyond her original humble station.

  ‘I have passed beyond it, because I have brains,‘ Becky thought, ‘and almost all the rest of the world are fools. I could not go back, and consort with those people now, whom I used to meet in my father‘s studio. Lords come up to my door with stars and garters instead of poor artists with screws of tobacco in their pockets. I have a gentleman for my husband, and an earl‘s daughter for my sister in the very house where I was little better than a servant a few years ago. But am I much better to do now in the world than I was when I was the poor painter‘s daughter, and wheedled the grocer round the corner for sugar and tea? Suppose I had married Francis who was so fond of me—I couldn‘t have been much poorer than I am now. Heigho! I wish I could exchange my position in society, and all my relations for a snug sum in the Three per Cent Consols;‘ for so it was that Becky felt the Vanity of human affairs, and it was in those securities that she would have liked to cast anchor.

  It may perhaps have struck her that to have been honest and humble, to have done her duty, and to have marched straightforward on her way, would have brought her as near happiness as that path by which she was striving to attain it. But,—just as the children at Queen‘s Crawley went round the room, where the body of their father lay;—if ever Becky had these thoughts, she was accustomed to walk round them, and not look in. She eluded them, and despised them—or at least she was committed to the other path from which retreat was now impossible. And for my part I believe that remorse is the least active of all a man‘s moral senses—the very easiest to be deadened when wakened: and in some never wakened at all. We grieve at being found out, and at the idea of shame or punishment; but the mere sense of wrong makes very few people unhappy in Vanity Fair.

  So Rebecca, during her stay at Queen‘s Crawley, made as many friends of the Mammon of Unrighteousnessmi as she could possibly bring under control. Lady Jane and her husband bade her farewell with the warmest demonstrations of goodwill. They looked forward with pleasure to the time when the family-house in Gaunt Street being repaired and beautified, they were to meet again in London. Lady Southdown made her up a packet of medicine, and sent a letter by her to the Rev. Lawrence Grills, exhorting that gentleman to save the brand who ‘honoured‘ the letter from the burning. Pitt accompanied them with four horses in the carriage to Mudbury, having sent on their baggage in a cart previously, accompanied with loads of game.

  ‘How happy you will be to see your darling little boy again!‘ Lady Crawley said, taking leave of her kinswoman.

  ‘Oh, so happy!‘ said Rebecca, throwing up the green eyes. She was immensely happy to be free of the place, and yet loath to go. Queen‘s Crawley was abominably stupid; and yet the air there was somehow purer than that which she had been accustomed to breathe. Everybody had been dull, but had been kind in their way. ‘It is all the influence of a long course of Three per Cents,‘ Becky said to herself, and was right very likely.

  However, the London lamps flashed joyfully as the stage rolled into Piccadilly, and Briggs had made a beautiful fire in Curzon Street, and little Rawdon was up to welcome back his papa and mamma.

  CHAPTER XLII

  Which Treats of the Osborne Family

  Considerable time has elapsed since we have seen our respectable friend, old Mr. Osborne of Russell Square. He has not been the happiest of mortals since last we met him. Events have occurred which have not improved his temper, and in more instances than one he has not been allowed to have his own way. To be thwarted in this reasonable desire was always very injurious to the old gentleman; and resistance became doubly exasperating when gout, age, loneliness, and the force of many disappointments combined to weigh him down. His stiff black hair began to grow quite white soon after his son‘s death; his face grew redder; his hands trembled more and more as he poured out his glass of port wine. He led his clerks a dire life in the City; his family at home were not much happier. I doubt if Rebecca, whom we have seen piously praying for Consols, would have exchanged her poverty and the daredevil excitement and chances of her life, for Osborne‘s money and the humdrum gloom which enveloped him. He had proposed for Miss Swartz, but had been rejected scornfully by the partisans of that lady, who married her to a young sprig of Scotch nobility. He was a man to have married a woman out of low life, and bullied her dreadfully afterwards: but no person presented herself suitable to his taste; and, instead, he tyrannized over his unmarried daughter, at home. She had a fine carriage and fine horses, and sat at the head of a table loaded with the grandest plate. She had a cheque-book, a prize footman to follow her when she walked, unlimited credit, and bows and compliments from all the tradesmen, and all the appurtenances of an heiress; but she spent a woful time. The little charity-girls at the Foundling, the sweeperess at the crossing, the poorest under-kitchenmaid in the servants‘ hall, was happy compared to that unfortunate and now middle-aged young lady.

  Frederick Bullock, Esq., of the house of Bullock, Hulker, and Bullock, had married Maria Osborne, not without a great deal of difficulty and grumbling on Mr. Bullock‘s part. George being dead and cut out of his father‘s will, Frederick insisted that the half of the old gentleman‘s property should be settled upon his Maria, and indeed, for a long time, refused ‘to come to the scratch‘ (it was Mr. Frederick‘s own expression) on any other terms. Osborne said Fred had agreed to take his daughter with twenty thousand, and he should bind himself to no more. ‘Fred might take it, and welcome, or leave it, and go and be hanged.‘ Fred, whose hopes had been raised when George had been disinherited, thought himself infamously swindled by the old merchant, and for some time made as if he would break off the match altogether. Osborne withdrew his account from Bullock and Hulker‘s, went on ‘Change with a horsewhip which he swore he would lay across the back of a certain scoundrel that should be nameless, and demeaned himself in his usual violent manner. Jane Osborne condoled with her sister Maria during this family feud. ‘I always told you, Maria, that it was your money he loved, and not you,‘ she said, soothingly.

  ‘He selected me and my money at any rate: he didn‘t choose you and yours,‘ replied Maria, tossing up her head.

  The rupture was, however, only temporary. Fred‘s father and senior partners counselled him to take Maria, even with the twenty thousand settled, half down, and half at the death of Mr. Osborne, with the chances of the further division of the property. So he ‘knuckled down‘, again to use his own phrase; and sent old Hulker with peaceable overtures to Osborne. It was his father, he said, who would not hear of the match, and had made the difficulties; he was most anxious to keep the engagement. The excuse was sulkily accepted by Mr. Osborne. Hulker and Bullock were a high family of the City aristocracy, and connected with the ‘nobs‘ at the West End. It was something for the old man to be able to say, ‘My son, sir, of the house of Hulker, Bullock and Co., sir; my daughter‘s cousin, Lady Mary Mango, sir, daughter of the Right Honourable the Earl of Castlemouldy.‘ In his imagination he saw his house peopled by the ‘nobs‘. So he forgave young Bullock, and consented that the marriage should take place.

  It was a grand affair—the bridegroom‘s relatives giving the breakfast, their habitations being near St. George‘s, Hanover Square, where the business took place. The ‘nobs of the West End‘ were invited, and many of them signed the book. Mr. Mango and Lady Mary Mango were there, with the dear young Gwendoline and Gwinever Mango as bridesmaids; Colonel Bludyer of the Dragoon Guards (eldest son of the house of Bludyer Brothers, Mincing Lane), another cousin of the bridegroom, and the Honourable Mrs. Bludyer; the Hon
ourable George Boulter, Lord Levant‘s son, and his lady, Miss Mango that was; Lord Viscount Castletoddy; Honourable James McMull and Mrs. McMull (formerly Miss Swartz), and a host of fashionables, who have all married into Lombard Street, and done a great deal to ennoble Cornhill. mj

  The young couple had a house near Berkeley Square, and a small villa at Roehampton, among the banking colony there. Fred was considered to have made rather a mésalliance by the ladies of his family, whose grandfather had been in a charity school, and who were allied through the husbands with some of the best blood in England. And Maria was bound, by superior pride and great care in the composition of her visiting-book, to make up for the defects of birth; and felt it her duty to see her father and sister as little as possible.

  That she should utterly break with the old man, who had still so many scores of thousand pounds to give away, is absurd to suppose. Fred Bullock would never allow her to do that. But she was still young and incapable of hiding her feelings: and by inviting her papa and sister to her third-rate parties, and behaving very coldly to them when they came, and by avoiding Russell Square, and indiscreetly begging her father to quit that odious vulgar place; she did more harm than all Frederick‘s diplomacy could repair, and perilled her chance of her inheritance like a giddy heedless creature as she was.

  ‘So Russell Square is not good enough for Mrs. Maria, hey?‘ said the old gentleman, rattling up the carriage-windows, as he and his daughter drove away one night from Mrs. Frederick Bullock‘s, after dinner. ‘So she invites her father and sister to a second day‘s dinner (if those sides, or on trys, as she calls ‘em, weren‘t served yesterday, I‘m d—d), and to meet City folks and littery men, and keeps the earls and the ladies, and the honourables to herself. Honourables? Damn honourables! I am a plain British merchant, I am: and could buy the beggarly hounds over and over. Lords, indeed!—why, at one of her swarreys I saw one of them speak to a dam fiddler—a fellar I despise. And they won‘t come to Russell Square, won‘t they? Why, I‘ll lay my life I‘ve got a better glass of wine, and pay a better figure for it, and can show a handsomer service of silver, and can lay a better dinner on my mahogany, than ever they see on theirs—the cringing, sneaking, stuck-up fools. Drive on quick, James: I want to get back to Russell Square—ha, ha!‘ and he sank back into the corner with a furious laugh. With such reflections on his own superior merits it was the custom of the old gentleman not unfrequently to console himself.

  Jane Osborne could not but concur in these opinions respecting her sister‘s conduct; and when Mrs. Frederick‘s firstborn, Frederick Augustus Howard Stanley Devereux Bullock, was born, old Osborne, who was invited to the christening and to be godfather, contented himself with sending the child a gold cup, with twenty guineas inside it for the nurse. ‘That‘s more than any of your lords will give, I‘ll warrant,‘ he said, and refused to attend at the ceremony.

  The splendour of the gift, however, caused great satisfaction to the house of Bullock. Maria thought that her father was very much pleased with her, and Frederick augured the best for his little son and heir.

  One can fancy the pangs with which Miss Osborne in her solitude in Russell Square read the Morning Post, where her sister‘s name occurred every now and then, in the articles headed ‘Fashionable Reunions‘, and where she had an opportunity of reading a description of Mrs. F. Bullock‘s costume, when presented at the Drawing-room by Lady Frederica Bullock. Jane‘s own life, as we have said, admitted of no such grandeur. It was an awful existence. She had to get up of black winter‘s mornings to make breakfast for her scowling old father, who would have turned the whole house out of doors if his tea had not been ready at half-past eight. She remained silent opposite to him, listening to the urn hissing, and sitting in tremor while the parent read his paper, and consumed his accustomed portion of muffins and tea. At half-past nine he rose and went to the City, and she was almost free till dinner-time, to make visitations in the kitchen and to scold the servants: to drive abroad and descend upon the tradesmen, who were prodigiously respectful: to leave her cards and her papa‘s at the great glum respectable houses of their City friends; or to sit alone in the large drawing-room, expecting visitors; and working at a huge piece of worsted by the fire, on the sofa, hard by the great Iphigenia clock, which ticked and tolled with mournful loudness in the dreary room. The great glass over the mantelpiece, faced by the other great console-glass at the opposite end of the room, increased and multiplied between them the brown holland bag in which the chandelier hung; until you saw these brown holland bags fading away in endless perspectives, and this apartment of Miss Osborne‘s seemed the centre of a system of drawing-rooms. When she removed the cordovan leather from the grand piano, and ventured to play a few notes on it, it sounded with a mournful sadness, startling the dismal echoes of the house. George‘s picture was gone, and laid upstairs in a lumber-room in the garret; and though there was a consciousness of him, and father and daughter often instinctively knew that they were thinking of him, no mention was ever made of the brave and once darling son.

  At five o‘clock Mr. Osborne came back to his dinner, which he and his daughter took in silence (seldom broken, except when he swore and was savage, if the cooking was not to his liking), or which they shared twice in a month with a party of dismal friends of Osborne‘s rank and age. Old Dr. Gulp and his lady from Bloomsbury Square: old Mr. Frowser, the attorney, from Bedford Row, a very great man, and from his business, hand-in-glove with the ‘nobs at the West End‘; old Colonel Livermore, of the Bombay Army, and Mrs. Livermore from Upper Bedford Place: old Serjeant Toffy and Mrs. Toffy; and sometimes old Sir Thomas Coffin and Lady Coffin, from Bedford Square. Sir Thomas was celebrated as a hanging judge, and the particular tawny port was produced when he dined with Mr. Osborne.

  These people and their like gave the pompous Russell Square merchant pompous dinners back again. They had solemn rubbers of whist, when they went upstairs after drinking, and their carriages were called at half-past ten. Many rich people, whom we poor devils are in the habit of envying, lead contentedly an existence like that above described. Jane Osborne scarcely ever met a man under sixty, and almost the only bachelor who appeared in their society was Mr. Smirk, the celebrated lady‘s doctor.

  I can‘t say that nothing had occurred to disturb the monotony of this awful existence: the fact is, there had been a secret in poor Jane‘s life which had made her father more savage and morose than even nature, pride, and overfeeding had made him. This secret was connected with Miss Wirt, who had a cousin an artist, Mr. Smee, very celebrated since as a portrait-painter and R.A.,mk but who once was glad enough to give drawing-lessons to ladies of fashion. Mr. Smee has forgotten where Russell Square is now, but he was glad enough to visit it in the year 1818, when Miss Osborne had instruction from him.

  Smee (formerly a pupil of Sharpe of Frith Street,ml a dissolute, irregular, and unsuccessful man, but a man with great knowledge of his art) being the cousin of Miss Wirt, we say, and introduced by her to Miss Osborne, whose hand and heart were still free after various incomplete love affairs, felt a great attachment for this lady, and it is believed inspired one in her bosom. Miss Wirt was the confidante of this intrigue. I know not whether she used to leave the room where the master and his pupil were painting, in order to give them an opportunity for exchanging those vows and sentiments which cannot be uttered advantageously in the presence of a third party: I know not whether she hoped that should her cousin succeed in carrying off the rich merchant‘s daughter, he would give Miss Wirt a portion of the wealth which she had enabled him to win—all that is certain is, that Mr. Osborne got some hint of the transaction, came back from the City abruptly, and entered the drawing-room with his bamboo cane; found the painter, the pupil, and the companion all looking exceedingly pale there; turned the former out of doors with menaces that he would break every bone in his skin, and half an hour afterwards dismissed Miss Wirt likewise, kicking her trunks down the stairs, trampling on her bandboxes, and shaking his fist
at her hackney-coach, as it bore her away.

  Jane Osborne kept her bedroom for many days. She was not allowed to have a companion afterwards. Her father swore to her that she should not have a shilling of his money if she made any match without his concurrence; and as he wanted a woman to keep his house, he did not choose that she should marry: so that she was obliged to give up all projects with which Cupid had any share. During her papa‘s life, then, she resigned herself to the manner of existence here described, and was content to be an Old Maid. Her sister, meanwhile, was having children with finer names every year—and the intercourse between the two grew fainter continually. ‘Jane and I do not move in the same sphere of life,‘ Mrs. Bullock said. ‘I regard her as a sister, of course‘—which means—what does it mean when a lady says that she regards Jane as a sister?