Vanity Fair (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

by William Makepeace Thackeray

  Finally, the procession being formed in the order described by the American diplomatist, they marched into the apartment where the banquet was served: and which, as I have promised the reader he shall enjoy it, he shall have the liberty of ordering himself so as to suit his fancy.

  But it was when the ladies were alone that Becky knew the tug of war would come. And then indeed the little woman found herself in such a situation, as made her acknowledge the correctness of Lord Steyne‘s caution to her to beware of the society of ladies above her own sphere. As they say the persons who hate Irishmen most are Irishmen; so, assuredly, the greatest tyrants over women are women. When poor little Becky, alone with the ladies, went up to the fireplace whither the great ladies had repaired, the great ladies marched away and took possession of a table of drawings. When Becky followed them to the table of drawings, they dropped off one by one to the fire again. She tried to speak to one of the children (of whom she was commonly fond in public places), but Master George Gaunt was called away by his mamma; and the stranger was treated with such cruelty finally, that even Lady Steyne herself pitied her, and went up to speak to the friendless little woman.

  ‘Lord Steyne,‘ said her ladyship, as her wan cheeks glowed with a blush, ‘says you sing and play very beautifully, Mrs. Crawley—I wish you would do me the kindness to sing to me.‘

  ‘I will do anything that may give pleasure to my Lord Steyne or to you,‘ said Rebecca, sincerely grateful, and seating herself at the piano, began to sing.

  She sang religious songs of Mozart, which had been early favourites of Lady Steyne, and with such sweetness and tenderness that the lady lingering round the piano, sat down by its side, and listened until the tears rolled down her eyes. It is true that the opposition ladies at the other end of the room kept up a loud and ceaseless buzzing and talking; but the Lady Steyne did not hear those rumours. She was a child again—and had wandered back through a forty years‘ wilderness to her convent garden. The chapel organ had pealed the same tones, the organist, the sister whom she loved best of the community, had taught them to her in those early happy days. She was a girl once more, and the brief period of her happiness bloomed out again for an hour—she started when the jarring doors were flung open, and with a loud laugh from Lord Steyne, the men of the party entered full of gaiety.

  He saw at a glance what had happened in his absence: and was grateful to his wife for once. He went and spoke to her, and called her by her Christian name, so as again to bring blushes to her pale face—‘My wife says you have been singing like an angel,‘ he said to Becky. Now there are angels of two kinds, and both sorts, it is said, are charming in their way.

  Whatever the previous portion of the evening had been, the rest of that night was a great triumph for Becky. She sang her very best, and it was so good that every one of the men came and crowded round the piano. The women, her enemies, were left quite alone. And Mr. Paul Jefferson Jones thought he had made a conquest of Lady Gaunt by going up to her ladyship, and praising her delightful friend‘s first-rate singing.

  CHAPTER L

  Contains a Vulgar Incident

  The Muse, whoever she be, who presides over this Comic History, must now descend from the genteel heights in which she has been soaring, and have the goodness to drop down upon the lowly roof of John Sedley at Brompton, and describe what events are taking place there. Here, too, in this humble tenement, live care, and distrust, and dismay. Mrs. Clapp in the kitchen is grumbling in secret to her husband about the rent, and urging the good fellow to rebel against his old friend and patron and his present lodger. Mrs. Sedley has ceased to visit her landlady in the lower regions now, and indeed is in a position to patronize Mrs. Clapp no longer. How can one be condescending to a lady to whom one owes a matter of forty pound, and who is perpetually throwing out hints for the money? The Irish maidservant has not altered in the least in her kind and respectful behaviour; but Mrs. Sedley fancies that she is growing insolent and ungrateful, and, as the guilty thief who fears each bush an officer, sees threatening innuendoes and hints of capture in all the girl‘s speeches and answers. Miss Clapp, grown quite a young woman now, is declared by the soured old lady to be an unbearable and impudent little minx. Why Amelia can be so fond of her, or have her in her room so much, or walk out with her so constantly, Mrs. Sedley cannot conceive. The bitterness of poverty has poisoned the life of the once cheerful and kindly woman. She is thankless for Amelia‘s constant and gentle bearing towards her; carps at her for her efforts at kindness or service; rails at her for her silly pride in her child, and her neglect of her parents. Georgy‘s house is not a very lively one since uncle Jos‘s annuity has been withdrawn, and the little family are almost upon famine diet.

  Amelia thinks, and thinks, and racks her brain, to find some means of increasing the small pittance upon which the household is starving. Can she give lessons in anything? paint card-racks? do fine work? She finds that women are working hard, and better than she can, for twopence a day. She buys a couple of begilt Bristol boards at the fancy stationer‘s, and paints her very best upon them—a shepherd with a red waistcoat on one, and a pink face smiling in the midst of a pencil landscape—a shepherdess on the other, crossing a little bridge, with a little dog, nicely shaded. The man of the Fancy Repository and Brompton Emporium of Fine Arts (of whom she bought the screens, vainly hoping that he would re-purchase them when ornamented by her hand) can hardly hide the sneer with which he examines these feeble works of art. He looks askance at the lady who waits in the shop, and ties up the cards again in their envelope of whity brown paper, and hands them to the poor widow and Miss Clapp, who had never seen such beautiful things in her life, and had been quite confident that the man must give at least two guineas for the screens. They try at other shops in the interior of London, with faint sickening hopes. ‘Don‘t want ‘em,‘ says one. ‘Be off,‘ says another, fiercely. Three and sixpence have been spent in vain—the screens retire to Miss Clapp‘s bedroom, who persists in thinking them lovely.

  She writes out a little card in her neatest hand, and after long thought and labour of composition; in which the public is informed that ‘A Lady who has some time at her disposal, wishes to undertake the education of some little girls, whom she would instruct in English, in French, in Geography, in History, and in Music—address A. O., at Mr. Brown‘s‘; and she confides the card to the gentleman of the Fine Art Repository, who consents to allow it to lie upon the counter, where it grows dingy and fly-blown. Amelia passes the door wistfully many a time, in hopes that Mr. Brown will have some news to give her; but he never beckons her in. When she goes to make little purchases, there is no news for her. Poor simple lady, tender and weak—how are you to battle with the struggling violent world?

  She grows daily more careworn and sad: fixing upon her child alarmed eyes, whereof the little boy cannot interpret the expression. She starts up of a night and peeps into his room stealthily, to see that he is sleeping and not stolen away. She sleeps but little now. A constant thought and terror is haunting her. How she weeps and prays in the long silent nights—how she tries to hide from herself the thought which will return to her, that she ought to part with the boy,—that she is the only barrier between him and prosperity. She can‘t, she can‘t! Not now, at least. Some other day. Oh! it is too hard to think of and to bear.

  A thought comes over her which makes her blush and turn from herself, —her parents might keep the annuity—the curate would marry her and give a home to her and the boy. But George‘s picture and dearest memory are there to rebuke her. Shame and love say no to the sacrifice. She shrinks from it as from something unholy; and such thoughts never found a resting-place in that pure and gentle bosom.

  The combat, which we describe in a sentence or two, lasted for many weeks in poor Amelia‘s heart: during which, she had no confidante: indeed, she could have none: as she would not allow to herself the possibility of yielding: though she was giving way daily before the enemy with whom she had to battle. One tru
th after another was marshalling itself silently against her, and keeping its ground. Poverty and misery for all, want and degradation for her parents, injustice to the boy—one by one the outworks of the little citadel were taken, in which the poor soul passionately guarded her only love and treasure.

  At the beginning of the struggle, she had written off a letter of tender supplication to her brother at Calcutta, imploring him not to withdraw the support which he had granted to their parents, and painting in terms of artless pathos their lonely and hapless condition. She did not know the truth of the matter. The payment of Jos‘s annuity was still regular: but it was a money-lender in the City who was receiving it: old Sedley had sold it for a sum of money wherewith to prosecute his bootless schemes. Emmy was calculating eagerly the time that would elapse before the letter would arrive and be answered. She had written down the date in her pocket- book of the day when she dispatched it. To her son‘s guardian, the good major at Madras, she had not communicated any of her griefs and perplexities. She had not written to him since she wrote to congratulate him on his approaching marriage. She thought with sickening despondency, that that friend,—the only one, the one who had felt such a regard for her,—was fallen away.

  One day, when things had come to a very bad pass—when the creditors were pressing, the mother in hysteric grief, the father in more than usual gloom, the inmates of the family avoiding each other, each secretly oppressed with his private unhappiness and notion of wrong—the father and daughter happened to be left alone together; and Amelia thought to comfort her father, by telling him what she had done. She had written to Joseph—an answer must come in three or four months. He was always generous, though careless. He could not refuse, when he knew how straitened the circumstances of his parents.

  Then the poor old gentleman revealed the whole truth to her—that his son was still paying the annuity, which his own imprudence had flung away. He had not dared to tell it sooner. He thought Amelia‘s ghastly and terrified look, when, with a trembling, miserable voice he made the confession, conveyed reproaches to him for his concealment.

  ‘Ah!‘ said he, with quivering lips and turning away, ‘you despise your old father now.‘

  ‘Oh, papa! it is not that,‘ Amelia cried out, falling on his neck, and kissing him many times. ‘You are always good and kind. You did it for the best. It is not for the money—it is—O my God! my God! have mercy upon me, and give me strength to bear this trial;‘ and she kissed him again wildly, and went away.

  Still the father did not know what that explanation meant, and the burst of anguish with which the poor girl left him. It was that she was conquered. The sentence was passed. The child must go from her—to others—to forget her. Her heart and her treasure—her joy, hope, love, worship—her God, almost! She must give him up; and then—and then she would go to George; and they would watch over the child, and wait for him until he came to them in heaven.

  She put on her bonnet, scarcely knowing what she did, and went out to walk in the lanes by which George used to come back from school, and where she was in the habit of going on his return to meet the boy. It was May, a half-holiday. The leaves were all coming out, the weather was brilliant: the boy came running to her, flushed with health, singing, his bundle of school-books hanging by a thong. There he was. Both her arms were round him. No, it was impossible. They could not be going to part. ‘What is the matter, mother?‘ said he; ‘you look very pale.‘

  ‘Nothing, my child,‘ she said, and stooped down and kissed him.

  That night Amelia made the boy read the story of Samuel to her, and how Hannah, his mother, having weaned him, brought him to Eli the High Priest to minister before the Lord. And he read the song of gratitude which Hannah sang: and which says, Who it is who maketh poor and maketh rich, and bringeth low and exalteth—how the poor shall be raised up out of the dust, and how, in his own might, no man shall be strong. Then he read how Samuel‘s mother made him a little coat, and brought it to him from year to year when she came up to offer the yearly sacrifice.ou And then, in her sweet simple way, George‘s mother made commentaries to the boy upon this affecting story. How Hannah, though she loved her son so much, yet gave him up because of her vow. And how she must always have thought of him as she sat at home, far away, making the little coat: and Samuel, she was sure, never forgot his mother: and how happy she must have been as the time came (and the years pass away very quick) when she should see her boy, and how good and wise he had grown. This little sermon she spoke with a gentle solemn voice, and dry eyes, until she came to the account of their meeting—then the discourse broke off suddenly, the tender heart overflowed, and taking the boy to her breast, she rocked him in her arms, and wept silently over him in a sainted agony of tears.

  Her mind being made up, the widow began to take such measures as seemed right to her for advancing the end which she proposed. One day, Miss Osborne, in Russell Square (Amelia had not written the name or number of the house for ten years—her youth, her early story came back to her as she wrote the superscription)—one day Miss Osborne got a letter from Amelia, which made her blush very much and look towards her father, sitting glooming in his place at the other end of the table.

  In simple terms, Amelia told her the reasons which had induced her to change her mind respecting her boy. Her father had met with fresh misfortunes which had entirely ruined him. Her own pittance was so small that it would barely enable her to support her parents, and would not suffice to give George the advantages which were his due. Great as her sufferings would be at parting with him, she would, by God‘s help, endure them for the boy‘s sake. She knew that those to whom he was going, would do all in their power to make him happy. She described his disposition, such as she fancied it; quick and impatient of control or harshness; easily to be moved by love and kindness. In a postscript, she stipulated that she should have a written agreement, that she should see the child as often as she wished,—she could not part with him under any other terms,

  ‘What? Mrs. Pride has come down, has she?‘ old Osborne said, when with a tremulous eager voice Miss Osborne read him the letter—‘Reg‘lar starved out, hey? ha, ha! I knew she would.‘ He tried to keep his dignity, and to read his paper as usual,—but he could not follow it. He chuckled and swore to himself behind the sheet.

  At last he flung it down: and scowling at his daughter as his wont was, went out of the room into his study adjoining, from whence he presently returned with a key. He flung it to Miss Osborne.

  ‘Get the room over mine—his room that was—ready,‘ he said. ‘Yes, sir,‘ his daughter replied in a tremble. It was George‘s room. It had not been opened for more than ten years. Some of his clothes, papers, handkerchiefs, whips and caps, fishing-rods and sporting gear, were still there. An Army List of 1814, with his name written on the cover; a little dictionary he was wont to use in writing; and the Bible his mother had given him, were on the mantelpiece; with a pair of spurs, and a dried inkstand covered with the dust of ten years. Ah, since that ink was wet, what days and people had passed away! The writing-book still on the table, was blotted with his hand.

  Miss Osborne was much affected when she first entered this room with the servants under her. She sank quite pale on the little bed. ‘This is blessed news, mam—indeed, mam,‘ the housekeeper said; ‘and the good old times is returning, mam. The dear little feller, to be sure, mam; how happy he will be! But some folks in May Fair, mam, will owe him a grudge, mam;‘ and she clicked back the bolt which held the window-sash, and let the air into the chamber.

  ‘You had better send that woman some money,‘ Mr. Osborne said, before he went out. ‘She shan‘t want for nothing. Send her a hundred pound.‘

  ‘And I‘ll go and see her to-morrow?‘ Miss Osborne asked.

  ‘That‘s your look out. She don‘t come in here, mind. No, by—, not for all the money in London. But she mustn‘t want now. So look out, and get things right.‘ With which brief speeches Mr. Osborne took leave of his daughter, and
went on his accustomed way into the City.

  ‘Here, papa, is some money,‘ Amelia said that night, kissing the old man, her father, and putting a bill for a hundred pounds into his hands. ‘And—and, mamma, don‘t be harsh with Georgy. He—he is not going to stop with us long.‘ She could say nothing more, and walked away silently to her room. Let us close it upon her prayers and her sorrow. I think we had best speak little about so much love and grief.

  Miss Osborne came the next day, according to the promise contained in her note, and saw Amelia. The meeting between them was friendly. A look and a few words from Miss Osborne showed the poor widow that, with regard to this woman at least, there need be no fear lest she should take the first place in her son‘s affection. She was cold, sensible, not unkind. The mother had not been so well pleased, perhaps, had the rival been better-looking, younger, more affectionate, warmer-hearted. Miss Osborne, on the other hand, thought of old times and memories, and could not but be touched with the poor mother‘s pitiful situation. She was conquered, and laying down her arms, as it were, she humbly submitted. That day they arranged together, the preliminaries of the treaty of capitulation.

  George was kept from school the next day, and saw his aunt. Amelia left them alone together, and went to her room. She was trying the separation: —as that poor gentle Lady Jane Grey felt the edge of the axe that was to come down and sever her slender life.ov Days were passed in parleys, visits, preparations. The widow broke the matter to Georgy with great caution; she looked to see him very much affected by the intelligence. He was rather elated than otherwise, and the poor woman turned sadly away. He bragged about the news that day to the boys at school; told them how he was going to live with his grandpapa, his father‘s father, not the one who comes here sometimes; and that he would be very rich, and have a carriage, and a pony, and go to a much finer school, and when he was rich he would buy Leader‘s pencil-case, and pay the tart-woman. The boy was the image of his father, as his fond mother thought.