Vanity Fair (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

by William Makepeace Thackeray

  What was it that poor old man had tried once or twice in vain to say? I hope it was that he wanted to see Amelia, and be reconciled before he left the world to the dear and faithful wife of his son: it was most likely that; for his will showed that the hatred which he had so long cherished had gone out of his heart.

  They found in the pocket of his dressing-gown the letter with the great red seal, which George had written him from Waterloo. He had looked at the other papers, too, relative to his son, for the key of the box in which he kept them was also in his pocket, and it was found the seals and envelopes had been broken—very likely on the night before the seizure, when the butler had taken him tea into his study, and found him reading in the great red family Bible.

  When the will was opened, it was found that half the property was left to George, and the remainder between the two sisters. Mr. Bullock to continue, for their joint benefit, the affairs of the commercial house, or to go out, as he thought fit. An annuity of five hundred pounds, chargeable on George‘s property, was left to his mother, ‘the widow of my beloved son George Osborne,‘ who was to resume the guardianship of the boy.

  ‘Major William Dobbin, my beloved son‘s friend,‘ was appointed executor; ‘and as out of his kindness and bounty, and with his own private funds, he maintained my grandson, and my son‘s widow, when they were otherwise without means of support‘ (the testator went on to say), ‘I hereby thank him heartily for his love and regard for them; and beseech him to accept such a sum as may be sufficient to purchase his commission as a lieutenant-colonel, or to be disposed of in any way he may think fit.‘

  When Amelia heard that her father-in-law was reconciled to her, her heart melted, and she was grateful for the fortune left to her. But when she heard how Georgy was restored to her, and knew how and by whom, and how it was William‘s bounty that supported her in poverty, how it was William who gave her her husband and her son—oh, then she sank on her knees, and prayed for blessings on that constant and kind heart: she bowed down and humbled herself, and kissed the feet, as it were, of that beautiful and generous affection.

  And gratitude was all that she had to pay back for such admirable devotion and benefits—only gratitude! If she thought of any other return, the image of George stood up out of the grave, and said, ‘You are mine, and mine only, now and for ever.‘

  William knew her feelings: had he not passed his whole life in divining them?

  When the nature of Mr. Osborne‘s will became known to the world, it was edifying to remark how Mrs. George Osborne rose in the estimation of the people forming her circle of acquaintance. The servants of Jos‘s establishment, who used to question her humble orders, and say they would ‘ask master‘, whether or not they could obey, never thought now of that sort of appeal. The cook forgot to sneer at her shabby old gowns (which, indeed, were quite eclipsed by that lady‘s finery when she was dressed to go to church of a Sunday evening); the others no longer grumbled at the sound of her bell, or delayed to answer that summons. The coachman, who grumbled that his osses should be brought out, and his carriage made into an ospital for that old feller and Mrs. O., drove her with the utmost alacrity now, and trembling lest he should be superseded by Mr. Osborne‘s coachman, asked ‘what them there Russell Square coachmen knew about town, and whether they was fit to sit on a box before a lady?‘ Jos‘s friends, male and female, suddenly became interested about Emmy, and cards of condolence multiplied on her hall-table. Jos himself, who had looked on her as a good-natured harmless pauper, to whom it was his duty to give victuals and shelter, paid her and the rich little boy, his nephew, the greatest respect—was anxious that she should have change and amusement after her troubles and trials, ‘poor dear girl‘—and began to appear at the breakfast-table, and most particularly to ask how she would like to dispose of the day.

  In her capacity of guardian to Georgy, she, with the consent of the major, her fellow-trustee, begged Miss Osborne to live in the Russell Square house as long as ever she chose to dwell there; but that lady, with thanks, declared that she never could think of remaining alone in that melancholy mansion, and departed in deep mourning, to Cheltenham, with a couple of her old domestics. The rest were liberally paid and dismissed; the faithful old butler, whom Mrs. Osborne proposed to retain, resigning and preferring to invest his savings in a public-house, where, let us hope, he was not unprosperous. Miss Osborne not choosing to live in Russell Square, Mrs. Osborne also, after consultation, declined to occupy the gloomy old mansion there. The house was dismantled; the rich furniture and effects, the awful chandeliers and dreary blank mirrors packed away and hidden, the rich rosewood drawing-room suite was muffled in straw, the carpets were rolled up and corded, the small select library of well-bound books were stowed into two wine chests, and the whole paraphernalia rolled away in several enormous vans to the Pantechnicon, where they were to lie until Georgy‘s majority. And the great heavy dark plate-chests went off to Messrs. Stumpy and Rowdy, to lie in the cellars of those eminent bankers until the same period should arrive.

  One day Emmy with George in her hand and clad in deep sables went to visit the deserted mansion which she had not entered since she was a girl. The place in front was littered with straw where the vans had been laden and rolled off. They went into the great blank rooms, the walls of which bore the marks where the pictures and mirrors had hung. Then they went up the great blank stone staircases into the upper rooms, into that where grandpapa died, as George said in a whisper, and then higher still into George‘s own room. The boy was still clinging by her side, but she thought of another besides him. She knew that it had been his father‘s room as well as his own.

  She went up to one of the open windows (one of those at which she used to gaze with a sick heart when the child was first taken from her) and thence as she looked out she could see over the trees of Russell Square, the old house in which she herself was born, and where she had passed so many happy days of sacred youth. They all came back to her, the pleasant holidays, the kind faces, the careless, joyful past times; and the long pains and trials that had since cast her down. She thought of these and of the man who had been her constant protector, her good genius, her sole benefactor, her tender and generous friend.

  ‘Look here, mother,‘ said Georgy, ‘here‘s a G. O. scratched on the glass with a diamond; I never saw it before, I never did it.‘

  ‘It was your father‘s room long, long before you were born, George,‘ she said, and she blushed as she kissed the boy.

  She was very silent as they drove back to Richmond where they had taken a temporary house: where the smiling lawyers used to come bustling over to see her (and we may be sure noted the visit in the bill): and where of course there was a room for Major Dobbin too, who rode over frequently, having much business to transact in behalf of his little ward.

  Georgy at this time was removed from Mr. Veal‘s on an unlimited holiday, and that gentleman was engaged to prepare an inscription for a fine marble slab, to be placed up in the Foundling under the monument of Captain George Osborne.

  The female Bullock, aunt of Georgy, although despoiled by that little monster of one-half of the sum which she expected from her father, nevertheless showed her charitableness of spirit by being reconciled to the mother and the boy. Roehampton is not far from Richmond, and one day the chariot, with the golden Bullocks emblazoned on the panels, and the flaccid children within, drove to Amelia‘s house at Richmond; and the Bullock family made an irruption into the garden, where Amelia was reading a book, Jos was in an arbour placidly dipping strawberries into wine, and the major in one of his Indian jackets was giving a back to Georgy, who chose to jump over him. He went over his head, and bounded into the little advance of Bullocks, with immense black bows in their hats, and huge black sashes, accompanying their mourning mamma.

  ‘He is just of the age for Rosa,‘ the fond parent thought, and glanced towards that dear child, an unwholesome little miss of seven years of age.

  ‘Rosa, go and kiss yo
ur dear cousin,‘ Mrs. Frederick said. ‘Don‘t you know me, George?—I am your aunt.‘

  ‘I know you well enough,‘ George said; ‘but I don‘t like kissing, please;‘ and he retreated from the obedient caresses of his cousin.

  ‘Take me to your dear mamma, you droll child,‘ Mrs. Frederick said; and those ladies accordingly met, after an absence of more than fifteen years. During Emmy‘s cares and poverty the other had never once thought about coming to see her; but now that she was decently prosperous in the world, her sister-in-law came to her as a matter of course.

  So did numbers more. Our old friend, Miss Swartz, and her husband came thundering over from Hampton Court, with flaming yellow liveries, and was as impetuously fond of Amelia as ever. Swartz would have liked her always if she could have seen her. One must do her that justice. But, que voulez-vous?sk—in this vast town one has not the time to go and seek one‘s friends; if they drop out of the rank they disappear, and we march on without them. Who is ever missed in Vanity Fair?

  But so, in a word, and before the period of grief for Mr. Osborne‘s death had subsided, Emmy found herself in the centre of a very genteel circle indeed; the members of which could not conceive that anybody belonging to it was not very lucky. There was scarce one of the ladies that hadn‘t a relation a peer, though the husband might be a drysaltersl in the City. Some of the ladies were very bluesm and well informed; reading Mrs. Somerville,sn and frequenting the Royal Institution; others were severe and Evangelical, and held by Exeter Hall.“so Emmy, it must be owned, found herself entirely at a loss in the midst of their clavers,sp and suffered wofully on the one or two occasions in which she was compelled to accept Mrs. Frederick Bullock‘s hospitalities. That lady persisted in patronizing her, and determined most graciously to form her. She found Amelia‘s milliners for her, and regulated her household and her manners. She drove over constantly from Roehampton, and entertained her friend with faint fashionable fiddlefaddle and feeble Court slipslop. Jos liked to hear it, but the major used to go off growling at the appearance of this woman, with her twopenny gentility. He went to sleep under Frederick Bullock‘s bald head, after dinner, at one of the banker‘s best parties (Fred was still anxious that the balance of the Osborne property should be transferred from Stumpy and Rowdy‘s to them), and whilst Amelia, who did not know Latin, or who wrote the last crack article in the Edinburgh, and did not in the least deplore, or otherwise, Mr. Peel‘s late extraordinary tergiversation in the fatal Catholic Relief Bill,sq sat dumb amongst the ladies in the grand drawing-room, looking out upon velvet lawns, trim gravel walks, and glistening hot houses.

  ‘She seems good-natured but insipid,‘ said Mrs. Rowdy; ‘that major seems to be particularly épris.‘sr

  ‘She wants ton sadly,‘ said Mrs. Hollyock. ‘My dear creature, you never will be able to form her.‘

  ‘She is dreadfully ignorant or indifferent,‘ said Mrs. Glowry, with a voice as if from the grave, and a sad shake of the head and turban—‘I asked her if she thought that it was in 1836, according to Mr. Jowls, or in 1839, according to Mr. Wapshot, that the Pope was to fall: and she said—“Poor Pope! I hope not—What has he done?” ‘ss

  ‘She is my brother‘s widow, my dear friends,‘ Mrs. Frederick replied, ‘and as such I think we‘re all bound to give her every attention and instruction on entering into the world. You may fancy there can be no mercenary motive in those whose disappointments are well known.‘

  ‘That poor dear Mrs. Bullock,‘ said Rowdy to Hollyock, as they drove away together—‘she is always scheming and managing. She wants Mrs. Osborne‘s account to be taken from our house to hers—and the way in which she coaxes that boy, and makes him sit by that blear-eyed little Rosa, is perfectly ridiculous.‘

  ‘I wish Glowry was choked with her Man of Sin and her Battle of Armageddon,‘ cried the other; and the carriage rolled away over Putney Bridge.

  But this sort of society was too cruelly genteel for Emmy: and all jumped for joy when a foreign tour was proposed.

  CHAPTER LXII

  Am Rheinst

  The above every-day events had occurred, and a few weeks had passed, when, on one fine morning, Parliament being over, the summer advanced, and all the good company in London about to quit that city for their annual tour in search of pleasure or health, the Batavier steamboat left the Tower stairs laden with a goodly company of English fugitives. The quarter-deck awnings were up, and the benches and gangways crowded with scores of rosy children, bustling nursemaids, ladies in the prettiest pink bonnets and summer dresses, gentlemen in travelling caps and linen jackets, whose moustachios had just begun to sprout for the ensuing tour; and stout trim old veterans with starched neckcloths and neat-brushed hats, such as have invaded Europe any time since the conclusion of the war, and carry the national Goddem into every city of the Continent. The congregation of hat-boxes, and Bramah desks,su and dressing-cases, was prodigious. There were jaunty young Cambridge men travelling with their tutor, and going for a reading excursion to Nonnenwerth or Königswinter: there were Irish gentlemen, with the most dashing whiskers and jewellery, talking about horses incessantly, and prodigiously polite to the young ladies on board, whom, on the contrary, the Cambridge lads and their pale-faced tutor avoided with maiden coyness: there were old Pall Mall loungers bound for Ems and Wiesbaden, and a course of waters to clear off the dinners of the season, and a little roulette and trente-et-quarantesv to keep the excitement going: there was old Methuselah, who had married his young wife, with Captain Papillon of the Guards holding her parasol and guide-books: there was young May who was carrying off his bride on a pleasure tour (Mrs. Winter that was, and who had been at school with May‘s grandmother); there was Sir John and my lady with a dozen children, and corresponding nursemaids; and the great grandee Bareacres family that sat by themselves near the wheel, stared at everybody, and spoke to no one. Their carriages, emblazoned with coronets, and heaped with shining imperials, were on the fore-deck; locked in with a dozen more such vehicles: it was difficult to pass in and out amongst them: and the poor inmates of the fore-cabin had scarcely any space for locomotion. These consisted of a few magnificently attired gentlemen from Houndsditch, who brought their own provisions, and could have bought half the gay people in the grand saloon; a few honest fellows with moustachios and portfolios, who set to sketching before they had been half an hour on board; one or two French femmes de chambre who began to be dreadfully ill by the time the boat had passed Greenwich; a groom or two who lounged in the neighbourhood of the horse-boxes under their charge, or leaned over the side by the paddle-wheels, and talked about who was good for the Leger, and what they stood to win or lose for the Goodwood Cup.

  All the couriers, when they had done plunging about the ship, and had settled their various masters in the cabins or on the deck, congregated together and began to chatter and smoke; the Hebrew gentlemen joining them and looking at the carriages. There was Sir John‘s great carriage that would hold thirteen people; my Lord Methuselah‘s carriage, my Lord Bareacres‘s chariot, britzka, and fourgon, that anybody might pay for who liked. It was a wonder how my lord got the ready money to pay for the expenses of the journey. The Hebrew gentlemen knew how he got it. They knew what money his lordship had in his pocket at that instant, and what interest he paid for it, and who gave it him. Finally, there was a very neat, handsome travelling carriage, about which the gentlemen speculated.

  ‘A qui cette voiture-là?‘sw said one gentleman-courier with a large morocco money-bag and ear-rings, to another with ear-rings and a large morocco money-bag.

  ‘C‘est à Kirsch, je bense—je l‘ai vu toute à l‘heure—qui brenait des sangviches dans la voiture,‘sx said the courier, in a fine German French.

  Kirsch emerging presently from the neighbourhood of the hold where he had been bellowing instructions intermingled with polyglot oaths to the ship‘s men engaged in secreting the passengers‘ luggage, came to give an account of himself to his brother interpreters. He informed them that th
e carriage belonged to a nabob from Calcutta and Jamaica, enormously rich, and with whom he was engaged to travel; and at this moment a young gentleman who had been warned off the bridge between the paddle-boxes, and who had dropped thence on to the roof of Lord Methuselah‘s carriage, from which he had made his way over other carriages and imperials until he had clambered on to his own, descended thence and through the window into the body of the carriage to the applause of the couriers looking on.

  ‘Nous allons avoir une belie traversée,sy Monsieur George,‘ said the courier, with a grin, as he lifted his gold-laced cap.

  ‘D—your French,‘ said the young gentleman, ‘where‘s the biscuits, eh?‘ Whereupon Kirsch answered him in the English language or in such an imitation of it as he could command,—for though he was familiar with all languages, Mr. Kirsch was not acquainted with a single one and spoke all with indifferent volubility and incorrectness.

  The imperious young gentleman who gobbled the biscuits (and indeed it was time to refresh himself, for he had breakfasted at Richmond full three hours before) was our young friend George Osborne. Uncle Jos and his mamma were on the quarter-deck with a gentleman of whom they used to see a good deal, and the four were about to make a summer tour.

  Jos was seated at that moment on deck under the awning, and pretty nearly opposite to the Earl of Bareacres and his family, whose proceedings absorbed the Bengalee almost entirely. Both the noble couple looked rather younger than in the eventful year ‘15, when Jos remembered to have seen them at Brussels (indeed he always gave out in India that he was intimately acquainted with them). Lady Bareacres‘s hair which was then dark was now a beautiful golden auburn, whereas Lord Bareacres‘s whiskers, formerly red, were at present of a rich black with purple and green reflections in the light. But changed as they were, the movements of the noble pair occupied Jos‘s mind entirely. The presence of a lord fascinated him, and he could look at nothing else.