Vanity Fair William Makepeace Thackeray (portable ebook reader .txt) 📖

nor could he muster sufficient presence of mind to find a pretext for backing out of this most delectable conversation.

“I thought you liked the City families pretty well,” he said, haughtily.

“Last year you mean, when I was fresh from that horrid vulgar school? Of course I did. Doesn’t every girl like to come home for the holidays? And how was I to know any better? But oh, Mr. Osborne, what a difference eighteen months’ experience makes! eighteen months spent, pardon me for saying so, with gentlemen. As for dear Amelia, she, I grant you, is a pearl, and would be charming anywhere. There now, I see you are beginning to be in a good humour; but oh these queer odd City people! And Mr. Jos⁠—how is that wonderful Mr. Joseph?”

“It seems to me you didn’t dislike that wonderful Mr. Joseph last year,” Osborne said kindly.

“How severe of you! Well, entre nous, I didn’t break my heart about him; yet if he had asked me to do what you mean by your looks (and very expressive and kind they are, too), I wouldn’t have said no.”

Mr. Osborne gave a look as much as to say, “Indeed, how very obliging!”

“What an honour to have had you for a brother-in-law, you are thinking? To be sister-in-law to George Osborne, Esquire, son of John Osborne, Esquire, son of⁠—what was your grandpapa, Mr. Osborne? Well, don’t be angry. You can’t help your pedigree, and I quite agree with you that I would have married Mr. Joe Sedley; for could a poor penniless girl do better? Now you know the whole secret. I’m frank and open; considering all things, it was very kind of you to allude to the circumstance⁠—very kind and polite. Amelia dear, Mr. Osborne and I were talking about your poor brother Joseph. How is he?”

Thus was George utterly routed. Not that Rebecca was in the right; but she had managed most successfully to put him in the wrong. And he now shamefully fled, feeling, if he stayed another minute, that he would have been made to look foolish in the presence of Amelia.

Though Rebecca had had the better of him, George was above the meanness of talebearing or revenge upon a lady⁠—only he could not help cleverly confiding to Captain Crawley, next day, some notions of his regarding Miss Rebecca⁠—that she was a sharp one, a dangerous one, a desperate flirt, etc.; in all of which opinions Crawley agreed laughingly, and with every one of which Miss Rebecca was made acquainted before twenty-four hours were over. They added to her original regard for Mr. Osborne. Her woman’s instinct had told her that it was George who had interrupted the success of her first love-passage, and she esteemed him accordingly.

“I only just warn you,” he said to Rawdon Crawley, with a knowing look⁠—he had bought the horse, and lost some score of guineas after dinner, “I just warn you⁠—I know women, and counsel you to be on the lookout.”

“Thank you, my boy,” said Crawley, with a look of peculiar gratitude. “You’re wide awake, I see.” And George went off, thinking Crawley was quite right.

He told Amelia of what he had done, and how he had counselled Rawdon Crawley⁠—a devilish good, straightforward fellow⁠—to be on his guard against that little sly, scheming Rebecca.

“Against whom?” Amelia cried.

“Your friend the governess.⁠—Don’t look so astonished.”

“O George, what have you done?” Amelia said. For her woman’s eyes, which Love had made sharp-sighted, had in one instant discovered a secret which was invisible to Miss Crawley, to poor virgin Briggs, and above all, to the stupid peepers of that young whiskered prig, Lieutenant Osborne.

For as Rebecca was shawling her in an upper apartment, where these two friends had an opportunity for a little of that secret talking and conspiring which form the delight of female life, Amelia, coming up to Rebecca, and taking her two little hands in hers, said, “Rebecca, I see it all.”

Rebecca kissed her.

And regarding this delightful secret, not one syllable more was said by either of the young women. But it was destined to come out before long.

Some short period after the above events, and Miss Rebecca Sharp still remaining at her patroness’s house in Park Lane, one more hatchment might have been seen in Great Gaunt Street, figuring amongst the many which usually ornament that dismal quarter. It was over Sir Pitt Crawley’s house; but it did not indicate the worthy baronet’s demise. It was a feminine hatchment, and indeed a few years back had served as a funeral compliment to Sir Pitt’s old mother, the late dowager Lady Crawley. Its period of service over, the hatchment had come down from the front of the house, and lived in retirement somewhere in the back premises of Sir Pitt’s mansion. It reappeared now for poor Rose Dawson. Sir Pitt was a widower again. The arms quartered on the shield along with his own were not, to be sure, poor Rose’s. She had no arms. But the cherubs painted on the scutcheon answered as well for her as for Sir Pitt’s mother, and Resurgam was written under the coat, flanked by the Crawley Dove and Serpent. Arms and Hatchments, Resurgam.⁠—Here is an opportunity for moralising!

Mr. Crawley had tended that otherwise friendless bedside. She went out of the world strengthened by such words and comfort as he could give her. For many years his was the only kindness she ever knew; the only friendship that solaced in any way that feeble, lonely soul. Her heart was dead long before her body. She had sold it to become Sir Pitt Crawley’s wife. Mothers and daughters are making the same bargain every day in Vanity Fair.

When the demise took place, her husband was in London attending to some of his innumerable schemes, and busy with his endless lawyers. He had found time, nevertheless, to call often in Park Lane, and to despatch many notes to Rebecca, entreating her, enjoining her, commanding her to return to her young pupils in the country, who were now utterly without companionship