30

There came a day when the round of decorous pleasures and solemn gaieties in which Mr. Jos Sedley’s family indulged was interrupted by an event which happens in most houses.

The period of mourning for Mrs. Sedley’s death was only just concluded, and Jos scarcely had had time to cast off his black and appear in the splendid waistcoats which he loved, when it became evident to those about Mr. Sedley that another event was at hand, and that the old man was about to go seek for his wife in the dark land whither she had preceded him.

So there came one morning and sunrise when all the world got up and set about its various works and pleasures, with the exception of old John Sedley, who was not to fight with fortune, or to hope or scheme any more, but to go and take up a quiet and utterly unknown residence in a churchyard at Brompton by the side of his old wife. Major Dobbin, Jos, and Georgy followed his remains to the grave, in a black cloth coach.

The Major’s position, as guardian to Georgy rendered some meetings between him and old Osborne inevitable; and it was in one of these that old Osborne, a keen man of business, looking into the Major’s accounts with his ward and the boy’s mother, got a hint, which staggered him very much, and at once pained and pleased him, that it was out of William Dobbin’s own pocket that a part of the fund had been supplied upon which the poor widow and the child had subsisted.

When pressed upon the point, Dobbin, who could not tell lies, blushed and stammered a good deal and finally confessed. “The marriage,” he said (at which his interlocutor’s face grew dark) “was very much my doing. I thought my poor friend had gone so far that retreat from his engagement would have been dishonor to him and death to Mrs. Osborne, and I could do no less, when she was left without resources, than give what money I could spare to maintain her.”

“Major D.,” Mr. Osborne said, looking hard at him and turning very red too – ”you did me a great injury; but give me leave to tell you, sir, you are an honest feller. There’s my hand, sir “ and the pair shook hands, with great confusion on Major Dobbin’s part, thus found out in his act of charitable hypocrisy.

More than once he asked the Major about – about Mrs. George Osborne – a theme on which the Major could be very eloquent when he chose. He told Mr. Osborne of her sufferings – of her passionate attachment to her husband, whose memory she worshipped still – of the tender and dutiful manner in which she had supported her parents, and given up her boy, when it seemed to her her duty to do so. “You don’t know what she endured, sir,” said honest Dobbin with a tremor in his voice, “and I hope and trust you will be reconciled to her. If she took your son away from you, she gave hers to you; and however much you loved your George, depend on it, she loved hers ten times more.”

“By God, you are a good feller, sir,” was all Mr. Osborne said.

It had never struck him that the widow would feel any pain at parting from the boy, or that his having a fine fortune could grieve her. A reconciliation was announced as speedy and inevitable, and Amelia’s heart already began to beat at the notion of the awful meeting with George’s father.

It was never, however, destined to take place. Old Sedley’s lingering illness and death supervened, after which a meeting was for some time impossible. That catastrophe and other events may have worked upon Mr. Osborne. He was much shaken of late, and aged, and his mind was working inwardly. He had sent for his lawyers, and probably changed something in his will. The medical man who looked in pronounced him shaky, agitated, and talked of a little blood and the seaside; but he took neither of these remedies.

One day when he should have come down to breakfast, his servant missing him, went into his dressing-room and found him lying at the foot of the dressing-table in a fit. The doctors were sent for; Georgy stopped away from school. Osborne partially regained cognizance, but never could speak again, though he tried dreadfully once or twice, and in four days he died.

What was it that poor old man 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 one 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.

When the will was opened, it was found that half the property was left to George,

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. 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. Their new life began in the house in Russel Square.

31

Amelia, George, Dobbin and Jos commenced their journey about Europe as most respectable people of that time did.

Before the winter was far advanced, it is actually on record that Emmy took a night and received company with great propriety and modesty. She had a French master, who complimented her upon the purity of her accent and her facility of learning; the fact is she had learned long ago and grounded herself subsequently in the grammar so as to be able to teach it to George. Everybody was asked to the fetes of the grand marriage between two young members of aristocratic families. Garlands and triumphal arches were hung across the road to welcome the young bride.

* * *

A woman with light hair, in a low dress by no means so fresh as it had been, and with a black mask on, through the eyelets of which her eyes twinkled strangely, was seated at one of the roulette-tables with a card and a pin and a couple of florins before her. But in spite of her care and assiduity she guessed wrong and the last two florins followed each other under the croupier’s rake. Then she looked round her and saw Georgy’s honest face staring at the scene.

Jos, however, remained behind over the play-table; he was no gambler, but not averse to the little excitement of the sport now and then.

“Come and give me good luck,” she said, still in a foreign accent, quite different from that frank and perfectly English “Do you play much?” she said.

“I put a Nap or two down,” said Jos with a superb air, flinging down a gold piece.

“Yes; ay nap after dinner,” said the mask archly.

But Jos looking frightened, she continued, in her pretty French accent, “You do not play to win. No more do I. I play to forget, but I cannot. I cannot forget old times, monsieur. Your little nephew is the image of his father; and you – you are not changed – but yes, you are. Everybody changes, everybody forgets; nobody has any heart.”

“Good God, who is it?” asked Jos in a flutter.

“Can’t you guess, Joseph Sedley?” said the little woman in a sad voice, and undoing her mask, she looked at him. “You have forgotten me.”

“Good heavens! Mrs. Crawley!” gasped out Jos.

“Rebecca,” said the other, putting her hand on his; but she followed the game still, all the time she was looking at him.

“I am stopping at the Elephant,” she continued. “Ask for Madame de Raudon. I saw my dear Amelia to-day; how pretty she looked, and how happy! So do you! Everybody but me, who am wretched, Joseph Sedley.” And she put her money over from the red to the black, as if by a chance movement of her hand, and while she was wiping her eyes with a pocket-handkerchief fringed with torn lace. The red came up again, and she lost the whole of that stake. “Come away,” she said. “Come with me a little – we are old friends, are we not, dear Mr. Sedley?”

32

We must pass over a part of Mrs. Rebecca Crawley’s biography with that lightness and delicacy which the world demands.

She lingered about London whilst her husband was making preparations for his departure to his seat of government, and it is believed made more than one attempt to see her brother-in-law, Sir Pitt Crawley, and to work upon his feelings, which she had almost enlisted in her favour. Probably Lady Jane interposed. Of her own movement, she invited Rawdon to come and stop in Gaunt Street until his departure for Coventry Island, knowing that with him for a guard Mrs. Becky would not try to force her door.

She forgot to take any step whatever about her son, the little Rawdon, and did not even once propose to go and see him. That young gentleman was consigned to the entire guardianship of his aunt and uncle. His mamma wrote him a neat letter from Boulogne, when she quitted England, in which she requested him to mind his book, and said she was going to take a Continental tour, during which she would have the pleasure of writing to him again. But she never did for a year afterwards, and not, indeed, until Sir Pitt’s only boy, always sickly, died – then Rawdon’s mamma wrote the most affectionate composition to her darling son, who was made heir of Queen’s Crawley by this accident, and drawn more closely than ever to the kind lady, whose tender heart had already adopted him. Rawdon Crawley, then grown a tall, fine lad, blushed when he got the letter. “Oh, Aunt Jane, you are my mother!” he said; “and not – and not that one.”

But he wrote back a kind and respectful letter to Mrs. Rebecca, then living at a boarding-house at Florence. But we are advancing matters.

Her history was after all a mystery. Parties were divided about her. Some people who took the trouble to busy themselves in the matter said that she was the criminal, whilst others vowed that she was as innocent as a lamb and that her odious husband was in fault. She won over a good many by bursting into tears about her boy and exhibiting the most frantic grief when his name was mentioned, or she saw anybody like him.

Whenever Becky made a little circle for herself with incredible toils and labour, somebody came and swept it down rudely, and she had all her work to begin over again. It was very hard; very hard; lonely and disheartening.

Then she tried keeping house with a female friend; then the double menage began to quarrel and get into debt. Then she determined upon a boarding-house existence and lived for some time at that famous mansion in Paris, where she began exercising her graces and fascinations upon the shabby dandies and flyblown beauties who frequented her landlady’s salons.

But it is probable that her old creditors of 1815 found her out and caused her to leave Paris, for the poor little woman was forced to fly from the city rather suddenly, and went to Brussels. When Becky left Brussels, the sad truth is that she owed three months’ pension. So our little wanderer went about setting up her tent in various cities of Europe. Her taste for disrespectability grew more and more remarkable.

They say that, when Mrs. Crawley was particularly down on her luck, she gave concerts and lessons in music here and there. She was, in fact, no better than a vagabond upon this earth. When she got her money she gambled; when she had gambled it she was put to shifts to live; who knows how or by what means she succeeded?