guage, and contented
herself by informing Mrs. Rawdon Crawley at their next
meeting, that she had received a charming letter from
that chere Mees, and that it was full of benevolent
things for Mrs. Crawley, who began seriously to have
hopes that the spinster would relent.

Meanwhile, she was the gayest and most admired of
Englishwomen:  and had a little European congress on her
reception-night.  Prussians and Cossacks, Spanish and
English--all the world was at Paris during this famous
winter:  to have seen the stars and cordons in Rebecca's
humble saloon would have made all Baker Street pale
with envy.  Famous warriors rode by her carriage in
the Bois, or crowded her modest little box at the Opera.
Rawdon was in the highest spirits.  There were no duns
in Paris as yet:  there were parties every day at Very's
or Beauvilliers'; play was plentiful and his luck good.
Tufto perhaps was sulky.  Mrs. Tufto had come over to
Paris at her own invitation, and besides this
contretemps, there were a score of generals now round
Becky's chair, and she might take her choice of a dozen
bouquets when she went to the play.  Lady Bareacres
and the chiefs of the English society, stupid and
irreproachable females, writhed with anguish at the
success of the little upstart Becky, whose poisoned jokes
quivered and rankled in their chaste breasts.  But she
had all the men on her side.  She fought the women
with indomitable courage, and they could not talk
scandal in any tongue but their own.

So in fetes, pleasures, and prosperity, the winter of
1815-16 passed away with Mrs. Rawdon Crawley,
who accommodated herself to polite life as if her
ancestors had been people of fashion for centuries past--
and who from her wit, talent, and energy, indeed merited
a place of honour in Vanity Fair.  In the early spring of
1816, Galignani's Journal contained the following
announcement in an interesting corner of the paper:  "On
the 26th of March--the Lady of Lieutenant-Colonel
Crawley, of the Life Guards Green--of a son and heir."

This event was copied into the London papers, out of
which Miss Briggs read the statement to Miss Crawley,
at breakfast, at Brighton.  The intelligence, expected as
it might have been, caused a crisis in the affairs of
the Crawley family.  The spinster's rage rose to its height,
and sending instantly for Pitt, her nephew, and for the
Lady Southdown, from Brunswick Square, she requested
an immediate celebration of the marriage which had been
so long pending between the two families.  And she
announced that it was her intention to allow the young
couple a thousand a year during her lifetime, at the
expiration of which the bulk of her property would be
settled upon her nephew and her dear niece, Lady Jane
Crawley.  Waxy came down to ratify the deeds--Lord
Southdown gave away his sister--she was married by a
Bishop, and not by the Rev.  Bartholomew Irons--to the
disappointment of the irregular prelate.

When they were married, Pitt would have liked to
take a hymeneal tour with his bride, as became people
of their condition.  But the affection of the old lady
towards Lady Jane had grown so strong, that she fairly
owned she could not part with her favourite.  Pitt and
his wife came therefore and lived with Miss Crawley:
and (greatly to the annoyance of poor Pitt, who
conceived himself a most injured character--being subject
to the humours of his aunt on one side, and of his
mother-in-law on the other) Lady Southdown, from her
neighbouring house, reigned over the whole family--
Pitt, Lady Jane, Miss Crawley, Briggs, Bowls, Firkin, and
all.  She pitilessly dosed them with her tracts and her
medicine, she dismissed Creamer, she installed Rodgers,
and soon stripped Miss Crawley of even the semblance
of authority.  The poor soul grew so timid that she
actually left off bullying Briggs any more, and clung to
her niece, more fond and terrified every day.  Peace to
thee, kind and selfish, vain and generous old heathen!--
We shall see thee no more.  Let us hope that Lady Jane
supported her kindly, and led her with gentle hand out
of the busy struggle of Vanity Fair.




CHAPTER XXXV


Widow and Mother

The news of the great fights of Quatre Bras and Waterloo
reached England at the same time.  The Gazette first
published the result of the two battles; at which glorious
intelligence all England thrilled with triumph and fear.
Particulars then followed; and after the announcement of
the victories came the list of the wounded and the slain.
Who can tell the dread with which that catalogue was
opened and read!  Fancy, at every village and homestead
almost through the three kingdoms, the great news
coming of the battles in Flanders, and the feelings of
exultation and gratitude, bereavement and sickening dismay,
when the lists of the regimental losses were gone through,
and it became known whether the dear friend and relative
had escaped or fallen.  Anybody who will take the trouble
of looking back to a file of the newspapers of the
time, must, even now, feel at second-hand this breathless
pause of expectation.  The lists of casualties are carried
on from day to day:  you stop in the midst as in a story
which is to be continued in our next.  Think what the
feelings must have been as those papers followed each
other fresh from the press; and if such an interest could
be felt in our country, and about a battle where but
twenty thousand of our people were engaged, think of
the condition of Europe for twenty years before, where
people were fighting, not by thousands, but by millions;
each one of whom as he struck his enemy wounded
horribly some other innocent heart far away.

The news which that famous Gazette brought to the
Osbornes gave a dreadful shock to the family and its chief.
The girls indulged unrestrained in their grief.  The
gloom-stricken old father was still more borne down by his fate
and sorrow.  He strove to think that a judgment was on
the boy for his disobedience.  He dared not own that the
severity of the sentence frightened him, and that its
fulfilment had come too soon upon his curses.  Sometimes a
shuddering terror struck him, as if he had been the author
of the doom which he had called down on his son.  There
was a chance before of reconciliation.  The boy's wife
might have died; or he might have come back and said,
Father I have sinned.  But there was no hope now.  He
stood on the other side of the gulf impassable, haunting
his parent with sad eyes.  He remembered them once
before so in a fever, when every one thought the lad was
dying, and he lay on his bed speechless, and gazing with a
dreadful gloom.  Good God! how the father clung to the
doctor then, and with what a sickening anxiety he
followed him:  what a weight of grief was off his mind when,
after the crisis of the fever, the lad recovered, and looked
at his father once more with eyes that recognised him.
But now there was no help or cure, or chance of
reconcilement:  above all, there were no humble words to
soothe vanity outraged and furious, or bring to its natural
flow the poisoned, angry blood.  And it is hard to say
which pang it was that tore the proud father's heart most
keenly--that his son should have gone out of the reach
of his forgiveness, or that the apology which his own
pride expected should have escaped him.

Whatever his sensations might have been, however, the
stem old man would have no confidant.  He never
mentioned his son's name to his daughters; but ordered the
elder to place all the females of the establishment in
mourning; and desired that the male servants should be
similarly attired in deep black.  All parties and entertainments,
of course, were to be put off.  No communications
were made to his future son-in-law, whose marriage-day
had been fixed:  but there was enough in Mr. Osborne's
appearance to prevent Mr. Bullock from making any
inquiries, or in any way pressing forward that ceremony.
He and the ladies whispered about it under their voices
in the drawing-room sometimes, whither the father never
came.  He remained constantly in his own study; the
whole front part of the house being closed until some
time after the completion of the general mourning.

About three weeks after the 18th of June, Mr.
Osborne's acquaintance, Sir William Dobbin, called at Mr.
Osborne's house in Russell Square, with a very pale and
agitated face, and insisted upon seeing that gentleman.
Ushered into his room, and after a few words, which
neither the speaker nor the host understood, the former
produced from an inclosure a letter sealed with a large
red seal.  "My son, Major Dobbin," the Alderman said,
with some hesitation, "despatched me a letter by an
officer of the --th, who arrived in town to-day.  My son's
letter contains one for you, Osborne." The Alderman
placed the letter on the table, and Osborne stared at him
for a moment or two in silence.  His looks frightened the
ambassador, who after looking guiltily for a little time at
the grief-stricken man, hurried away without another
word.

The letter was in George's well-known bold handwriting.
It was that one which he had written before daybreak
on the 16th of June, and just before he took leave
of Amelia.  The great red seal was emblazoned with the
sham coat of arms which Osborne had assumed from
the Peerage, with "Pax in bello" for a motto; that of the
ducal house with which the vain old man tried to fancy
himself connected.  The hand that signed it would never
hold pen or sword more.  The very seal that sealed it
had been robbed from George's dead body as it lay on the
field of battle.  The father knew nothing of this, but sat and
looked at the letter in terrified vacancy.  He almost fell
when he went to open it.

Have you ever had a difference with a dear friend?
How his letters, written in the period of love and
confidence, sicken and rebuke you!  What a dreary mourning
it is to dwell upon those vehement protests of dead
affection!  What lying epitaphs they make over the corpse of
love!  What dark, cruel comments upon Life and Vanities!
Most of us have got or written drawers full of them.
They are closet-skeletons which we keep and shun.
Osborne trembled long before the letter from his dead
son.

The poor boy's letter did not say much.  He had been
too proud to acknowledge the tenderness which his heart
felt.  He only said, that on the eve of a great battle, he
wished to bid his father farewell, and solemnly to implore
his good offices for the wife--it might be for the child--
whom he left behind him.  He owned with contrition that
his irregularities and his extravagance had already wasted
a large part of his mother's little fortune.  He thanked his
father for his former generous conduct; and he promised
him that if he fell on the field or survived it, he would
act in a manner worthy of the name of George Osborne.

His English habit, pride, awkwardness perhaps, had
prevented him from saying more.  His father could not
see the kiss George had placed on the superscription of
his letter.  Mr. Osborne dropped it with the bitterest,
deadliest pang of balked affection and revenge.  His son
was still beloved and unforgiven.

About two months afterwards, however, as the young
ladies of the family went to church with their father, they
remarked how he took a different seat from that which
he usually occupied when he chose to attend divine
worship; and that from his cushion opposite, he looked up at
the wall over their heads.  This caused the young women
likewise to gaze in the direction towards which their
father's gloomy eyes pointed:  and they saw an elaborate
monument upon the wall, where Britannia was represented
weeping over an urn, and a broken sword and a
couchant lion indicated that the piece of sculpture had
been erected in honour of a deceased warrior.  The
sculptors of those days had stocks of such funereal
emblems in hand; as you may see still on the walls of St.
Paul's, which are covered with hundreds of these
braggart heathen allegories.  There was a constant demand
for them during the first fifteen years of the present
century.

Under the memorial in question were emblazoned the
well-known and pompous Osborne arms; and the
inscription said, that the monument was "Sacred to the
memory of George Osborne, Junior, Esq., late a Captain
in his Majesty's --th regiment of foot, who fell on the
18th of June, 1815, aged 28 years, while fighting for his
king and country in the glorious victory of Waterloo.
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori."

The sight of that stone agitated the nerves of the
sisters so much, that Miss Maria was compelled to leave
the church.  The congregation made way respectfully for
those sobbing girls clothed in deep black, and pitied the
stern old father seated opposite the memorial of the dead
soldier.  "Will he forgive Mrs. George?" the girls said to
themselves as soon as their ebullition of grief was over.
Much conversation passed too among the acquaintances
of the Osborne family, who knew of the rupture between
the son and father caused by the former's marriage, as
to the chance of a reconciliation with the young widow.
There were bets among the gentlemen both about Russell
Square and in the City.

If the sisters had any anxiety regarding the possible
recognition of Amelia as a daughter of the family, it
was increased presently, and towards the end of the
autumn, by their father's announcement that he was going
abroad.  He did not say whither, but they knew at once
that his steps would be turned towards Belgium, and were
aware that George's widow was still in Brussels.  They
had pretty accurate news indeed of poor Amelia from
Lady Dobbin and her daughters.  Our honest Captain had
been promoted in consequence of the death of the second
Major of the regiment on the field; and the brave O'Dowd,
who had distinguished himself greatly here as upon all
occasions where he had a chance to show his coolness
and valour, was a Colonel and Companion of the Bath.

Very many of the brave --th, who had suffered
severely upon both days of action, were still at Brussels
in the autumn, recovering of their wounds.  The city was
a vast military hospital for months after the great battles;
and as men and officers began to rally from their hurts,
the gardens and places of public resort swarmed with
maimed warriors, old and young, who, just rescued out of
death, fell to gambling, and gaiety, and love-making, as
people of Vanity Fair will do.  Mr. Osborne found out
some of the --th easily.  He knew their uniform quite
well, and had been used to follow all the promotions and
exchanges in the regiment, and loved to talk about it and
its officers as if he had been one of the number.  On the
day after his arrival at Brussels, and as he issued from
his hotel, which faced the park, he saw a soldier in the
well-known facings, reposing on a stone bench in the
garden, and went and sate down trembling by the
wounded convalescent man.

"Were you in Captain Osborne's company?" he said,
and added, after a pause, "he was my son, sir."

The man was not of the Captain's company, but he
lifted up his unwounded arm and touched-his cap sadly
and respectfully to the haggard broken-spirited gentleman
who questioned him.  "The whole army didn't contain
a finer or a better officer," the soldier said.  "The Sergeant
of the Captain's company (Captain Raymond had it
now), was in town, though, and was just well of a shot
in the shoulder.  His honour might see him if he liked,
who could tell him anything he wanted to know about--
about the --th's actions.  But his honour had seen
Major Dobbin, no doubt, the brave Captain's great
friend; and Mrs. Osborne, who was here too, and had
been very bad, he heard everybody say.  They say she
was out of her mind like for six weeks or more.  But your
honour knows all about that--and asking your pardon"
--the man added.

Osborne put a guinea into the soldier's hand, and told
him he should have another if he would bring the Sergeant
to the Hotel du Parc; a promise which very soon
brought the desired officer to Mr. Osborne's presence.
And the first soldier went away; and after telling a
comrade or two how Captain Osborne's father was arrived,
and what a free-handed generous gentleman he was, they
went and made good cheer with drink and feasting, as
long as the guineas lasted which had come from the
proud purse of the mourning old father.

In the Sergeant's company, who was also just convalescent,
Osborne made the journey of Waterloo and
Quatre Bras, a journey which thousands of his countrymen
were then taking.  He took the Sergeant with him in
his carriage, and went through both fields under his
guidance.  He saw the point of the road where the regiment
marched into action on the 16th, and the slope down
which they drove the French cavalry who were pressing
on the retreating Belgians.  There was the spot where the
noble Captain cut down the French officer who was
grappling with the young Ensign for the colours, the
Colour-Sergeants having been shot down.  Along this road
they retreated on the next day, and here was the bank
at which the regiment bivouacked under the rain of the
night of the seventeenth.  Further on was the position
which they took and held during the day, forming time
after time to receive the charge of the enemy's horsemen
and lying down under the shelter of the bank from the
furious French cannonade.  And it was at this declivity
when at evening the whole English line received the order
to advance, as the enemy fell back after his last charge,
that the Captain, hurraying and rushing down the hill
waving his sword, received a shot and fell dead.  "It was
Major Dobbin who took back the Captain's body to
Brussels," the Sergeant said, in a low voice, "and had him
buried, as your honour knows." The peasants and relic-
hunters about the place were screaming round the pair,
as the soldier told his story, offering for sale all sorts of
mementoes of the fight, crosses, and epaulets, and
shattered cuirasses, and eagles.

Osborne gave a sumptuous reward to the Sergeant
when he parted with him, after having visited the scenes
of his son's last exploits.  His burial-place he had already
seen.  Indeed, he had driven thither immediately after his
arrival at Brussels.  George's body lay in the pretty burial-
ground of Laeken, near the city; in which place, having
once visited it on a party of pleasure, he had lightly
expressed a wish to have his grave made.  And there the
young officer was laid by his friend, in the unconsecrated
corner of the garden, separated by a little hedge from
the temples and towers and plantations of flowers and
shrubs, under which the Roman Catholic dead repose.  It
seemed a humiliation to old Osborne to think that his
son, an English gentleman, a captain in the famous British
army, should not be found worthy to lie in ground where
mere foreigners were buried.  Which of us is there can
tell how much vanity lurks in our warmest regard for
others, and how selfish our love is? Old Osborne did
not speculate much upon the mingled nature of his feelings,
and how his instinct and selfishness were combating
together.  He firmly believed that everything he did was
right, that he ought on all occasions to have his own way
--and like the sting of a wasp or serpent his hatred
rushed out armed and poisonous against anything like
opposition.  He was proud of his hatred as of everything
else.  Always to be right, always to trample forward, and
never to doubt, are not these the great qualities with
which dullness takes the lead in the world?

As after the drive to Waterloo, Mr. Osborne's carriage
was nearing the gates of the city at sunset, they met
another open barouche, in which were a couple of ladies
and a gentleman, and by the side of which an officer was
riding.  Osborne gave a start back, and the Sergeant,
seated with him, cast a look of surprise at his neighbour,
as he touched his cap to the officer, who mechanically
returned his salute.  It was Amelia, with the lame young
Ensign by her side, and opposite to her her faithful
friend Mrs. O'Dowd.  It was Amelia, but how changed
from the fresh and comely girl Osborne knew.  Her face
was white and thin.  Her pretty brown hair was parted
under a widow's cap--the poor child.  Her eyes were
fixed, and looking nowhere.  They stared blank in the
face of Osborne, as the carriages crossed each other, but
she did not know him; nor did he recognise her, until
looking up, he saw Dobbin riding by her:  and then he
knew who it was.  He hated her.  He did not know how
much until he saw her there.  When her carriage had
passed on, he turned and stared at the Sergeant, with a
curse and defiance in his eye cast at his companion, who
could not help looking at him--as much as to say "How
dare you look at me? Damn you!  I do hate her.  It is she
who has tumbled my hopes and all my pride down."
"Tell the scoundrel to drive on quick," he shouted with
an oath, to the lackey on the box.  A minute afterwards, a
horse came clattering over the pavement behind
Osborne's carriage, and Dobbin rode up.  His thoughts
had been elsewhere as the carriages passed each other,
and it was not until he had ridden some paces forward,
that he remembered it was Osborne who had just passed
him.  Then he turned to examine if the sight of her father-
in-law had made any impression on Amelia, but the poor
girl did not know who had passed.  Then William, who
daily used to accompany her in his drives, taking out his
watch, made some excuse about an engagement which he
suddenly recollected, and so rode off.  She did not
remark that either:  but sate looking before her, over the
homely landscape towards the woods in the distance, by
which George marched away.

Mr. Osborne, Mr. Osborne!" cried Dobbin, as he rode
up and held out his hand.  Osborne made no motion to
take it, but shouted out once more and with another curse
to his servant to drive on.

Dobbin laid his hand on the carriage side.  "I will see
you, sir," he said.  "I have a message for you."

"From that woman?" said Osborne, fiercely.

"No," replied the other, "from your son"; at which
Osborne fell back into the corner of his carriage, and
Dobbin allowing it to pass on, rode close behind it, and
so through the town until they reached Mr. Osborne's
hotel, and without a word.  There he followed Osborne
up to his apartments.  George had often been in the
rooms; they were the lodgings which the Crawleys had
occupied during their stay in Brussels.

"Pray, have you any commands for me, Captain
Dobbin, or, I beg your pardon, I should say MAJOR Dobbin,
since better men than you are dead, and you step into
their SHOES?" said Mr. Osborne, in that sarcastic tone
which he sometimes was pleased to assume.

"Better men ARE dead," Dobbin replied.  "I want to
speak to you about one."

"Make it short, sir," said the other with an oath,
scowling at his visitor.

"I am here as his closest friend," the Major resumed,
"and the executor of his will.  He made it before he went
into action.  Are you aware how small his means are,
and of the straitened circumstances of his widow?"

"I don't know his widow, sir," Osborne said.  "Let her
go back to her father." But the gentleman whom he
addressed was determined to remain in good temper, and
went on without heeding the interruption.

"Do you know, sir, Mrs. Osborne's condition? Her life
and her reason almost have been shaken by the blow
which has fallen on her.  It is very doubtful whether she
will rally.  There is a chance left for her, however, and it
is about this I came to speak to you.  She will be a mother
soon.  Will you visit the parent's offence upon the child's
head? or will you forgive the child for poor George's
sake?"

Osborne broke out into a rhapsody of self-praise and
imprecations;--by the first, excusing himself to his own
conscience for his conduct; by the second, exaggerating
the undutifulness of George.  No father in all England
could have behaved more generously to a son, who had
rebelled against him wickedly.  He had died without even
so much as confessing he was wrong.  Let him take
the consequences of his undutifulness and folly.  As for
himself, Mr. Osborne, he was a man of his word.  He
had sworn never to speak to that woman, or to recognize
her as his son's wife.  "And that's what you may tell
her," he concluded with an oath; "and that's what I will
stick to to the last day of my life."

There was no hope from that quarter then.  The widow
must live on her slender pittance, or on such aid as Jos
could give her.  "I might tell her, and she would not heed
it," thought Dobbin, sadly:  for the poor girl's thoughts
were not here at all since her catastrophe, and, stupefied
under the pressure of her sorrow, good and evil were
alike indifferent to her.

So, indeed, were even friendship and kindness.  She
received them both uncomplainingly, and having accepted
them, relapsed into her grief.

Suppose some twelve months after the above conversation
took place to have passed in the life of our poor
Amelia.  She has spent the first portion of that time in a
sorrow so profound and pitiable, that we who have been
watching and describing some of the emotions of that
weak and tender heart, must draw back in the presence
of the cruel grief under which it is bleeding.  Tread silently
round the hapless couch of the poor prostrate soul.
Shut gently the door of the dark chamber wherein she
suffers, as those kind people did who nursed her through
the first months of her pain, and never left her until
heaven had sent her consolation.  A day came--of
almost terrified delight and wonder--when the poor
widowed girl pressed a child upon her breast--a child, with
the eyes of George who was gone--a little boy, as beautiful
as a cherub.  What a miracle it was to hear its first
cry!  How she laughed and wept over it--how love, and
hope, and prayer woke again in her bosom as the baby
nestled there.  She was safe.  The doctors who attended
her, and had feared for her life or for her brain, had
waited anxiously for this crisis before they could
pronounce that either was secure.  It was worth the long
months of doubt and dread which the persons who had
constantly been with her had passed, to see her eyes once
more beaming tenderly upon them.

Our friend Dobbin was one of them.  It was he who
brought her back to England and to her mother's house;
when Mrs. O'Dowd, receiving a peremptory summons
from her Colonel, had been forced to quit her patient.
To see Dobbin holding the infant, and to hear Amelia's
laugh of triumph as she watched him, would have done
any man good who had a sense of humour.  William was
the godfather of the child, and exerted his ingenuity in
the purchase of cups, spoons, pap-boats, and corals for
this little Christian.

How his mother nursed him, and dressed him, and
lived upon him; how she drove away all nurses, and
would scarce allow any hand but her own to touch him;
how she considered that the greatest favour she could
confer upon his godfather, Major Dobbin, was to allow
the Major occasionally to dandle him, need not be told
here.  This child was her being.  Her existence was a
maternal caress.  She enveloped the feeble and unconscious
creature with love and worship.  It was her life
which the baby drank in from her bosom.  Of nights, and
when alone, she had stealthy and intense raptures of
motherly love, such as God's marvellous care has awarded
to the female instinct--joys how far higher and lower
than reason--blind beautiful devotions which only women's
hearts know.  It was William Dobbin's task to muse
upon these movements of Amelia's, and to watch her
heart; and if his love made him divine almost all the feelings
which agitated it, alas! he could see with a fatal
perspicuity that there was no place there for him.  And
so, gently, he bore his fate, knowing it, and content to
bear it.

I suppose Amelia's father and mother saw through the
intentions of the Major, and were not ill-disposed to
encourage him; for Dobbin visited their house daily, and
stayed for hours with them, or with Amelia, or with the
honest landlord, Mr. Clapp, and his family.  He brought,
on one pretext or another, presents to everybody, and
almost every day; and went, with the landlord's little girl,
who was rather a favourite with Amelia, by the name of
Major Sugarplums.  It was this little child who commonly
acted as mistress of the ceremonies to introduce him
to Mrs. Osborne.  She laughed one day when Major Sugarplums'
cab drove up to Fulham, and he descended from
it, bringing out a wooden horse, a drum, a trumpet, and
other warlike toys, for little Georgy, who was scarcely
six months old, and for whom the articles in question were
entirely premature.

The child was asleep.  "Hush," said Amelia, annoyed,
perhaps, at the creaking of the Major's boots; and she
held out her hand; smiling because William could not
take it until he had rid himself of his cargo of toys.  "Go
downstairs, little Mary," said he presently to the child,
"I want to speak to Mrs. Osborne." She looked up rather
astonished, and laid down the infant on its bed.

"I am come to say good-bye, Amelia," said he, taking
her slender little white hand gently.

"Good-bye? and where are you going?" she said, with
a smile.

"Send the letters to the agents," he said; "they will
forward them; for you will write to me, won't you? I
shall be away a long time."

"I'll write to you about Georgy," she said.  "Dear' William,
how good you have been to him and to me.  Look at
him.  Isn't he like an angel?"

The little pink hands of the child closed mechanically
round the honest soldier's finger, and Amelia looked up
in his face with bright maternal pleasure.  The cruellest
looks could not have wounded him more than that glance
of hopeless kindness.  He bent over the child and mother.
He could not speak for a moment.  And it was only with
all his strength that he could force himself to say a God
bless you.  "God bless you," said Amelia, and held up her
face and kissed him.

"Hush!  Don't wake Georgy!" she added, as William
Dobbin went to the door with heavy steps.  She did not
hear the noise of his cab-wheels as he drove away:  she
was looking at the child, who was laughing in his sleep.




CHAPTER XXXVI


How to Live Well on Nothing a Year

I suppose there is no man in this Vanity Fair of ours so
little observant as not to think sometimes about the
worldly affairs of his acquaintances, or so extremely
charitable as not to wonder how his neighbour Jones,
or his neighbour Smith, can make both ends meet at the
end of the year.  With the utmost regard for the family,
for instance (for I dine with them twice or thrice in the
season), I cannot but own that the appearance of the
Jenkinses in the park, in the large barouche with the
grenadier-footmen, will surprise and mystify me to my
dying day:  for though I know the equipage is only
jobbed, and all the Jenkins people are on board wages,
yet those three men and the carriage must represent an
expense of six hundred a year at the very least--and then
there are the splendid dinners, the two boys at Eton, the
prize governess and masters for the girls, the trip
abroad, or to Eastbourne or Worthing, in the autumn,
the annual ball with a supper from Gunter's (who, by the
way, supplies most of the first-rate dinners which J.  gives,
as I know very well, having been invited to one of them to
fill a vacant place, when I saw at once that these repasts are
very superior to the common run of entertainments for which the
humbler sort of J.'s acquaintances get cards)--who, I say, with the
most good-natured feelings in the world, can help wondering how
the Jenkinses make out matters? What is Jenkins? We all know
--Commissioner of the Tape and Sealing Wax Office, with
1200 pounds a year for a salary.  Had his wife a private
fortune? Pooh!--Miss Flint--one of eleven children of a
small squire in Buckinghamshire.  All she ever gets from
her family is a turkey at Christmas, in exchange for which
she has to board two or three of her sisters in the off
season, and lodge and feed her brothers when they
come to town.  How does Jenkins balance his income? I
say, as every friend of his must say, How is it that he
has not been outlawed long since, and that he ever came
back (as he did to the surprise of everybody) last year
from Boulogne?

"I" is here introduced to personify the world in
general--the Mrs. Grundy of each respected reader's private
circle--every one of whom can point to some families
of his acquaintance who live nobody knows how.  Many
a glass of wine have we all of us drunk, I have very
little doubt, hob-and-nobbing with the hospitable giver
and wondering how the deuce he paid for it.

Some three or four years after his stay in Paris, when
Rawdon Crawley and his wife were established in a very
small comfortable house in Curzon Street, May Fair, there
was scarcely one of the numerous friends whom they
entertained at dinner that did not ask the above question
regarding them.  The novelist, it has been said before,
knows everything, and as I am in a situation to be
able to tell the public how Crawley and his wife lived
without any income, may I entreat the public newspapers
which are in the habit of extracting portions of the
various periodical works now published not to reprint
the following exact narrative and calculations--of which
I ought, as the discoverer (and at some expense, too),
to have the benefit? My son, I would say, were I blessed
with a child--you may by deep inquiry and constant
intercourse with him learn how a man lives comfortably
on nothing a year.  But it is best not to be intimate with
gentlemen of this profession and to take the calculations
at second hand, as you do logarithms, for to work
them yourself, depend upon it, will cost you something
considerable.

On nothing per annum then, and during a course of
some two or three years, of which we can afford to
give but a very brief history, Crawley and his wife lived
very happily and comfortably at Paris.  It was in this
period that he quitted the Guards and sold out of the
army.  When we find him again, his mustachios and the
title of Colonel on his card are the only relics of his
military profession.

It has been mentioned that Rebecca, soon after her
arrival in Paris, took a very smart and leading position in
the society of that capital, and was welcomed at some
of the most distinguished houses of the restored French
nobility.  The English men of fashion in Paris courted her,
too, to the disgust of the ladies their wives, who could
not bear the parvenue.  For some months the salons
of the Faubourg St.  Germain, in which her place was
secured, and the splendours of the new Court, where she
was received with much distinction, delighted and
perhaps a little intoxicated Mrs. Crawley, who may have
been disposed during this period of elation to slight the
people--honest young military men mostly--who formed
her husband's chief society.

But the Colonel yawned sadly among the Duchesses
and great ladies of the Court.  The old women who
played ecarte made such a noise about a five-franc
piece that it was not worth Colonel Crawley's while to
sit down at a card-table.  The wit of their conversation he
could not appreciate, being ignorant of their language.
And what good could his wife get, he urged, by making
curtsies every night to a whole circle of Princesses? He
left Rebecca presently to frequent these parties alone,
resuming his own simple pursuits and amusements
amongst the amiable friends of his own choice.

The truth is, when we say of a gentleman that he
lives elegantly on nothing a year, we use the word
"nothing" to signify something unknown; meaning, simply,
that we don't know how the gentleman in question defrays
the expenses of his establishment.  Now, our friend the
Colonel had a great aptitude for all games of chance:
and exercising himself, as he continually did, with the
cards, the dice-box, or the cue, it is natural to suppose
that he attained a much greater skill in the use of these
articles than men can possess who only occasionally
handle them.  To use a cue at billiards well is like using a
pencil, or a German flute, or a small-sword--you cannot
master any one of these implements at first, and it is only
by repeated study and perseverance, joined to a natural
taste, that a man can excel in the handling of either.
Now Crawley, from being only a brilliant amateur, had
grown to be a consummate master of billiards.  Like a
great General, his genius used to rise with the danger,
and when the luck had been unfavourable to him for a
whole game, and the bets were consequently against him,
he would, with consummate skill and boldness, make
some prodigious hits which would restore the battle, and
come in a victor at the end, to the astonishment of
everybody--of everybody, that is, who was a stranger to his
play.  Those who were accustomed to see it were cautious
how they staked their money against a man of such
sudden resources and brilliant and overpowering skill.

At games of cards he was equally skilful; for though
he would constantly lose money at the commencement
of an evening, playing so carelessly and making such
blunders, that newcomers were often inclined to think
meanly of his talent; yet when roused to action and
awakened to caution by repeated small losses, it was
remarked that Crawley's play became quite different, and
that he was pretty sure of beating his enemy thoroughly
before the night was over.  Indeed, very few men could
say that they ever had the better of him.
His successes were so repeated that no wonder the
envious and the vanquished spoke sometimes with
bitterness regarding them.  And as the French say of the
Duke of Wellington, who never suffered a defeat, that
only an astonishing series of lucky accidents enabled him
to be an invariable winner; yet even they allow that he
cheated at Waterloo, and was enabled to win the last
great trick:  so it was hinted at headquarters in England
that some foul play must have taken place in order to
account for the continuous successes of Colonel Crawley.

Though Frascati's and the Salon were open at that time
in Paris, the mania for play was so widely spread that
the public gambling-rooms did not suffice for the general
ardour, and gambling went on in private houses as
much as if there had been no public means for gratifying
the passion.  At Crawley's charming little reunions of an
evening this fatal amusement commonly was practised--
much to good-natured little Mrs. Crawley's annoyance.
She spoke about her husband's passion for dice with the
deepest grief; she bewailed it to everybody who came to
her house.  She besought the young fellows never, never
to touch a box; and when young Green, of the Rifles,
lost a very considerable sum of money, Rebecca passed a
whole night in tears, as the servant told the unfortunate
young gentleman, and actually went on her knees to her
husband to beseech him to remit the debt, and burn the
acknowledgement.  How could he? He had lost just as
much himself to Blackstone of the Hussars, and Count
Punter of the Hanoverian Cavalry.  Green might have any
decent time; but pay?--of course he must pay; to talk
of burning IOU's was child's play.

Other officers, chiefly young--for the young fellows
gathered round Mrs. Crawley--came from her parties
with long faces, having dropped more or less money at
her fatal card-tables.  Her house began to have an
unfortunate reputation.  The old hands warned the less
experienced of their danger.  Colonel O'Dowd, of the --th
regiment, one of those occupying in Paris, warned
Lieutenant Spooney of that corps.  A loud and violent fracas
took place between the infantry Colonel and his lady,
who were dining at the Cafe de Paris, and Colonel and
Mrs. Crawley; who were also taking their meal there.
The ladies engaged on both sides.  Mrs. O'Dowd snapped
her fingers in Mrs. Crawley's face and called her
husband "no betther than a black-leg." Colonel Crawley
challenged Colonel O'Dowd, C.B.  The Commander-in-Chief
hearing of the dispute sent for Colonel Crawley, who was
getting ready the same pistols "which he shot Captain
Marker," and had such a conversation with him that no
duel took place.  If Rebecca had not gone on her knees
to General Tufto, Crawley would have been sent back
to England; and he did not play, except with civilians,
for some weeks after.

But, in spite of Rawdon's undoubted skill and constant
successes, it became evident to Rebecca, considering
these things, that their position was but a precarious
one, and that, even although they paid scarcely anybody,
their little capital would end one day by dwindling into
zero.  "Gambling," she would say, "dear, is good to help
your income, but not as an income itself.  Some day
people may be tired of play, and then where are we?"
Rawdon acquiesced in the justice of her opinion; and in
truth he had remarked that after a few nights o