Vanity Fair (85 page)

Becky took it, however, with grateful humility, and performing a
reverence which would have done credit to the best dancer-master,
put herself at Lady Steyne's feet, as it were, by saying that his
Lordship had been her father's earliest friend and patron, and that
she, Becky, had learned to honour and respect the Steyne family from
the days of her childhood. The fact is that Lord Steyne had once
purchased a couple of pictures of the late Sharp, and the
affectionate orphan could never forget her gratitude for that
favour.

The Lady Bareacres then came under Becky's cognizance—to whom the
Colonel's lady made also a most respectful obeisance: it was
returned with severe dignity by the exalted person in question.

"I had the pleasure of making your Ladyship's acquaintance at
Brussels, ten years ago," Becky said in the most winning manner. "I
had the good fortune to meet Lady Bareacres at the Duchess of
Richmond's ball, the night before the Battle of Waterloo. And I
recollect your Ladyship, and my Lady Blanche, your daughter, sitting
in the carriage in the porte-cochere at the Inn, waiting for horses.
I hope your Ladyship's diamonds are safe."

Everybody's eyes looked into their neighbour's. The famous diamonds
had undergone a famous seizure, it appears, about which Becky, of
course, knew nothing. Rawdon Crawley retreated with Lord Southdown
into a window, where the latter was heard to laugh immoderately, as
Rawdon told him the story of Lady Bareacres wanting horses and
"knuckling down by Jove," to Mrs. Crawley. "I think I needn't be
afraid of THAT woman," Becky thought. Indeed, Lady Bareacres
exchanged terrified and angry looks with her daughter and retreated
to a table, where she began to look at pictures with great energy.

When the Potentate from the Danube made his appearance, the
conversation was carried on in the French language, and the Lady
Bareacres and the younger ladies found, to their farther
mortification, that Mrs. Crawley was much better acquainted with
that tongue, and spoke it with a much better accent than they.
Becky had met other Hungarian magnates with the army in France in
1816-17. She asked after her friends with great interest The
foreign personages thought that she was a lady of great distinction,
and the Prince and the Princess asked severally of Lord Steyne and
the Marchioness, whom they conducted to dinner, who was that petite
dame who spoke so well?

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 fire-
place 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.

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 pounds,
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 repurchase 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 whitey-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 has 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 care-worn 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 never have one, 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 truth 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 were 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, papal 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—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.