In the first place, and as a matter of the greatest necessity, we are bound to describe how a house may be got for nothing a year. These mansions are to be had either unfurnished, where, if you have credit with Messrs. Gillows or Bantings, you can get them splendidly montees and decorated entirely according to your own fancy; or they are to be let furnished, a less troublesome and complicated arrangement to most parties. It was so that Crawley and his wife preferred to hire their house.
Before Mr. Bowls came to preside over Miss Crawley's house and cellar in Park Lane, that lady had had for a butler a Mr. Raggles, who was born on the family estate of Queen's Crawley, and indeed was a younger son of a gardener there. By good conduct, a handsome person and calves, and a grave demeanour, Raggles rose from the knife-board to the footboard of the carriage; from the footboard to the butler's pantry. When he had been a certain number of years at the head of Miss Crawley's establishment, where he had had good wages, fat perquisites, and plenty of opportunities of saving, he announced that he was about to contract a matrimonial alliance with a late cook of Miss Crawley's, who had subsisted in an honourable manner by the exercise of a mangle, and the keeping of a small greengrocer's shop in the neighbourhood. The truth is, that the ceremony had been clandestinely performed some years back; although the news of Mr. Raggles' marriage was first brought to Miss Crawley by a little boy and girl of seven and eight years of age, whose continual presence in the kitchen had attracted the attention of Miss Briggs.
Mr. Raggles then retired and personally undertook the superintendence of the small shop and the greens. He added milk and cream, eggs and country-fed pork to his stores, contenting himself whilst other retired butlers were vending spirits in public houses, by dealing in the simplest country produce. And having a good connection amongst the butlers in the neighbourhood, and a snug back parlour where he and Mrs. Raggles received them, his milk, cream, and eggs got to be adopted by many of the fraternity, and his profits increased every year. Year after year he quietly and modestly amassed money, and when at length that snug and complete bachelor's residence at No. 201, Curzon Street, May Fair, lately the residence of the Honourable Frederick Deuceace, gone abroad, with its rich and appropriate furniture by the first makers, was brought to the hammer, who should go in and purchase the lease and furniture of the house but Charles Raggles? A part of the money he borrowed, it is true, and at rather a high interest, from a brother butler, but the chief part he paid down, and it was with no small pride that Mrs. Raggles found herself sleeping in a bed of carved mahogany, with silk curtains, with a prodigious cheval glass opposite to her, and a wardrobe which would contain her, and Raggles, and all the family.
Of course, they did not intend to occupy permanently an apartment so splendid. It was in order to let the house again that Raggles purchased it. As soon as a tenant was found, he subsided into the greengrocer's shop once more; but a happy thing it was for him to walk out of that tenement and into Curzon Street, and there survey his house--his own house--with geraniums in the window and a carved bronze knocker. The footman occasionally lounging at the area railing, treated him with respect; the cook took her green stuff at his house and called him Mr. Landlord, and there was not one thing the tenants did, or one dish which they had for dinner, that Raggles might not know of, if he liked.
He was a good man; good and happy. The house brought him in so handsome a yearly income that he was determined to send his children to good schools, and accordingly, regardless of expense, Charles was sent to boarding at Dr. Swishtail's, Sugar-cane Lodge, and little Matilda to Miss Peckover's, Laurentinum House, Clapham.
Raggles loved and adored the Crawley family as the author of all his prosperity in life. He had a silhouette of his mistress in his back shop, and a drawing of the Porter's Lodge at Queen's Crawley, done by that spinster herself in India ink--and the only addition he made to the decorations of the Curzon Street House was a print of Queen's Crawley in Hampshire, the seat of Sir Walpole Crawley, Baronet, who was represented in a gilded car drawn by six white horses, and passing by a lake covered with swans, and barges containing ladies in hoops, and musicians with flags and periwigs. Indeed Raggles thought there was no such palace in all the world, and no such august family.
As luck would have it, Raggles' house in Curzon Street was to let when Rawdon and his wife returned to London. The Colonel knew it and its owner quite well; the latter's connection with the Crawley family had been kept up constantly, for Raggles helped Mr. Bowls whenever Miss Crawley received friends. And the old man not only let his house to the Colonel but officiated as his butler whenever he had company; Mrs. Raggles operating in the kitchen below and sending up dinners of which old Miss Crawley herself might have approved. This was the way, then, Crawley got his house for nothing; for though Raggles had to pay taxes and rates, and the interest of the mortgage to the brother butler; and the insurance of his life; and the charges for his children at school; and the value of the meat and drink which his own family--and for a time that of Colonel Crawley too--consumed; and though the poor wretch was utterly ruined by the transaction, his children being flung on the streets, and himself driven into the Fleet Prison: yet somebody must pay even for gentlemen who live for nothing a year--and so it was this unlucky Raggles was made the representative of Colonel Crawley's defective capital.
I wonder how many families are driven to roguery and to ruin by great practitioners in Crawley's way?--how many great noblemen rob their petty tradesmen, condescend to swindle their poor retainers out of wretched little sums and cheat for a few shillings? When we read that a noble nobleman has left for the Continent, or that another noble nobleman has an execution in his house--and that one or other owes six or seven millions, the defeat seems glorious even, and we respect the victim in the vastness of his ruin. But who pities a poor barber who can't get his money for powdering the footmen's heads; or a poor carpenter who has ruined himself by fixing up ornaments and pavilions for my lady's dejeuner; or the poor devil of a tailor whom the steward patronizes, and who has pledged all he is worth, and more, to get the liveries ready, which my lord has done him the honour to bespeak? When the great house tumbles down, these miserable wretches fall under it unnoticed: as they say in the old legends, before a man goes to the devil himself, he sends plenty of other souls thither.
Rawdon and his wife generously gave their patronage to all such of Miss Crawley's tradesmen and purveyors as chose to serve them. Some were willing enough, especially the poor ones. It was wonderful to see the pertinacity with which the washerwoman from Tooting brought the cart every Saturday, and her bills week after week. Mr. Raggles himself had to supply the greengroceries. The bill for servants' porter at the Fortune of War public house is a curiosity in the chronicles of beer. Every servant also was owed the greater part of his wages, and thus kept up perforce an interest in the house. Nobody in fact was paid. Not the blacksmith who opened the lock; nor the glazier who mended the pane; nor the jobber who let the carriage; nor the groom who drove it; nor the butcher who provided the leg of mutton; nor the coals which roasted it; nor the cook who basted it; nor the servants who ate it: and this I am given to understand is not unfrequently the way in which people live elegantly on nothing a year.
In a little town such things cannot be done without remark. We know there the quantity of milk our neighbour takes and espy the joint or the fowls which are going in for his dinner. So, probably, 200 and 202 in Curzon Street might know what was going on in the house between them, the servants communicating through the area-railings; but Crawley and his wife and his friends did not know 200 and 202. When you came to 201 there was a hearty welcome, a kind smile, a good dinner, and a jolly shake of the hand from the host and hostess there, just for all the world as if they had been undisputed masters of three or four thousand a year--and so they were, not in money, but in produce and labour--if they did not pay for the mutton, they had it: if they did not give bullion in exchange for their wine, how should we know? Never was better claret at any man's table than at honest Rawdon's; dinners more gay and neatly served. His drawing-rooms were the prettiest, little, modest salons conceivable: they were decorated with the greatest taste, and a thousand knick-knacks from Paris, by Rebecca: and when she sat at her piano trilling songs with a lightsome heart, the stranger voted himself in a little paradise of domestic comfort and agreed that, if the husband was rather stupid, the wife was charming, and the dinners the pleasantest in the world.
Rebecca's wit, cleverness, and flippancy made her speedily the vogue in London among a certain class. You saw demure chariots at her door, out of which stepped very great people. You beheld her carriage in the park, surrounded by dandies of note. The little box in the third tier of the opera was crowded with heads constantly changing; but it must be confessed that the ladies held aloof from her, and that their doors were shut to our little adventurer.
With regard to the world of female fashion and its customs, the present writer of course can only speak at second hand. A man can no more penetrate or understand those mysteries than he can know what the ladies talk about when they go upstairs after dinner. It is only by inquiry and perseverance that one sometimes gets hints of those secrets; and by a similar diligence every person who treads the Pall Mall pavement and frequents the clubs of this metropolis knows, either through his own experience or through some acquaintance with whom he plays at billiards or shares the joint, something about the genteel world of London, and how, as there are men (such as Rawdon Crawley, whose position we mentioned before) who cut a good figure to the eyes of the ignorant world and to the apprentices in the park, who behold them consorting with the most notorious dandies there, so there are ladies, who may be called men's women, being welcomed entirely by all the gentlemen and cut or slighted by all their wives. Mrs. Firebrace is of this sort; the lady with the beautiful fair ringlets whom you see every day in Hyde Park, surrounded by the greatest and most famous dandies of this empire. Mrs. Rockwood is another, whose parties are announced laboriously in the fashionable newspapers and with whom you see that all sorts of ambassadors and great noblemen dine; and many more might be mentioned had they to do with the history at present in hand. But while simple folks who are out of the world, or country people with a taste for the genteel, behold these ladies in their seeming glory in public places, or envy them from afar off, persons who are better instructed could inform them that these envied ladies have no more chance of establishing themselves in "society," than the benighted squire's wife in Somersetshire who reads of their doings in the Morning Post. Men living about London are aware of these awful truths. You hear how pitilessly many ladies of seeming rank and wealth are excluded from this "society." The frantic efforts which they make to enter this circle, the meannesses to which they submit, the insults which they undergo, are matters of wonder to those who take human or womankind for a study; and the pursuit of fashion under difficulties would be a fine theme for any very great person who had the wit, the leisure, and the knowledge of the English language necessary for the compiling of such a history.
Now the few female acquaintances whom Mrs. Crawley had known abroad not only declined to visit her when she came to this side of the Channel, but cut her severely when they met in public places. It was curious to see how the great ladies forgot her, and no doubt not altogether a pleasant study to Rebecca. When Lady Bareacres met her in the waiting-room at the opera, she gathered her daughters about her as if they would be contaminated by a touch of Becky, and retreating a step or two, placed herself in front of them, and stared at her little enemy. To stare Becky out of countenance required a severer glance than even the frigid old Bareacres could shoot out of her dismal eyes. When Lady de la Mole, who had ridden a score of times by Becky's side at Brussels, met Mrs. Crawley's open carriage in Hyde Park, her Ladyship was quite blind, and could not in the least recognize her former friend. Even Mrs. Blenkinsop, the banker's wife, cut her at church. Becky went regularly to church now; it was edifying to see her enter there with Rawdon by her side, carrying a couple of large gilt prayer-books, and afterwards going through the ceremony with the gravest resignation.
Rawdon at first felt very acutely the slights which were passed upon his wife, and was inclined to be gloomy and savage. He talked of calling out the husbands or brothers of every one of the insolent women who did not pay a proper respect to his wife; and it was only by the strongest commands and entreaties on her part that he was brought into keeping a decent behaviour. "You can't shoot me into society," she said good-naturedly. "Remember, my dear, that I was but a governess, and you, you poor silly old man, have the worst reputation for debt, and dice, and all sorts of wickedness. We shall get quite as many friends as we want by and by, and in the meanwhile you must be a good boy and obey your schoolmistress in everything she tells you to do. When we heard that your aunt had left almost everything to Pitt and his wife, do you remember what a rage you were in? You would have told all Paris, if I had not made you keep your temper, and where would you have been now?--in prison at Ste. Pelagie for debt, and not established in London in a handsome house, with every comfort about you--you were in such a fury you were ready to murder your brother, you wicked Cain you, and what good would have come of remaining angry? All the rage in the world won't get us your aunt's money; and it is much better that we should be friends with your brother's family than enemies, as those foolish Butes are. When your father dies, Queen's Crawley will be a pleasant house for you and me to pass the winter in. If we are ruined, you can carve and take charge of the stable, and I can be a governess to Lady Jane's children. Ruined! fiddlede-dee! I will get you a good place before that; or Pitt and his little boy will die, and we will be Sir Rawdon and my lady. While there is life, there is hope, my dear, and I intend to make a man of you yet. Who sold your horses for you? Who paid your debts for you?" Rawdon was obliged to confess that he owed all these benefits to his wife, and to trust himself to her guidance for the future.
Indeed, when Miss Crawley quitted the world, and that money for which all her relatives had been fighting so eagerly was finally left to Pitt, Bute Crawley, who found that only five thousand pounds had been left to him instead of the twenty upon which he calculated, was in such a fury at his disappointment that he vented it in savage abuse upon his nephew; and the quarrel always rankling between them ended in an utter breach of intercourse. Rawdon Crawley's conduct, on the other hand, who got but a hundred pounds, was such as to astonish his brother and delight his sister-in-law, who was disposed to look kindly upon all the members of her husband's family. He wrote to his brother a very frank, manly, good-humoured letter from Paris. He was aware, he said, that by his own marriage he had forfeited his aunt's favour; and though he did not disguise his disappointment that she should have been so entirely relentless towards him, he was glad that the money was still kept in their branch of the family, and heartily congratulated his brother on his good fortune. He sent his affectionate remembrances to his sister, and hoped to have her good-will for Mrs. Rawdon; and the letter concluded with a postscript to Pitt in the latter lady's own handwriting. She, too, begged to join in her husband's congratulations. She should ever remember Mr. Crawley's kindness to her in early days when she was a friendless orphan, the instructress of his little sisters, in whose welfare she still took the tenderest interest. She wished him every happiness in his married life, and, asking his permission to offer her remembrances to Lady Jane (of whose goodness all the world informed her), she hoped that one day she might be allowed to present her little boy to his uncle and aunt, and begged to bespeak for him their good-will and protection.
Pitt Crawley received this communication very graciously--more graciously than Miss Crawley had received some of Rebecca's previous compositions in Rawdon's handwriting; and as for Lady Jane, she was so charmed with the letter that she expected her husband would instantly divide his aunt's legacy into two equal portions and send off one-half to his brother at Paris.
To her Ladyship's surprise, however, Pitt declined to accommodate his brother with a cheque for thirty thousand pounds. But he made Rawdon a handsome offer of his hand whenever the latter should come to England and choose to take it; and, thanking Mrs. Crawley for her good opinion of himself and Lady Jane, he graciously pronounced his willingness to take any opportunity to serve her little boy.
Thus an almost reconciliation was brought about between the brothers. When Rebecca came to town Pitt and his wife were not in London. Many a time she drove by the old door in Park Lane to see whether they had taken possession of Miss Crawley's house there. But the new family did not make its appearance; it was only through Raggles that she heard of their movements--how Miss Crawley's domestics had been dismissed with decent gratuities, and how Mr. Pitt had only once made his appearance in London, when he stopped for a few days at the house, did business with his lawyers there, and sold off all Miss Crawley's French novels to a bookseller out of Bond Street. Becky had reasons of her own which caused her to long for the arrival of her new relation. "When Lady Jane comes," thought she, "she shall be my sponsor in London society; and as for the women! bah! the women will ask me when they find the men want to see me."
An article as necessary to a lady in this position as her brougham or her bouquet is her companion. I have always admired the way in which the tender creatures, who cannot exist without sympathy, hire an exceedingly plain friend of their own sex from whom they are almost inseparable. The sight of that inevitable woman in her faded gown seated behind her dear friend in the opera-box, or occupying the back seat of the barouche, is always a wholesome and moral one to me, as jolly a reminder as that of the Death's-head which figured in the repasts of Egyptian bon-vivants, a strange sardonic memorial of Vanity Fair. What? even battered, brazen, beautiful, conscienceless, heartless, Mrs. Firebrace, whose father died of her shame: even lovely, daring Mrs. Mantrap, who will ride at any fence which any man in England will take, and who drives her greys in the park, while her mother keeps a huckster's stall in Bath still--even those who are so bold, one might fancy they could face anything, dare not face the world without a female friend. They must have somebody to cling to, the affectionate creatures! And you will hardly see them in any public place without a shabby companion in a dyed silk, sitting somewhere in the shade close behind them.
"Rawdon," said Becky, very late one night, as a party of gentlemen were seated round her crackling drawing-room fire (for the men came to her house to finish the night; and she had ice and coffee for them, the best in London): "I must have a sheep-dog."
"A what?" said Rawdon, looking up from an ecarte table.
"A sheep-dog!" said young Lord Southdown. "My dear Mrs. Crawley, what a fancy! Why not have a Danish dog? I know of one as big as a camel-leopard, by Jove. It would almost pull your brougham. Or a Persian greyhound, eh? (I propose, if you please); or a little pug that would go into one of Lord Steyne's snuff-boxes? There's a man at Bayswater got one with such a nose that you might--I mark the king and play--that you might hang your hat on it."
"I mark the trick," Rawdon gravely said. He attended to his game commonly and didn't much meddle with the conversation, except when it was about horses and betting.
"What CAN you want with a shepherd's dog?" the lively little Southdown continued.
"I mean a MORAL shepherd's dog," said Becky, laughing and looking up at Lord Steyne.
"What the devil's that?" said his Lordship.
"A dog to keep the wolves off me," Rebecca continued. "A companion."
"Dear little innocent lamb, you want one," said the marquis; and his jaw thrust out, and he began to grin hideously, his little eyes leering towards Rebecca.
The great Lord of Steyne was standing by the fire sipping coffee. The fire crackled and blazed pleasantly. There was a score of candles sparkling round the mantel piece, in all sorts of quaint sconces, of gilt and bronze and porcelain. They lighted up Rebecca's figure to admiration, as she sat on a sofa covered with a pattern of gaudy flowers. She was in a pink dress that looked as fresh as a rose; her dazzling white arms and shoulders were half-covered with a thin hazy scarf through which they sparkled; her hair hung in curls round her neck; one of her little feet peeped out from the fresh crisp folds of the silk: the prettiest little foot in the prettiest little sandal in the finest silk stocking in the world.
The candles lighted up Lord Steyne's shining bald head, which was fringed with red hair. He had thick bushy eyebrows, with little twinkling bloodshot eyes, surrounded by a thousand wrinkles. His jaw was underhung, and when he laughed, two white buck-teeth protruded themselves and glistened savagely in the midst of the grin. He had been dining with royal personages, and wore his garter and ribbon. A short man was his Lordship, broad-chested and bow-legged, but proud of the fineness of his foot and ankle, and always caressing his garter-knee.
"And so the shepherd is not enough," said he, "to defend his lambkin?"
"The shepherd is too fond of playing at cards and going to his clubs," answered Becky, laughing.
"'Gad, what a debauched Corydon!" said my lord--"what a mouth for a pipe!"
"I take your three to two," here said Rawdon, at the card-table.
"Hark at Meliboeus," snarled the noble marquis; "he's pastorally occupied too: he's shearing a Southdown. What an innocent mutton, hey? Damme, what a snowy fleece!"
Rebecca's eyes shot out gleams of scornful humour. "My lord," she said, "you are a knight of the Order." He had the collar round his neck, indeed--a gift of the restored princes of Spain.
Lord Steyne in early life had been notorious for his daring and his success at play. He had sat up two days and two nights with Mr. Fox at hazard. He had won money of the most august personages of the realm: he had won his marquisate, it was said, at the gaming-table; but he did not like an allusion to those bygone fredaines. Rebecca saw the scowl gathering over his heavy brow.
She rose up from her sofa and went and took his coffee cup out of his hand with a little curtsey. "Yes," she said, "I must get a watchdog. But he won't bark at YOU." And, going into the other drawing-room, she sat down to the piano and began to sing little French songs in such a charming, thrilling voice that the mollified nobleman speedily followed her into that chamber, and might be seen nodding his head and bowing time over her.
Rawdon and his friend meanwhile played ecarte until they had enough. The Colonel won; but, say that he won ever so much and often, nights like these, which occurred many times in the week--his wife having all the talk and all the admiration, and he sitting silent without the circle, not comprehending a word of the jokes, the allusions, the mystical language within--must have been rather wearisome to the ex-dragoon.
"How is Mrs. Crawley's husband?" Lord Steyne used to say to him by way of a good day when they met; and indeed that was now his avocation in life. He was Colonel Crawley no more. He was Mrs. Crawley's husband.
About the little Rawdon, if nothing has been said all this while, it is because he is hidden upstairs in a garret somewhere, or has crawled below into the kitchen for companionship. His mother scarcely ever took notice of him. He passed the days with his French bonne as long as that domestic remained in Mr. Crawley's family, and when the Frenchwoman went away, the little fellow, howling in the loneliness of the night, had compassion taken on him by a housemaid, who took him out of his solitary nursery into her bed in the garret hard by and comforted him.
Rebecca, my Lord Steyne, and one or two more were in the drawing-room taking tea after the opera, when this shouting was heard overhead. "It's my cherub crying for his nurse," she said. She did not offer to move to go and see the child. "Don't agitate your feelings by going to look for him," said Lord Steyne sardonically. "Bah!" replied the other, with a sort of blush, "he'll cry himself to sleep"; and they fell to talking about the opera.
Rawdon had stolen off though, to look after his son and heir; and came back to the company when he found that honest Dolly was consoling the child. The Colonel's dressing-room was in those upper regions. He used to see the boy there in private. They had interviews together every morning when he shaved; Rawdon minor sitting on a box by his father's side and watching the operation with never-ceasing pleasure. He and the sire were great friends. The father would bring him sweetmeats from the dessert and hide them in a certain old epaulet box, where the child went to seek them, and laughed with joy on discovering the treasure; laughed, but not too loud: for mamma was below asleep and must not be disturbed. She did not go to rest till very late and seldom rose till after noon.
Rawdon bought the boy plenty of picture-books and crammed his nursery with toys. Its walls were covered with pictures pasted up by the father's own hand and purchased by him for ready money. When he was off duty with Mrs. Rawdon in the park, he would sit up here, passing hours with the boy; who rode on his chest, who pulled his great mustachios as if they were driving-reins, and spent days with him in indefatigable gambols. The room was a low room, and once, when the child was not five years old, his father, who was tossing him wildly up in his arms, hit the poor little chap's skull so violently against the ceiling that he almost dropped the child, so terrified was he at the disaster.
Rawdon minor had made up his face for a tremendous howl--the severity of the blow indeed authorized that indulgence; but just as he was going to begin, the father interposed.
"For God's sake, Rawdy, don't wake Mamma," he cried. And the child, looking in a very hard and piteous way at his father, bit his lips, clenched his hands, and didn't cry a bit. Rawdon told that story at the clubs, at the mess, to everybody in town. "By Gad, sir," he explained to the public in general, "what a good plucked one that boy of mine is--what a trump he is! I half-sent his head through the ceiling, by Gad, and he wouldn't cry for fear of disturbing his mother."
Sometimes--once or twice in a week--that lady visited the upper regions in which the child lived. She came like a vivified figure out of the Magasin des Modes--blandly smiling in the most beautiful new clothes and little gloves and boots. Wonderful scarfs, laces, and jewels glittered about her. She had always a new bonnet on, and flowers bloomed perpetually in it, or else magnificent curling ostrich feathers, soft and snowy as camellias. She nodded twice or thrice patronizingly to the little boy, who looked up from his dinner or from the pictures of soldiers he was painting. When she left the room, an odour of rose, or some other magical fragrance, lingered about the nursery. She was an unearthly being in his eyes, superior to his father--to all the world: to be worshipped and admired at a distance. To drive with that lady in the carriage was an awful rite: he sat up in the back seat and did not dare to speak: he gazed with all his eyes at the beautifully dressed Princess opposite to him. Gentlemen on splendid prancing horses came up and smiled and talked with her. How her eyes beamed upon all of them! Her hand used to quiver and wave gracefully as they passed. When he went out with her he had his new red dress on. His old brown holland was good enough when he stayed at home. Sometimes, when she was away, and Dolly his maid was making his bed, he came into his mother's room. It was as the abode of a fairy to him--a mystic chamber of splendour and delights. There in the wardrobe hung those wonderful robes--pink and blue and many-tinted. There was the jewel-case, silver-clasped, and the wondrous bronze hand on the dressing-table, glistening all over with a hundred rings. There was the cheval-glass, that miracle of art, in which he could just see his own wondering head and the reflection of Dolly (queerly distorted, and as if up in the ceiling), plumping and patting the pillows of the bed. Oh, thou poor lonely little benighted boy! Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children; and here was one who was worshipping a stone!
Now Rawdon Crawley, rascal as the Colonel was, had certain manly tendencies of affection in his heart and could love a child and a woman still. For Rawdon minor he had a great secret tenderness then, which did not escape Rebecca, though she did not talk about it to her husband. It did not annoy her: she was too good-natured. It only increased her scorn for him. He felt somehow ashamed of this paternal softness and hid it from his wife--only indulging in it when alone with the boy.
He used to take him out of mornings when they would go to the stables together and to the park. Little Lord Southdown, the best-natured of men, who would make you a present of the hat from his head, and whose main occupation in life was to buy knick-knacks that he might give them away afterwards, bought the little chap a pony not much bigger than a large rat, the donor said, and on this little black Shetland pygmy young Rawdon's great father was pleased to mount the boy, and to walk by his side in the park. It pleased him to see his old quarters, and his old fellow-guardsmen at Knightsbridge: he had begun to think of his bachelorhood with something like regret. The old troopers were glad to recognize their ancient officer and dandle the little colonel. Colonel Crawley found dining at mess and with his brother-officers very pleasant. "Hang it, I ain't clever enough for her--I know it. She won't miss me," he used to say: and he was right, his wife did not miss him.
Rebecca was fond of her husband. She was always perfectly good-humoured and kind to him. She did not even show her scorn much for him; perhaps she liked him the better for being a fool. He was her upper servant and maitre d'hotel. He went on her errands; obeyed her orders without question; drove in the carriage in the ring with her without repining; took her to the opera-box, solaced himself at his club during the performance, and came punctually back to fetch her when due. He would have liked her to be a little fonder of the boy, but even to that he reconciled himself. "Hang it, you know she's so clever," he said, "and I'm not literary and that, you know." For, as we have said before, it requires no great wisdom to be able to win at cards and billiards, and Rawdon made no pretensions to any other sort of skill.
When the companion came, his domestic duties became very light. His wife encouraged him to dine abroad: she would let him off duty at the opera. "Don't stay and stupefy yourself at home to-night, my dear," she would say. "Some men are coming who will only bore you. I would not ask them, but you know it's for your good, and now I have a sheep-dog, I need not be afraid to be alone."
"A sheep-dog--a companion! Becky Sharp with a companion! Isn't it good fun?" thought Mrs. Crawley to herself. The notion tickled hugely her sense of humour.
One Sunday morning, as Rawdon Crawley, his little son, and the pony were taking their accustomed walk in the park, they passed by an old acquaintance of the Colonel's, Corporal Clink, of the regiment, who was in conversation with a friend, an old gentleman, who held a boy in his arms about the age of little Rawdon. This other youngster had seized hold of the Waterloo medal which the Corporal wore, and was examining it with delight.
"Good morning, your Honour," said Clink, in reply to the "How do, Clink?" of the Colonel. "This ere young gentleman is about the little Colonel's age, sir," continued the corporal.
"His father was a Waterloo man, too," said the old gentleman, who carried the boy. "Wasn't he, Georgy?"
"Yes," said Georgy. He and the little chap on the pony were looking at each other with all their might--solemnly scanning each other as children do.
"In a line regiment," Clink said with a patronizing air.
"He was a Captain in the --th regiment," said the old gentleman rather pompously. "Captain George Osborne, sir--perhaps you knew him. He died the death of a hero, sir, fighting against the Corsican tyrant." Colonel Crawley blushed quite red. "I knew him very well, sir," he said, "and his wife, his dear little wife, sir--how is she?"
"She is my daughter, sir," said the old gentleman, putting down the boy and taking out a card with great solemnity, which he handed to the Colonel. On it written--
"Mr. Sedley, Sole Agent for the Black Diamond and Anti-Cinder Coal Association, Bunker's Wharf, Thames Street, and Anna-Maria Cottages, Fulham Road West."
Little Georgy went up and looked at the Shetland pony.
"Should you like to have a ride?" said Rawdon minor from the saddle.
"Yes," said Georgy. The Colonel, who had been looking at him with some interest, took up the child and put him on the pony behind Rawdon minor.
"Take hold of him, Georgy," he said--"take my little boy round the waist--his name is Rawdon." And both the children began to laugh.
"You won't see a prettier pair I think, THIS summer's day, sir," said the good-natured Corporal; and the Colonel, the Corporal, and old Mr. Sedley with his umbrella, walked by the side of the children.

In the first place, let us describe how a house may be got for nothing a year. These mansions are to be had either unfurnished, where, if you have credit with Messrs. Gillows or Bantings, you can get them splendidly decorated according to your fancy; or they are let furnished, a less troublesome arrangement. It was so that Crawley and his wife preferred to hire their house.
Before Mr. Bowls came to Miss Crawley's house in Park Lane, that lady had as her butler a Mr. Raggles, who was the younger son of a gardener at Queen's Crawley. By good conduct, a handsome appearance and a grave demeanour, Raggles rose from the knife-board to the butler's pantry. After many years at the head of Miss Crawley's house, he announced that he was about to marry a former cook of Miss Crawley's, who kept a small greengrocer's shop. In truth, the marriage had secretly happened some years back.
Mr. Raggles retired to superintend the small shop. He added milk, cream, eggs and country-fed pork to his stores, and his profits increased every year. He quietly and modestly amassed money, and when a snug bachelor's house at 201, Curzon Street, with rich furniture, went under the hammer, who should purchase the lease but Raggles? Some of the money he borrowed, it is true, at rather high interest from a brother butler, but the chief part he paid down; and Mrs. Raggles found herself proudly sleeping in a bed of carved mahogany, with silk curtains, and a wardrobe which would contain her, and Raggles, and all the family.
Of course, they did not intend to occupy it long, but to let it again. As soon as a tenant was found, Raggles returned to the greengrocer's shop; but it was a happy thing for him to walk down Curzon Street, and survey his house with its carved bronze knocker.
He was a good man; good and happy. The house brought him so handsome an income that he was determined to send his children to good schools, and accordingly, regardless of expense, Charles was sent to board at Dr. Swishtail's, and little Matilda to Miss Peckover's at Clapham.
Raggles loved the Crawley family as the author of all his prosperity. He thought there was no family so august. As luck would have it, Raggles' house in Curzon Street was to let when Rawdon and his wife returned to London. Raggles knew the Colonel; and he not only let his house to him, but acted as his butler whenever he had company, with Mrs. Raggles cooking in the kitchen below and sending up dinners.
In this way Crawley got his house for nothing; for though Raggles had to pay taxes and rates, and the interest of the mortgage to the brother butler; and his children's school fees, and the cost of meat and drink for his family, and for Colonel Crawley too; and though the poor wretch was utterly ruined by the transaction, his children being flung on the streets, and himself driven into the Fleet Prison: yet somebody must pay for gentlemen who live for nothing a year - and in this case it was the unlucky Raggles.
I wonder how many families are driven to ruin in this way? - how many great noblemen rob their petty tradesmen and swindle their poor retainers? When we read that a nobleman owes six or seven millions, the defeat seems glorious even, and we respect the victim in the vastness of his ruin. But who pities his poor barber, or carpenter, on his poor devil of a tailor? When the great house tumbles down, these miserable wretches fall under it unnoticed.
Rawdon and his wife generously patronised those of Miss Crawley's tradesmen who would serve them. Some were willing enough, especially the poor ones. It was wonderful to see the tenacity with which the washerwoman brought the cart every Saturday, and her bills week after week. Mr. Raggles himself had to supply the greengroceries. Every servant was owed most of his wages, and thus kept up an interest in the house. Nobody was paid. Not the blacksmith who opened the lock; nor the glazier who mended the pane; nor the jobber who let the carriage; nor the groom who drove it. This is the way in which people live elegantly on nothing a year.
At 201 Curzon Street there was a hearty welcome, a kind smile and a good dinner from the host and hostess, just as if they had three or four thousand a year. And so they did, not in money, but in produce and labour. No man had better claret than Rawdon; his drawing-rooms were the prettiest little salons conceivable, decorated by Rebecca with knick-knacks from Paris. When she sat at her piano trilling songs, the stranger thought himself in a little paradise of domestic comfort and agreed that, although the husband was rather stupid, the wife was charming.
Rebecca's wit, cleverness, and flippancy made her speedily the vogue in London among a certain class. You beheld her carriage in the park, surrounded by dandies. Her box in the third tier of the opera was crowded; but the ladies held aloof from her, and closed their doors to our little adventurer.
There are ladies who may be called men's women, being welcomed entirely by all the gentlemen and slighted by all their wives. Mrs. Firebrace is of this sort - the lady with the beautiful fair ringlets whom you see every day in Hyde Park, surrounded by famous dandies. Mrs. Rockwood is another, whose parties are announced in the fashionable newspapers. But while simple folks might envy them, persons who are better informed know that these ladies have no chance of establishing themselves in "society," but are pitilessly excluded.
Now the few female acquaintances whom Mrs. Crawley had known abroad not only declined to visit her when she came to London, but cut her severely when they met in public. When Lady Bareacres saw her in the opera-house, she gathered her daughters about her as if they would be contaminated by a touch of Becky, and stared frigidly at her little enemy. Mrs. Blenkinsop, the banker's wife, cut her at church, where Becky went regularly now.
Rawdon at first felt very acutely the slights upon his wife, and was gloomy and savage. He talked of calling out the husbands of the insolent women who did not respect his wife; and it was only by the strongest commands on her part that he was restrained.
"You can't shoot me into society," she said good-naturedly. "Remember, my dear, that I was only a governess, and you, you poor silly man, have the worst reputation for debt and wickedness. We shall get quite as many friends as we want by and by, and in the meanwhile you must be a good boy. When we heard that your aunt had left almost everything to Pitt, do you remember what a rage you were in? You would have told all Paris, if I had not made you keep your temper, and then where would you be now? - in prison for debt, and not in a handsome house in London. Rage won't get us your aunt's money; and it is much better that we should be friends with your brother than enemies. When your father dies, Queen's Crawley will be a pleasant house for us to pass the winter in. Or Pitt and his little boy will die, and we will be Sir Rawdon and my lady. While there is life, there is hope, my dear, and I intend to make a man of you yet. Who sold your horses for you? Who paid your debts for you?" Rawdon confessed that he owed all these benefits to his wife.
Indeed, Miss Crawley had left her money finally to Pitt. Bute Crawley, who found that only five thousand pounds had been left to him instead of the twenty which he expected, was in such a fury that he savagely abused his nephew, and caused an utter breach between them. Rawdon Crawley, on the other hand, who got only a hundred pounds, astonished his brother and delighted his sister-in-law, by writing them a very frank, manly, good-humoured letter from Paris.
He was aware, he said, that he had forfeited his aunt's favour; and though he did not disguise his disappointment, he was glad that the money was kept in their branch of the family, and heartily congratulated his brother, and sent his affectionate goodwill. Becky joined in her husband's congratulations, writing that she would always remember Mr. Crawley's kindness when she was a friendless orphan. She wished him every happiness in his married life, and hoped that one day she might be allowed to present her little boy to his uncle and aunt.
Pitt Crawley received this letter very graciously; and as for Lady Jane, she was so charmed with it that she expected her husband to instantly divide his aunt's legacy into two and send half to his brother.
To her Ladyship's surprise, however, Pitt declined to give his brother thirty thousand pounds. But he thanked Rawdon and Mrs. Crawley, and graciously pronounced his willingness to help their little boy.
Thus an almost-reconciliation was brought about. When Rebecca came to town Pitt and his wife were not in London. She heard through Raggles that Miss Crawley's servants had been dismissed with decent payments; and that Mr. Pitt had only once appeared in London, when he stayed for a few days at the house and did business with his lawyers. Becky longed for the arrival of her new relation.
"When Lady Jane comes," she thought, "she shall be my sponsor in London; and the women will ask me when they find the men want to see me."
A lady in this position needs a companion. I have always admired the way in which the tender creatures hire an exceedingly plain friend of their own sex, from whom they are almost inseparable. Even battered, brazen, beautiful, heartless Mrs. Firebrace, whose father died of her shame - even she is hardly seen in any public place without a shabby companion sitting somewhere in the shade.
"Rawdon," said Becky, very late one night, as a party of gentlemen were seated round her drawing-room fire, "I must have a sheep-dog."
"A what?" said Rawdon, looking up from the card-table.
"A sheep-dog!" said young Lord Southdown. "My dear Mrs. Crawley, what a fancy! Why not have a Great Dane? I know of one so big, by Jove, it would almost pull your carriage. Or do you want a little pug that would go into one of Lord Steyne's snuff-boxes?"
"I mean a moral sheep-dog," said Becky, laughing, and looking at Lord Steyne. "A dog to keep the wolves off me. A companion."
"Dear little innocent lamb, you need one," said the Marquis of Steyne. With jaw thrust out, he began to grin hideously, his little eyes leering at Rebecca.
The great Lord of Steyne was standing by the fire sipping coffee. A score of candles sparkled round the mantelpiece, lighting up Rebecca's figure to admiration as she sat on a flowered sofa. She was in a pink dress that looked as fresh as a rose; her dazzling white arms and shoulders were half-covered with a thin hazy scarf; her hair hung in curls round her neck; one of her pretty little feet peeped out from the crisp folds of the silk.
The candles lit up Lord Steyne's shining bald head, which was fringed with red hair. He had thick bushy eyebrows, with little bloodshot eyes, surrounded by a thousand wrinkles. When he laughed, two white buck-teeth protruded, glistening savagely. He had been dining with royalty, and wore his garter and ribbon. Though his Lordship was a short, bow-legged man, he was proud of the fineness of his ankle, and always caressing his garter-knee.
"And so the shepherd is not enough," said he, "to defend his lambkin?"
"The shepherd is too fond of playing at cards and going to his clubs," answered Becky, laughing.
"Gad, what a debauched Corydon!" said my lord.
"I take your three to two," said Rawdon at the card-table.
"Hark," snarled the noble marquis; "he's pastorally occupied: he's shearing a Southdown. Damme, what a snowy fleece!" Lord Steyne in early life had been notorious for his success at play.
Rebecca rose up and took his coffee cup from his hand with a little curtsey. "Yes," she said, "I must get a watchdog. But he won't bark at you." And, going into the other drawing-room, she sat down at the piano and began to sing French songs in such a thrilling voice that the mollified nobleman speedily followed her.
Rawdon meanwhile played cart, and won. Nights like these occurred many times in the week - his wife having all the talk and admiration, and he sitting silent, not comprehending a word of the jokes and allusions.
"How is Mrs. Crawley's husband?" Lord Steyne used to say to him; and indeed that was now his role. He was Colonel Crawley no more. He was Mrs. Crawley's husband.
About the little Rawdon, if nothing has been said all this while, it is because he is hidden in a garret somewhere, or has crawled into the kitchen for companionship. His mother scarcely ever took notice of him. He passed the days with his French maid until she went away; and then the little fellow, howling in the loneliness of the night, had pity taken on him by a housemaid, who took him out of his solitary nursery into her bed and comforted him.
Rebecca, my Lord Steyne, and one or two more were in the drawing-room when this shouting was heard overhead.
"It's my cherub crying for his nurse," said Rebecca. She did not move to go and see the child. "He'll cry himself to sleep." And they began talking about the opera.
Rawdon had stolen off, though, to look after his son, and found honest Dolly consoling the child. The Colonel's dressing-room was in those upper regions. He used to see the boy there in private, every morning when he shaved; Rawdon minor sitting on a box and watching the operation with never-ceasing pleasure. They were great friends. The father would bring sweetmeats and hide them in a box, where the child laughed with joy on discovering the treasure; laughed, but not too loud: for mamma was asleep below and must not be disturbed. She seldom rose till after noon.
Rawdon bought the boy plenty of picture-books and crammed his nursery with toys. Its walls were covered with pictures pasted up by the father's hand and purchased by him with actual cash. When he was not with Mrs. Rawdon in the park, he would sit up here, passing hours with the boy; who rode on his chest, pulled his mustachios like driving-reins, and spent days playing with him.
The ceiling was low, and once, when the child was not five years old, his father, tossing him wildly up in his arms, hit the poor little chap's skull violently. Rawdon minor screwed up his face for a tremendous howl - but his father interposed.
"For God's sake, Rawdy, don't wake Mamma," he cried. And the child, looking piteously at his father, bit his lips, clenched his hands, and didn't cry a bit.
Rawdon told that story to everybody. "By Gad, sir," he explained, "what a plucky boy he is - what a trump! I half-sent his head through the ceiling, by Gad, and he wouldn't cry for fear of disturbing his mother."
Once or twice a week that lady visited the upper regions where the child lived. She came blandly smiling in beautiful new clothes and gloves and boots. Wonderful scarfs, laces, and jewels glittered about her. She had always a new bonnet on, with flowers or magnificent ostrich feathers. When she left the room, an odour of roses lingered about the nursery. She was an unearthly being in the child's eyes, superior to his father - to all the world: to be worshipped at a distance. To drive with her in the carriage was an awful ritual: he sat up in the back seat and did not dare to speak, gazing at the beautifully dressed Princess opposite. Gentlemen on splendid prancing horses came up and talked with her. How her eyes beamed upon them!
Sometimes, when she was away, he came into his mother's room. It was like a fairy's abode - a mystic chamber of delights. In the wardrobe hung wonderful robes; there was the jewel-case, and the wondrous bronze hand on the dressing-table, glistening with a hundred rings. Poor lonely little boy! Mother is the name for God in the hearts of little children; and here was one who was worshipping a stone!
Now Colonel Crawley, rascal as he was, could love a child still. For Rawdon minor he had a great secret tenderness, which did not escape Rebecca. It did not annoy her: she was too good-natured. It only increased her scorn for him. He felt somehow ashamed of this paternal softness and hid it from his wife, only indulging in it when alone with the boy.
He used to take him out in the mornings to the stables and the park. Young Lord Southdown, the best-natured of men, bought the little chap a pony, and on this little black Shetland Rawdon's father liked to mount the boy, and to walk by his side in the park. It pleased him to see his old quarters: he had begun to think of his bachelorhood with something like regret. The old troopers were glad to recognize their ancient officer and dandle the little boy. Colonel Crawley found dining with his brother-officers very pleasant. "Hang it, I ain't clever enough for her. She won't miss me," he used to say: and he was right.
Rebecca was fond of her husband. She was always perfectly good-humoured and kind to him. She did not show her scorn for him much; perhaps she liked him the better for being a fool. He went on her errands; obeyed her orders without question; took her to the opera-box, and came back punctually to fetch her.
When the companion arrived, his duties became very light. His wife encouraged him to dine out.
"Don't stay at home to-night, my dear," she would say. "Some men are coming who will only bore you. Now I have a sheep-dog, I need not be afraid to be alone."
One Sunday morning, as Rawdon Crawley and his little son were taking their walk in the park, they passed an old acquaintance, Corporal Clink, talking to an old gentleman who held a boy in his arms. This other youngster had seized hold of the Waterloo medal which the Corporal wore, and was examining it with delight.
"Good morning, your Honour," said Clink. "This 'ere young man is about the little Colonel's age, sir."
"His father was a Waterloo man, too," said the old gentleman. "Wasn't he, Georgy?"
"Yes," said Georgy. He and the little chap on the pony were solemnly scanning each other as children do.
"He was a Captain," said the old gentleman rather pompously. "Captain George Osborne, sir - perhaps you knew him. He died the death of a hero, sir."
Colonel Crawley blushed quite red. "I knew him very well, sir," he said, "and his dear little wife - how is she?"
"She is my daughter, sir," said the old gentleman, handing him a card with great solemnity. On it was written-
"Mr. Sedley, Sole Agent for the Anti-Cinder Coal Association, Bunker's Wharf, and Anna-Maria Cottages, Fulham Road West."
Little Georgy went up and looked at the Shetland pony.
"Would you like to have a ride?" said Rawdon minor.
"Yes," said Georgy. The Colonel took up the child and put him on the pony behind Rawdon.
"Take hold of him round the waist, Georgy," he said. And both the children began to laugh.
"You won't see a prettier pair, sir," said the Corporal; and the three men walked alongside the children.


Such polite behaviour as that of Lord Tapeworm did not fail to have the most favourable effect upon Mr. Sedley's mind, and the very next morning, at breakfast, he pronounced his opinion that Pumpernickel was the pleasantest little place of any which he had visited on their tour. Jos's motives and artifices were not very difficult of comprehension, and Dobbin laughed in his sleeve, like a hypocrite as he was, when he found, by the knowing air of the civilian and the offhand manner in which the latter talked about Tapeworm Castle and the other members of the family, that Jos had been up already in the morning, consulting his travelling Peerage. Yes, he had seen the Right Honourable the Earl of Bagwig, his lordship's father; he was sure he had, he had met him at--at the Levee--didn't Dob remember? and when the Diplomatist called on the party, faithful to his promise, Jos received him with such a salute and honours as were seldom accorded to the little Envoy. He winked at Kirsch on his Excellency's arrival, and that emissary, instructed before-hand, went out and superintended an entertainment of cold meats, jellies, and other delicacies, brought in upon trays, and of which Mr. Jos absolutely insisted that his noble guest should partake.
Tapeworm, so long as he could have an opportunity of admiring the bright eyes of Mrs. Osborne (whose freshness of complexion bore daylight remarkably well) was not ill pleased to accept any invitation to stay in Mr. Sedley's lodgings; he put one or two dexterous questions to him about India and the dancing-girls there; asked Amelia about that beautiful boy who had been with her; and complimented the astonished little woman upon the prodigious sensation which she had made in the house; and tried to fascinate Dobbin by talking of the late war and the exploits of the Pumpernickel contingent under the command of the Hereditary Prince, now Duke of Pumpernickel.
Lord Tapeworm inherited no little portion of the family gallantry, and it was his happy belief that almost every woman upon whom he himself cast friendly eyes was in love with him. He left Emmy under the persuasion that she was slain by his wit and attractions and went home to his lodgings to write a pretty little note to her. She was not fascinated, only puzzled, by his grinning, his simpering, his scented cambric handkerchief, and his high-heeled lacquered boots. She did not understand one-half the compliments which he paid; she had never, in her small experience of mankind, met a professional ladies' man as yet, and looked upon my lord as something curious rather than pleasant; and if she did not admire, certainly wondered at him. Jos, on the contrary, was delighted. "How very affable his Lordship is," he said; "How very kind of his Lordship to say he would send his medical man! Kirsch, you will carry our cards to the Count de Schlusselback directly; the Major and I will have the greatest pleasure in paying our respects at Court as soon as possible. Put out my uniform, Kirsch--both our uniforms. It is a mark of politeness which every English gentleman ought to show to the countries which he visits to pay his respects to the sovereigns of those countries as to the representatives of his own."
When Tapeworm's doctor came, Doctor von Glauber, Body Physician to H.S.H. the Duke, he speedily convinced Jos that the Pumpernickel mineral springs and the Doctor's particular treatment would infallibly restore the Bengalee to youth and slimness. "Dere came here last year," he said, "Sheneral Bulkeley, an English Sheneral, tvice so pic as you, sir. I sent him back qvite tin after tree months, and he danced vid Baroness Glauber at the end of two."
Jos's mind was made up; the springs, the Doctor, the Court, and the Charge d'Affaires convinced him, and he proposed to spend the autumn in these delightful quarters. And punctual to his word, on the next day the Charge d'Affaires presented Jos and the Major to Victor Aurelius XVII, being conducted to their audience with that sovereign by the Count de Schlusselback, Marshal of the Court.
They were straightway invited to dinner at Court, and their intention of staying in the town being announced, the politest ladies of the whole town instantly called upon Mrs. Osborne; and as not one of these, however poor they might be, was under the rank of a Baroness, Jos's delight was beyond expression. He wrote off to Chutney at the Club to say that the Service was highly appreciated in Germany, that he was going to show his friend, the Count de Schlusselback, how to stick a pig in the Indian fashion, and that his august friends, the Duke and Duchess, were everything that was kind and civil.
Emmy, too, was presented to the august family, and as mourning is not admitted in Court on certain days, she appeared in a pink crape dress with a diamond ornament in the corsage, presented to her by her brother, and she looked so pretty in this costume that the Duke and Court (putting out of the question the Major, who had scarcely ever seen her before in an evening dress, and vowed that she did not look five-and-twenty) all admired her excessively.
In this dress she walked a Polonaise with Major Dobbin at a Court ball, in which easy dance Mr. Jos had the honour of leading out the Countess of Schlusselback, an old lady with a hump back, but with sixteen good quarters of nobility and related to half the royal houses of Germany.
Pumpernickel stands in the midst of a happy valley through which sparkles--to mingle with the Rhine somewhere, but I have not the map at hand to say exactly at what point--the fertilizing stream of the Pump. In some places the river is big enough to support a ferry-boat, in others to turn a mill; in Pumpernickel itself, the last Transparency but three, the great and renowned Victor Aurelius XIV built a magnificent bridge, on which his own statue rises, surrounded by water-nymphs and emblems of victory, peace, and plenty; he has his foot on the neck of a prostrate Turk--history says he engaged and ran a Janissary through the body at the relief of Vienna by Sobieski--but, quite undisturbed by the agonies of that prostrate Mahometan, who writhes at his feet in the most ghastly manner, the Prince smiles blandly and points with his truncheon in the direction of the Aurelius Platz, where he began to erect a new palace that would have been the wonder of his age had the great-souled Prince but had funds to complete it. But the completion of Monplaisir (Monblaisir the honest German folks call it) was stopped for lack of ready money, and it and its park and garden are now in rather a faded condition, and not more than ten times big enough to accommodate the Court of the reigning Sovereign.
The gardens were arranged to emulate those of Versailles, and amidst the terraces and groves there are some huge allegorical waterworks still, which spout and froth stupendously upon fete-days, and frighten one with their enormous aquatic insurrections. There is the Trophonius' cave in which, by some artifice, the leaden Tritons are made not only to spout water, but to play the most dreadful groans out of their lead conchs--there is the nymphbath and the Niagara cataract, which the people of the neighbourhood admire beyond expression, when they come to the yearly fair at the opening of the Chamber, or to the fetes with which the happy little nation still celebrates the birthdays and marriage-days of its princely governors.
Then from all the towns of the Duchy, which stretches for nearly ten mile--from Bolkum, which lies on its western frontier bidding defiance to Prussia, from Grogwitz, where the Prince has a hunting-lodge, and where his dominions are separated by the Pump River from those of the neighbouring Prince of Potzenthal; from all the little villages, which besides these three great cities, dot over the happy principality--from the farms and the mills along the Pump come troops of people in red petticoats and velvet head-dresses, or with three-cornered hats and pipes in their mouths, who flock to the Residenz and share in the pleasures of the fair and the festivities there. Then the theatre is open for nothing, then the waters of Monblaisir begin to play (it is lucky that there is company to behold them, for one would be afraid to see them alone)--then there come mountebanks and riding troops (the way in which his Transparency was fascinated by one of the horse-riders is well known, and it is believed that La Petite Vivandiere, as she was called, was a spy in the French interest), and the delighted people are permitted to march through room after room of the Grand Ducal palace and admire the slippery floor, the rich hangings, and the spittoons at the doors of all the innumerable chambers. There is one Pavilion at Monblaisir which Aurelius Victor XV had arranged--a great Prince but too fond of pleasure--and which I am told is a perfect wonder of licentious elegance. It is painted with the story of Bacchus and Ariadne, and the table works in and out of the room by means of a windlass, so that the company was served without any intervention of domestics. But the place was shut up by Barbara, Aurelius XV's widow, a severe and devout Princess of the House of Bolkum and Regent of the Duchy during her son's glorious minority, and after the death of her husband, cut off in the pride of his pleasures.
The theatre of Pumpernickel is known and famous in that quarter of Germany. It languished a little when the present Duke in his youth insisted upon having his own operas played there, and it is said one day, in a fury, from his place in the orchestra, when he attended a rehearsal, broke a bassoon on the head of the Chapel Master, who was conducting, and led too slow; and during which time the Duchess Sophia wrote domestic comedies, which must have been very dreary to witness. But the Prince executes his music in private now, and the Duchess only gives away her plays to the foreigners of distinction who visit her kind little Court.
It is conducted with no small comfort and splendour. When there are balls, though there may be four hundred people at supper, there is a servant in scarlet and lace to attend upon every four, and every one is served on silver. There are festivals and entertainments going continually on, and the Duke has his chamberlains and equerries, and the Duchess her mistress of the wardrobe and ladies of honour, just like any other and more potent potentates.
The Constitution is or was a moderate despotism, tempered by a Chamber that might or might not be elected. I never certainly could hear of its sitting in my time at Pumpernickel. The Prime Minister had lodgings in a second floor, and the Foreign Secretary occupied the comfortable lodgings over Zwieback's Conditorey. The army consisted of a magnificent band that also did duty on the stage, where it was quite pleasant to see the worthy fellows marching in Turkish dresses with rouge on and wooden scimitars, or as Roman warriors with ophicleides and trombones--to see them again, I say, at night, after one had listened to them all the morning in the Aurelius Platz, where they performed opposite the cafe where we breakfasted. Besides the band, there was a rich and numerous staff of officers, and, I believe, a few men. Besides the regular sentries, three or four men, habited as hussars, used to do duty at the Palace, but I never saw them on horseback, and au fait, what was the use of cavalry in a time of profound peace?--and whither the deuce should the hussars ride?
Everybody--everybody that was noble of course, for as for the bourgeois we could not quite be expected to take notice of THEM--visited his neighbour. H. E. Madame de Burst received once a week, H. E. Madame de Schnurrbart had her night--the theatre was open twice a week, the Court graciously received once, so that a man's life might in fact be a perfect round of pleasure in the unpretending Pumpernickel way.
That there were feuds in the place, no one can deny. Politics ran very high at Pumpernickel, and parties were very bitter. There was the Strumpff faction and the Lederlung party, the one supported by our envoy and the other by the French Charge d'Affaires, M. de Macabau. Indeed it sufficed for our Minister to stand up for Madame Strumpff, who was clearly the greater singer of the two, and had three more notes in her voice than Madame Lederlung her rival--it sufficed, I say, for our Minister to advance any opinion to have it instantly contradicted by the French diplomatist.
Everybody in the town was ranged in one or other of these factions. The Lederlung was a prettyish little creature certainly, and her voice (what there was of it) was very sweet, and there is no doubt that the Strumpff was not in her first youth and beauty, and certainly too stout; when she came on in the last scene of the Sonnambula, for instance, in her night-chemise with a lamp in her hand, and had to go out of the window, and pass over the plank of the mill, it was all she could do to squeeze out of the window, and the plank used to bend and creak again under her weight--but how she poured out the finale of the opera! and with what a burst of feeling she rushed into Elvino's arms--almost fit to smother him! Whereas the little Lederlung--but a truce to this gossip--the fact is that these two women were the two flags of the French and the English party at Pumpernickel, and the society was divided in its allegiance to those two great nations.
We had on our side the Home Minister, the Master of the Horse, the Duke's Private Secretary, and the Prince's Tutor; whereas of the French party were the Foreign Minister, the Commander-in-Chief's Lady, who had served under Napoleon, and the Hof-Marschall and his wife, who was glad enough to get the fashions from Paris, and always had them and her caps by M. de Macabau's courier. The Secretary of his Chancery was little Grignac, a young fellow, as malicious as Satan, and who made caricatures of Tapeworm in all the albums of the place.
Their headquarters and table d'hote were established at the Pariser Hof, the other inn of the town; and though, of course, these gentlemen were obliged to be civil in public, yet they cut at each other with epigrams that were as sharp as razors, as I have seen a couple of wrestlers in Devonshire, lashing at each other's shins and never showing their agony upon a muscle of their faces. Neither Tapeworm nor Macabau ever sent home a dispatch to his government without a most savage series of attacks upon his rival. For instance, on our side we would write, "The interests of Great Britain in this place, and throughout the whole of Germany, are perilled by the continuance in office of the present French envoy; this man is of a character so infamous that he will stick at no falsehood, or hesitate at no crime, to attain his ends. He poisons the mind of the Court against the English minister, represents the conduct of Great Britain in the most odious and atrocious light, and is unhappily backed by a minister whose ignorance and necessities are as notorious as his influence is fatal." On their side they would say, "M. de Tapeworm continues his system of stupid insular arrogance and vulgar falsehood against the greatest nation in the world. Yesterday he was heard to speak lightly of Her Royal Highness Madame the Duchess of Berri; on a former occasion he insulted the heroic Duke of Angouleme and dared to insinuate that H.R.H. the Duke of Orleans was conspiring against the august throne of the lilies. His gold is prodigated in every direction which his stupid menaces fail to frighten. By one and the other, he has won over creatures of the Court here--and, in fine, Pumpernickel will not be quiet, Germany tranquil, France respected, or Europe content until this poisonous viper be crushed under heel": and so on. When one side or the other had written any particularly spicy dispatch, news of it was sure to slip out.
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; and Madam Strumpff came to give her lessons in singing, which she performed so well and with such a true voice that the Major's windows, who had lodgings opposite under the Prime Minister, were always open to hear the lesson. Some of the German ladies, who are very sentimental and simple in their tastes, fell in love with her and began to call her du at once. These are trivial details, but they relate to happy times. The Major made himself George's tutor and read Caesar and mathematics with him, and they had a German master and rode out of evenings by the side of Emmy's carriage--she was always too timid, and made a dreadful outcry at the slightest disturbance on horse-back. So she drove about with one of her dear German friends, and Jos asleep on the back-seat of the barouche.
He was becoming very sweet upon the Grafinn Fanny de Butterbrod, a very gentle tender-hearted and unassuming young creature, a Canoness and Countess in her own right, but with scarcely ten pounds per year to her fortune, and Fanny for her part declared that to be Amelia's sister was the greatest delight that Heaven could bestow on her, and Jos might have put a Countess's shield and coronet by the side of his own arms on his carriage and forks; when--when events occurred, and those grand fetes given upon the marriage of the Hereditary Prince of Pumpernickel with the lovely Princess Amelia of Humbourg-Schlippenschloppen took place.
At this festival the magnificence displayed was such as had not been known in the little German place since the days of the prodigal Victor XIV. All the neighbouring Princes, Princesses, and Grandees were invited to the feast. Beds rose to half a crown per night in Pumpernickel, and the Army was exhausted in providing guards of honour for the Highnesses, Serenities, and Excellencies who arrived from all quarters. The Princess was married by proxy, at her father's residence, by the Count de Schlusselback. Snuff-boxes were given away in profusion (as we learned from the Court jeweller, who sold and afterwards bought them again), and bushels of the Order of Saint Michael of Pumpernickel were sent to the nobles of the Court, while hampers of the cordons and decorations of the Wheel of St. Catherine of Schlippenschloppen were brought to ours. The French envoy got both. "He is covered with ribbons like a prize cart-horse," Tapeworm said, who was not allowed by the rules of his service to take any decorations: "Let him have the cordons; but with whom is the victory?" The fact is, it was a triumph of British diplomacy, the French party having proposed and tried their utmost to carry a marriage with a Princess of the House of Potztausend-Donnerwetter, whom, as a matter of course, we opposed.
Everybody was asked to the fetes of the marriage. Garlands and triumphal arches were hung across the road to welcome the young bride. The great Saint Michael's Fountain ran with uncommonly sour wine, while that in the Artillery Place frothed with beer. The great waters played; and poles were put up in the park and gardens for the happy peasantry, which they might climb at their leisure, carrying off watches, silver forks, prize sausages hung with pink ribbon, &c., at the top. Georgy got one, wrenching it off, having swarmed up the pole to the delight of the spectators, and sliding down with the rapidity of a fall of water. But it was for the glory's sake merely. The boy gave the sausage to a peasant, who had very nearly seized it, and stood at the foot of the mast, blubbering, because he was unsuccessful.
At the French Chancellerie they had six more lampions in their illumination than ours had; but our transparency, which represented the young Couple advancing and Discord flying away, with the most ludicrous likeness to the French Ambassador, beat the French picture hollow; and I have no doubt got Tapeworm the advancement and the Cross of the Bath which he subsequently attained.
Crowds of foreigners arrived for the fetes, and of English, of course. Besides the Court balls, public balls were given at the Town Hall and the Redoute, and in the former place there was a room for trente-et-quarante and roulette established, for the week of the festivities only, and by one of the great German companies from Ems or Aix-la-Chapelle. The officers or inhabitants of the town were not allowed to play at these games, but strangers, peasants, ladies were admitted, and any one who chose to lose or win money.
That little scapegrace Georgy Osborne amongst others, whose pockets were always full of dollars and whose relations were away at the grand festival of the Court, came to the Stadthaus Ball in company of his uncle's courier, Mr. Kirsch, and having only peeped into a play-room at Baden-Baden when he hung on Dobbin's arm, and where, of course, he was not permitted to gamble, came eagerly to this part of the entertainment and hankered round the tables where the croupiers and the punters were at work. Women were playing; they were masked, some of them; this license was allowed in these wild times of carnival.
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. As the croupier called out the colour and number, she pricked on the card with great care and regularity, and only ventured her money on the colours after the red or black had come up a certain number of times. It was strange to look at 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, as he cried out with his inexorable voice the winning colour and number. She gave a sigh, a shrug with her shoulders, which were already too much out of her gown, and dashing the pin through the card on to the table, sat thrumming it for a while. Then she looked round her and saw Georgy's honest face staring at the scene. The little scamp! What business had he to be there?
When she saw the boy, at whose face she looked hard through her shining eyes and mask, she said, "Monsieur n'est pas joueur?"
"Non, Madame," said the boy; but she must have known, from his accent, of what country he was, for she answered him with a slight foreign tone. "You have nevare played--will you do me a littl' favor?"
"What is it?" said Georgy, blushing again. Mr. Kirsch was at work for his part at the rouge et noir and did not see his young master.
"Play this for me, if you please; put it on any number, any number." And she took from her bosom a purse, and out of it a gold piece, the only coin there, and she put it into George's hand. The boy laughed and did as he was bid.
The number came up sure enough. There is a power that arranges that, they say, for beginners.
"Thank you," said she, pulling the money towards her, "thank you. What is your name?"
"My name's Osborne," said Georgy, and was fingering in his own pockets for dollars, and just about to make a trial, when the Major, in his uniform, and Jos, en Marquis, from the Court ball, made their appearance. Other people, finding the entertainment stupid and preferring the fun at the Stadthaus, had quitted the Palace ball earlier; but it is probable the Major and Jos had gone home and found the boy's absence, for the former instantly went up to him and, taking him by the shoulder, pulled him briskly back from the place of temptation. Then, looking round the room, he saw Kirsch employed as we have said, and going up to him, asked how he dared to bring Mr. George to such a place.
"Laissez-moi tranquille," said Mr. Kirsch, very much excited by play and wine. "Il faut s'amuser, parbleu. Je ne suis pas au service de Monsieur."
Seeing his condition the Major did not choose to argue with the man, but contented himself with drawing away George and asking Jos if he would come away. He was standing close by the lady in the mask, who was playing with pretty good luck now, and looking on much interested at the game.
"Hadn't you better come, Jos," the Major said, "with George and me?"
"I'll stop and go home with that rascal, Kirsch," Jos said; and for the same reason of modesty, which he thought ought to be preserved before the boy, Dobbin did not care to remonstrate with Jos, but left him and walked home with Georgy.
"Did you play?" asked the Major when they were out and on their way home.
The boy said "No."
"Give me your word of honour as a gentleman that you never will."
"Why?" said the boy; "it seems very good fun." And, in a very eloquent and impressive manner, the Major showed him why he shouldn't, and would have enforced his precepts by the example of Georgy's own father, had he liked to say anything that should reflect on the other's memory. When he had housed him, he went to bed and saw his light, in the little room outside of Amelia's, presently disappear. Amelia's followed half an hour afterwards. I don't know what made the Major note it so accurately.
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, and he had some Napoleons chinking in the embroidered pockets of his court waistcoat. He put down one over the fair shoulder of the little gambler before him, and they won. She made a little movement to make room for him by her side, and just took the skirt of her gown from a vacant chair there.
"Come and give me good luck," she said, still in a foreign accent, quite different from that frank and perfectly English "Thank you," with which she had saluted Georgy's coup in her favour. The portly gentleman, looking round to see that nobody of rank observed him, sat down; he muttered--"Ah, really, well now, God bless my soul. I'm very fortunate; I'm sure to give you good fortune," and other words of compliment and confusion. "Do you play much?" the foreign mask 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?"
And Mr. Kirsch having lost all his money by this time, followed his master out into the moonlight, where the illuminations were winking out and the transparency over our mission was scarcely visible.

Lord Tapeworm's politeness impressed Mr. Sedley; and the next morning, at breakfast, he declared that Pumpernickel was the pleasantest little place he had visited on their tour. Dobbin laughed when he heard Jos talk about Tapeworm Castle, and learned that he had already been consulting his Peerage. When the diplomat called on the party, Jos received him with profuse honours. There was an entertainment of cold meats, jellies, and other delicacies, brought in upon trays, of which Mr. Jos insisted that his noble guest should partake.
Tapeworm, so long as he could have an opportunity of admiring the bright eyes of Mrs. Osborne, was pleased to accept an invitation to stay. He chatted to Mr. Sedley about India and the dancing-girls there; asked Amelia about that beautiful boy who had been with her; and tried to fascinate Dobbin by talking of the late war and the exploits of the Duke of Pumpernickel.
Lord Tapeworm held the happy belief that almost every woman he looked at was in love with him. He left Emmy, persuaded that she was slain by his attractions, and went home to write a pretty note to her. She was not fascinated, only puzzled by his grinning, his simpering, his scented handkerchief, and his high-heeled lacquered boots. She did not understand one-half the compliments he paid; she had never met a professional ladies' man as yet, and looked upon him as something curious rather than pleasant.
Jos, on the contrary, was delighted. "How very affable his Lordship is," he said; "How very kind to say he would send his medical man! We should pay our respects at Court as soon as possible."
When Tapeworm's doctor came, he speedily convinced Jos that the Pumpernickel mineral springs and his own particular treatment would restore him to youth and slimness. Jos, therefore, proposed to spend the autumn in this delightful place. And punctual to his word, on the next day the Charge d'Affaires presented Jos and the Major to Victor Aurelius XVII.
They were invited to dinner at Court, and afterwards the politest ladies of the town instantly called upon Mrs. Osborne. As not one of these was under the rank of a Baroness, Jos's delight was beyond expression.
Emmy was presented to the noble family. Since mourning is not admitted in Court on certain days, she appeared in a pink dress with a diamond ornament, given to her by her brother. She looked so pretty that the Duke and Court (to say nothing of the Major) all admired her excessively. In this dress she walked a Polonaise with Major Dobbin, while Mr. Jos had the honour of leading out the Countess of Schlusselback, an old lady with a hump back, but related to half the royal houses of Germany.
Pumpernickel stands in a happy valley through which sparkles the stream of the Pump. In some places the river is big enough to support a ferry-boat, in others to turn a mill; in Pumpernickel itself, the great and renowned Victor Aurelius XIV built a magnificent bridge, on which his own statue rises, surrounded by water-nymphs and with its foot on the neck of a prostrate Turk. The statue smiles and points in the direction of the Aurelius Platz, where the Prince began to erect a new palace that would have been the wonder of his age if he had only had the money to complete it.
The gardens (which are now rather faded) copied those of Versailles. Amidst the terraces and groves there are some huge waterworks still, which spout and froth stupendously, and which the people of the neighbourhood admire beyond expression, when they come to the fetes with which the happy little nation still celebrates the birthdays of its princes.
Then from all the towns of the Duchy, which stretches for nearly ten miles - from all the little villages, farms and mills along the Pump, come troops of people in red petticoats and velvet head-dresses, or three-cornered hats, flocking to the festivities. Then the theatre is open for nothing, the fountains begin to play; the delighted people are permitted to march through room after room of the Grand Ducal palace and admire the slippery floor, the rich hangings, and the spittoons at the doors of the innumerable chambers.
The theatre of Pumpernickel is famous in that part of Germany. It languished a little when the present Duke insisted upon having his own operas played there, and it is said, one day, in a fury, broke a bassoon on the head of the Chapel Master, who was conducting too slow; but the Prince executes his music in private now.
When there are balls at Pumpernickel, though there may be four hundred people at supper, there is a servant in scarlet and lace to attend upon every four, and everyone is served on silver. There are festivals and entertainments going on continually, and the Duke has his chamberlains, and the Duchess her ladies of honour, just like more potent potentates.
The Constitution is or was a moderate despotism, tempered by a Chamber that might or might not be elected. The army consisted of a magnificent band that also did duty on the stage; besides the band, there was a rich and numerous staff of officers, and a few men.
That there were feuds in the place, no one can deny. Politics ran very high at Pumpernickel, and factions - supporting either the English or the French - were very bitter. Everybody in the town was ranged in one or other of these factions. We had on our English side the Home Minister, the Master of the Horse, the Duke's Private Secretary, and the Prince's Tutor; whereas of the French party were the Foreign Minister, the Commander-in-Chief's Lady, and the Hof-Marschall and his wife. Their headquarters were at the other inn of the town; and though, of course, these gentlemen were obliged to be civil in public, yet they cut at each other with epigrams as sharp as razors.
Emmy had a French teacher, who complimented her upon the purity of her accent and her ease of learning; the fact is she had learned the grammar long ago, so as to be able to teach it to George. She had singing lessons, and performed with such a true voice that the Major's windows were always open to hear the lesson. Some of the German ladies, who are very sentimental, fell in love with her. These are trivial details, but they relate to happy times. The Major made himself George's tutor and read Caesar and mathematics with him, and they had a German master and rode beside Emmy's carriage. She drove about with one of her dear German friends, and Jos asleep on the back-seat.
Jos was becoming very sweet upon the Grafinn Fanny de Butterbrod, a tender-hearted and unassuming young creature, a Countess, but with scarcely ten pounds per year. Fanny declared that to be Amelia's sister was the greatest delight possible, and Jos might have put the question - when events occurred.
A grand festival took place upon the marriage of the Prince of Pumpernickel with the lovely Princess Amelia of Humbourg Schlippenschloppen. Its magnificence was unsurpassed. All the neighbouring Princes, Princesses, and Grandees were invited to the feast.
Garlands and triumphal arches were hung across the road to welcome the young bride. The great Saint Michael's Fountain ran with uncommonly sour wine, while that in the Artillery Place frothed with beer. Poles were put up in the park and gardens for the happy peasantry to climb, carrying off prizes of watches, silver forks and sausages hung with pink ribbon at the top. Georgy got a sausage, having swarmed up the pole to the delight of the spectators, and gave it to a peasant who was blubbering because he had just failed in his own attempt.
Crowds of foreigners arrived, and of English, of course. Besides the Court balls, public balls were given at the Town Hall, where there was a room for gaming, for the week of the festivities only; although the inhabitants of the town were not allowed to play.
That little scapegrace Georgy Osborne came eagerly to this entertainment, accompanied by Jos's courier, and hankered round the tables where the croupiers and the punters were at work. Women were playing, some of them masked.
A woman with light hair, in a low dress by no means so fresh as it had been, and with a black mask on, was seated at one of the roulette-tables with a couple of florins. As the croupier called out the colour and number, she ventured her money with great care.
But in spite of her care she guessed wrong; and the last two florins followed each other under the croupier's rake. She gave a sigh, and shrugged her shoulders, which were already too much out of her gown. Then, looking round, she saw Georgy's honest face.
She looked hard at him, and said, "Monsieur n'est pas joueur?"
"Non, Madame," said the boy; but she must have recognised his accent, for she answered in English with a slight foreign tone.
"You have nevare played - will you do me a littl' favour?"
"What is it?" said Georgy, blushing.
"Play this for me, if you please; put it on any number." And she took from her bosom a purse, and out of it a gold piece, the only coin there. She put it into George's hand. The boy laughed and did as he was bid.
The number came up.
"Thank you," said she, pulling the money towards her, "thank you. What is your name?"
"My name's Osborne," said Georgy, and he was fingering in his own pockets for money, when the Major, in his uniform, and Jos, from the Court ball, made their appearance. The Major instantly went up and pulled him briskly away from the place of temptation. Jos, however, looked on with much interest at the game, standing close by the lady in the mask.
"Jos," the Major said, "are you coming with George and me?"
"I'll stay and go home later," Jos said. So Dobbin left him and walked home with Georgy.
"Did you play?" asked the Major when they were outside.
"No."
"Give me your word of honour as a gentleman that you never will."
"Why?" said the boy; "it seems very good fun." And, in a very eloquent and impressive manner, the Major showed him why he shouldn't, and would have enforced his lessons by the example of Georgy's own father, if it would not have reflected on the other's memory.
Jos, however, remained behind at the play-table. He was no gambler, but not averse to the little excitement of the sport now and then, and he had some Napoleons chinking in his embroidered pockets. He put one down over the fair shoulder of the little gambler before him. She moved to make room for him by her side.
"Come and give me good luck," she said, still in a foreign accent. Jos sat down.
"Do you play much?" the foreign mask said.
"I put down a Nap or two," said Jos with a superb air, flinging down a gold piece.
"Yes; a nap after dinner," said the mask archly. "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 - yet 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 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 staying at the Elephant," she continued. "Ask for Madame de Raudon. I saw my dear Amelia today; how pretty she looked, and how happy! So do you! Everybody but me, who am wretched." And she moved her money from the red to the black, as if by a chance movement of her hand, while she was wiping her eyes with a torn handkerchief.
The red came up again, and she lost all that stake.
"Come away," she said. "Come with me a little - we are old friends, are we not, dear Mr. Sedley?"
And they went out into the moonlight together.

Chapter 63: In Which We Meet an Old Acquaintance