Chapter 12

In after years Dobbin's father, the despised grocer, became Alderman, and Colonel of the City Light Horse, in which corps George Osborne's father was but an indifferent Corporal. Colonel Dobbin was knighted by his sovereign, which honour placed his son William in a social position above that of the old school friends who had once been so scornful of him at Swishtail Academy; even above the object of his deepest admiration, George Osborne.

But this did not in the least alter honest, simple-minded William Dobbin's feelings, and his adoration for young Osborne remained unchanged. The two entered the army in the same regiment, and served together, and Dobbin's attachment for George was as warm and loyal then as when they were school-boys together.

Honest William Dobbin,--I would that there were more such staunch comrades as you to answer to the name of friend!

GEORGE OSBORNE--RAWDON CRAWLEY

Rebecca sharp, the teacher of French at Miss Pinkerton's Academy for young ladies, and intimate friend of Miss Amelia Sedley, the most popular scholar in Miss Pinkerton's select establishment, left the institution at the same time to become a governess in the family of Sir Pitt Crawley. Amelia was the only daughter of John Sedley, a wealthy London stock broker, and upon leaving school was to take her place in fashionable society. Being the sweetest, most kind-hearted girl in the world, Amelia invited Becky to visit her in London before taking up her new duties as governess; which invitation Becky was only too glad to accept.

Now, Miss Sharp was in no way like the gentle Amelia, but as keen, brilliant, and selfish a young person of eighteen as ever schemed to have events turn to her advantage. These characteristics she showed so plainly while visiting at the Sedleys' that she left anything but a good impression behind her. In fact, her visit was cut short because of some unpleasant circumstances connected with her behaviour.

From that time she and Amelia did not meet for many months, during which Amelia had become the wife of George Osborne, and Rebecca Sharp had married Rawdon Crawley, son of Sir Pitt Crawley, Baronet.

The circumstances of Amelia's life during these months altered greatly, for shortly after she left school honest John Sedley met with such severe losses that his family were obliged to live in a much more modest way than formerly. Because of this misfortune, the course of Amelia's love affair with young Lieutenant Osborne did not run smoothly; for his father was far too ambitious to consent to his only son's marriage with the daughter of a ruined man, although John Sedley was his son's godfather, and George had been devoted to Amelia since early boyhood.

Lieutenant Osborne therefore went away with his regiment, and poor little Amelia was left behind, to pine and mourn until it seemed there was no hope of saving her life unless happiness should speedily come to her. Then it was that Major Dobbin, George Osborne's staunch friend of schooldays, and also an ardent admirer of Amelia's, saw how she was grieving and took upon himself to inform George Osborne of the state of affairs. The young lieutenant came hurrying home just in time to save a gentle little heart from wearing itself away with sorrowing, and married Amelia without his father's consent. This so enraged the old gentleman that he refused to have his name mentioned in the home where the boy had grown up; the veriest tyrant and idol of his sisters and father.

To Brighton George and Amelia went on their honeymoon, and there they met Becky Sharp and her husband. Though the circumstances of the two young women's career had altered, Amelia and Becky were unchanged in character, but that is of small concern to us, except as it affects their children, to whose lives we now turn with keen interest, noting how they reflect the dispositions, and are affected by the characters of their mothers.

As for little Rawdon Crawley, Becky's only child, he had few early happy recollections of his mother. She had not, to say the truth, seen much of the young gentleman since his birth. After the amiable fashion of French mothers, she had placed him out at nurse in a village in the neighbourhood of Paris, where little Rawdon lived, not unhappily, with a numerous family of foster brothers in wooden shoes. His father, who was devotedly attached to the little fellow, would ride over many a time to see him here, and the elder Rawdon's paternal heart glowed to see him rosy and dirty, shouting lustily, and happy in the making of mud-pies under the superintendence of the gardener's wife, his nurse.

Rebecca, however, did not care much to go and see her son and heir, who as a result preferred his nurse's caresses to his mamma's, and when finally he quitted that jolly nurse, he cried loudly for hours. He was only consoled by his mother's promise that he should return to his nurse the next day; which promise, it is needless to say, was not kept; instead the boy was consigned to the care of a French maid, Genevieve, while his mother was seldom with him, and the French woman was so neglectful of her young charge that at one time he very narrowly escaped drowning on Calais sands, where Genevieve had left and lost him.

So with little care and less love his childhood passed until presently he went with his father and mother, Colonel and Mrs. Crawley, to London, to their new home in Curzon Street, Mayfair. There little Rawdon's time was mostly spent hidden upstairs in a garret somewhere, or crawling below into the kitchen for companionship. His mother scarcely ever took notice of him. He passed the days with his French nurse as long as she remained in the family, and when she went away, a housemaid took compassion on the little fellow, who was howling in the loneliness of the night, and got him out of his solitary nursery into her bed in the garret and comforted him.

Rebecca, her friend, 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," said his mother, who did not offer to move and go and see the child. "Don't agitate your feelings by going to look after him," said Lord Steyne sardonically. "Bah!" exclaimed Becky, with a sort of blush. "He'll cry himself to sleep"; and they fell to talking about the opera.

Mr. Rawdon Crawley had stolen off, however, 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 sweet-meats 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 asleep and must not be disturbed. She did not go to rest until very late, and seldom rose until afternoon.

His father 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. He passed hours with the boy, who rode on his chest, pulled his great moustaches as if they were driving reins, and spent days with him in indefatigable gambols. The room was a low one, 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 scull so violently against the ceiling that he almost dropped him, so terrified was he at the disaster.

Rawdon minor had made up his face for a tremendous howl, 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 plucky one that boy of mine is. What a trump he is! I half sent his head through the ceiling, and he wouldn't cry for fear of disturbing mother!"

Sometimes, once or twice in a week, that lady visited the upper regions in which the child lived. She came like a vivified picture, 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 patronisingly 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 a carriage was an awful rite. He sat 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 the 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 delight. There in the wardrobe hung those wonderful robes--pink and blue and many-tinted. There was the jewel case, silver clasped; and a hundred rings on the dressing table. There was a cheval glass, that miracle of art, in which he could just see his own wondering head, and the reflection of Dolly, plumping and patting the pillows of the bed. 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!

His father 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 a hat from his head, and whose main occupation in life was to buy nicknacks that he might give them away afterwards, bought the little chap a pony, not much bigger than a large rat, and on this little black Shetland pony young Rawdon's great father would mount the boy, and walk by his side in the Park.

One Sunday morning as Rawdon Crawley, his little son, and the pony were taking their accustomed walk, they passed an old acquaintance of the Colonel's, Corporal Clink, who was in conversation with an old gentleman, who held a boy in his arms about the age of little Rawdon. The 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, Georgie?"

"Yes, sir," said Georgie. He and the little chap on the pony were looking at each other with all their might, solemnly scanning each other as children do.

"His father was a captain in the--the 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"

"I knew him very well, sir," said Colonel Crawley, "and his wife, his dear little wife, sir--how is she?"

"She is my daughter, sir," said the old gentleman proudly, putting down the boy, and taking out his card, which he handed to the Colonel, while little Georgie went up and looked at the Shetland pony.

"Should you like to have a ride?" said Rawdon minor from the saddle.

"Yes," said Georgie. 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, Georgie," he said; "take my little boy around 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, who enjoyed each other and the pony enormously. In later years they often talked of that first meeting.

But this is anticipating our story, for between the time of their first ride together, and the time when circumstances brought them together again, the little chaps saw nothing of one another for a number of years, during which the incidents of their lives differed as widely as did the lives of their parents.

About the time when the little boys first met, Sir Pitt Crawley, Baronet, father of Pitt and Rawdon Crawley, died, and Rebecca and her husband hastened to Queen's Crawley, the old family home, where Rebecca had once been governess, to shed a last tear over the departed Baronet. Rebecca was not bowed down with grief, we must confess, but keenly alive to the benefits which might come to herself and Rawdon if she could please Sir Pitt Crawley, the new Baronet, and Lady Jane his wife, a simple-minded woman mostly absorbed in the affairs of her nursery. This interest aroused Becky's private scorn, but the first thing that clever little lady did was to attack Lady Jane at her vulnerable point. After being conducted to the apartments prepared for her, and having taken off her bonnet and cloak, Becky asked her sister-in-law in what more she could be useful.

"What I should like best," she added, "would be to see your dear little nursery," at which the two ladies looked very kindly at each other, and went to the nursery hand in hand.

Becky admired little Matilda, who was not quite four years old, as the most charming little love in the world; and the boy, Pitt Blinkie Southdown, a little fellow of two years, pale, heavy-eyed, and large-headed, she pronounced to be a perfect prodigy in size, intelligence and beauty.

The funeral over, Rebecca and her husband remained for a visit at Queen's Crawley, which assumed its wonted aspect. Rawdon senior received constant bulletins respecting little Rawdon, who was left behind in London, and sent messages of his own. "I am very well," he wrote. "I hope you are very well. I hope mamma is very well. The pony is very well. Grey takes me to ride in the Park. I can canter. I met the little boy who rode before. He cried when he cantered. I do not cry."

Rawdon read these letters to his brother, and Lady Jane, who was delighted with them, gave Rebecca a banknote, begging her to buy a present with it for her little nephew.

Like all other good things, the visit came to an end, and one night the London lamps flashed joyfully as the stage rolled into Piccadilly, and Briggs had made a beautiful fire on the hearth in Curzon Street, and little Rawdon was up to welcome back his papa and mamma.

At this time he was a fine open-faced boy, with blue eyes and waving flaxen hair, sturdy in limb, but generous and soft in heart, fondly attaching himself to all who were good to him: to the pony, to Lord Southdown, who gave him the horse; to the groom who had charge of the pony; to Molly the cook, who crammed him with ghost stories at night and with good things from the dinner; to Briggs, his meek, devoted attendant, whom he plagued and laughed at; and to his father especially. Here, as he grew to be about eight years old, his attachment may be said to have ended. The beautiful mother vision had faded away after a while. During nearly two years his mother had scarcely spoken to the child. She disliked him. He had the measles and the whooping cough. He bored her. One day when he was standing at the landing-place, having crept down from the upper regions, attracted by the sound of his mother's voice, who was singing to Lord Steyne, the drawing-room door opening suddenly discovered the little spy, who but a moment before had been rapt in delight and listening to the music.

His mother came out and struck him violently a couple of boxes on the ear. He heard a laugh from the Marquis in the inner room, and fled down below to his friends of the kitchen, bursting in an agony of grief.

"It is not because it hurts me," little Rawdon gasped out, "only--only--" sobs and tears wound up the sentence in a storm. It was the little boy's heart that was bleeding. "Why mayn't I hear her singing? Why don't she ever sing to me, as she does to that bald-headed man with the large teeth?" He gasped out at various intervals these exclamations of grief and rage. The cook looked at the housemaid; the housemaid looked knowingly at the footman, who all sat in judgment on Rebecca from that moment.

After this incident the mother's dislike increased to hatred; the consciousness that the child was in the house was a reproach and a pain to her. His very sight annoyed her. Fear, doubt, and resistance sprang up too, in the boy's own bosom.

He and his mother were separated from that day of the boxes on the ear.

Lord Steyne also disliked the boy. When they met he made sarcastic bows or remarks to the child, or glared at him with savage-looking eyes. Rawdon used to stare him in the face and double his little fists in return. Had it not been for his father, the child would have been desolate indeed, in his own home.

But an unexpected good time came to him a day or two before Christmas, when he was taken by his father and mother to pass the holidays at Queen's Crawley. Becky would have liked to leave him at home, but for Lady Jane's urgent invitation to the youngster; and the symptoms of revolt and discontent manifested by Rawdon at her neglect of her son. "He is the finest boy in England," the father said reproachfully, "and you don't seem to care for him as much as you do for your spaniel. He shan't bother you much; at home he will be away from you in the nursery, and he shall go outside on the coach with me."

So little Rawdon was wrapped up in shawls and comforters for the winter's journey, and hoisted respectfully onto the roof of the coach in the dark morning; with no small delight watched the dawn arise, and made his first journey to the place which his father still called home. It was a journey of infinite pleasure to the boy, to whom the incidents of the road afforded endless interest; his father answering all questions connected with it, and telling him who lived in the great white house to the right, and whom the park belonged to.

Presently the boy fell asleep, and it was dark when he was wakened up to enter his uncle's carriage at Mudbury, and he sat and looked out of it wondering as the great iron gates flew open, and at the white trunks of the limes as they swept by, until they stopped at length before the lighted windows of the Hall, which were blazing and comfortable with Christmas welcome. The hall-door was flung open; a big fire was burning in the great old fireplace, a carpet was down over the chequered black flags, and the next instant Becky was kissing Lady Jane.

She and Sir Pitt performed the same salute with great gravity, while Sir Pitt's two children came up to their cousin. Matilda held out her hand and kissed him. Pitt Blinkie Southdown, the son and heir, stood aloof, and examined him as a little dog does a big one.

Then the kind hostess conducted her guests to snug apartments blazing with cheerful fires, and after some conversation with the fine young ladies of the house, the great dinner bell having rung, the family assembled at dinner, at which meal Rawdon junior was placed by his aunt, and exhibited not only a fine appetite, but a gentlemanlike behaviour.

"I like to dine here," he said to his aunt when he had completed his meal, at the conclusion of which, and after a decent grace by Sir Pitt, the younger son and heir was introduced and was perched on a high chair by the Baronet's side, while the daughter took possession of the place prepared for her, near her mother. "I like to dine here," said Rawdon minor, looking up at his relation's kind face.

"Why?" said the good Lady Jane.

"I dine in the kitchen when I am at home," replied Rawdon minor, "or else with Briggs." This honest confession was fortunately not heard by Becky, who was deep in conversation with the Baronet, or it might have been worse for little Rawdon.

As a guest, and it being the first night of his arrival, he was allowed to sit up until the hour when, tea being over and a great gilt book being laid on the table before Sir Pitt, all the domestics of the family streamed in and Sir Pitt read prayers. It was the first time the poor little boy had ever witnessed or heard of such a ceremonial.

Queen's Crawley had been much improved since the young Baronet's brief reign, and was pronounced by Becky to be perfect, charming, delightful, when she surveyed it in his company. As for little Rawdon, who examined it with the children for his guides, it seemed to him a perfect palace of enchantment and wonder. There were long galleries, and ancient state bed-rooms; there were pictures and old china and armour which enchanted little Rawdon, who had never seen their like before, and who, poor child, had never before been in such an atmosphere of kindness and good cheer.

On Christmas day a great family gathering took place, and one and all agreed that little Rawdon was a fine boy. They respected a possible Baronet in the boy between whom and the title there was only the little sickly, pale Pitt Blinkie.

The children were very good friends. Pitt Blinkie was too little a dog for such a big dog as Rawdon to play with, and Matilda, being only a girl, of course not fit companion for a young gentleman who was near eight years old, and going into jackets very soon. He took the command of this small party at once, the little girl and the little boy following him about with great reverence at such times as he condescended to sport with them. His happiness and pleasure in the country were extreme. The kitchen-garden pleased him hugely, the flowers moderately; but the pigeons and the poultry, and the stables, when he was allowed to visit them, were delightful objects to him. He resisted being kissed by the Misses Crawley; but he allowed Lady Jane sometimes to embrace him, and it was by her side that he liked to sit rather than by his mother. Rebecca, seeing that tenderness was the fashion, called Rawdon to her one evening, and stooped down and kissed him in the presence of all the ladies.

He looked her full in the face after the operation, trembling and turning very red, as his wont was when moved. "You never kiss me at home, Mamma," he said; at which there was a general silence and consternation, and by no means a pleasant look in Becky's eyes; but she was obliged to allow the incident to pass in silence.

But the greatest day of all was that on which Sir Huddlestone Fuddlestone's hounds met upon the lawn at Queen's Crawley.