Chapter 15

"That absurd Maria!" says Madam Bernstein, playing piquet with Harry. "She never had a good constitution. I hope she intends to be well to-morrow morning. She was forty-one years old. All her upper teeth are false, and she can't eat with them. How clumsily you deal, child!"

The next morning Lady Maria's indisposition was over, but Harry was wretched. Then in the evening the horse Harry was riding, in the matter of which he had been cheated by his cousin Will, at Castlewood, came down on his knees and sent the rider over his head. Mr. Harry was picked up insensible and carried home into a house called Oakhurst that stood hard by the road.

_II.--Samaritans_

That Mr. Warrington is still alive can be proved by the following letter, sent from the lady into whose house he was taken after his fall from Mr. Will's broken-kneed horse, to Mrs. Esmond Warrington. "If Mrs. Esmond Warrington of Virginia can call to mind twenty-three years ago, she may perhaps remember Miss Molly Benson, her classmate, at Kensington boarding school. Yesterday evening, as we were at tea there came a great ringing at our gate, and the servants, running out returned with the news that a young gentleman was lying lifeless on the road. At this, my dear husband, Colonel Lambert (who is sure the most Samaritan of men) hastens away, and presently, with the aid of the servants, and followed by two ladies,--one of whom is your cousin, Lady Maria Esmond and the other Baroness of Bernstein,--brings into the house such a pale, beautiful young man! The ladies went on to Tunbridge when Mr. Warrington was restored to consciousness and this morning the patient is very comfortable and the Colonel, who has had plenty of practice in accidents of this nature during his campaigns, pronounces that in two days more Mr. Warrington will be ready to take the road.

"Madam, Your affectionate, humble servant,

"MARY LAMBERT."

Harry Warrington's dislocated shoulder having been set, he was well enough to rise the following day, and Colonel Lambert lead his young guest into the parlour and introduced him to his two daughters, Miss Hester and Miss Theo. Three days later Mr. Warrington's health was entirely restored and he was out walking with Mrs. Lambert and the young ladies. What business had he to be walking with anybody but Lady Maria Esmond on the Pantiles, Tunbridge Wells? Why did he stay behind, unless he was in love with either of the young ladies? (and we say he wasn't). Could it be that he did not want to go? Only a week ago he was whispering in Castlewood shrubberies, and was he now ashamed of the nonsense he had talked there? What if his fell aunt's purpose is answered, and if his late love is killed by her communications? Surely kind hearts must pity Lady Maria, for she is having no very pleasant time of it at Tunbridge Wells. There is no one to protect her. Madam Beatrix has her all to herself. Lady Maria is poor, and hopes for money for her aunt, and Lady Maria has a secret or two which the old woman knows and brandishes over her.

Meanwhile Harry Warrington remained day after day contentedly at Oakhurst, with each day finding the kindly folks who welcomed him more to his liking. Never, since his grandfather's death, had he been in such good company. His lot had lain among fox hunting Virginian squires, and until he left his home he did not know how narrow and confined his life had been there.

Here the lad found himself in the midst of a circle where everything about him was incomparably gayer, brighter and more free. He was living with a man and woman who had seen the world, though they lived retired from it, and one of the benefits which Harry Warrington received from this family was to begin to learn that he was a profoundly ignorant young fellow. He admired his brother at home faithfully, of his kinsman at Castlewood he had felt himself at least the equal. In Colonel Lambert he found a man who had read far more books than Harry could pretend to judge of, and who had goodness and honesty written on his face and breathing from his lips.

As for the women, they were the kindest, merriest, most agreeable he had ever known. Here was a tranquil, sunshiny day of a life that was to be agitated and stormy. He was not in love, either with saucy Hetty or generous Theodosia: but when the time came for going away, he fastened on both their hands, and felt an immense regard for them.

"He is very kind and honest," said Theo gravely as they watched him and their father riding away.

"I am glad he has got papa to ride with him to Westerham," said little Hetty. "I don't like his going to those Castlewood people. I am sure that Madam Bernstein is a wicked old woman. I expected to see her ride away on her crooked stick. The other old woman seemed fond of him. She looked very melancholy when she went away, but Madam Bernstein whisked her off with her crutch, and she was obliged to go."

_III.--Harry Warrington is Disinherited_

Our young Virginian found himself after a few days at Tunbridge Wells by far the most important personage in the place. The story of his wealth had been magnified, and his winnings at play, which were considerable, were told and calculated at every tea-table. The old aunt Bernstein enjoyed his triumphs, and bade him pursue his enjoyments. As for Lady Maria, though Harry Warrington knew she was as old as his mother, he had given her his word to marry her at Castlewood, and, as he said, "A Virginian Esmond has but his word!"

Madam Bernstein offered her niece £5,000 to free Mr. Warrington of his engagement but the offer was declined, and a few weeks later Lady Maria returned to Castlewood, while Harry went to London. He knew that his mother, who was mistress for life of the Virginian property, would refuse her consent to his marriage, and the thought of it was put off to a late period. Meanwhile it hung like a weight round the young man's neck.

No wonder that his spirits rose more gaily as he came near London. He took lodgings in Bond Street and lived upon the fat of the land. His title of Fortunate Youth, bestowed upon him because of his luck at cards, was prettily recognised. But after a few weeks of lavish success, the luck turned and he lost heavily: the last blow was after a private game at piquet with his kinsman Lord Castlewood. Harry Warrington had now drawn and spent all his patrimony, and one evening when he was leaving the house of his uncle Sir Miles Warrington,--his dead father's elder brother,--two bailiffs took him for a debt of £500 and the Fortunate Youth was lodged in a sponging house in Chancery Lane.

Madam Bernstein was willing to pay her nephew's debts at once if he would break off his engagement with Lady Maria, but this the high-spirited youth declined to do.

Castlewood wrote frankly and said he had not got enough money for the purpose, and Lady Warrington sent a tract and said Sir Miles was away from home. But for his faithful servant Gumbo, Harry would have wanted ready money for his food.

It was Colonel Lambert, of whom Harry had seen little since he left Oakhurst, who came to his young friend's assistance. But the same night which saw Colonel Lambert at the sponging house saw the reappearance of his brother George.

"I am the brother whom you have heard of, sir," he said, addressing Colonel Lambert; "and who was left for dead in Mr. Braddock's action: and came to life again after eighteen months amongst the French; and live to thank God, and thank you for your kindness to my Harry. I can never forget that you helped my brother at his need."

While the two brothers were rejoicing over their meeting, "the whole town" was soon busy talking over the news that Mr. Harry Warrington was but a second son, and no longer the heir to a principality and untold wealth.

George loved his brother too well to have any desire for the union with Lady Maria, and lost no time in explaining to Lord Castlewood that Harry had no resources save dependence,--"and I know no worse lot than to be dependent on a self-willed woman like our mother. The means my brother had to make himself respected at home he hath squandered away here."

To Harry himself George repeated these words and added:

"My dear, I think one day you will say I have done my duty."

That night after the two brothers had dined together Harry went out, and did not return for three hours.

"It was shabby to say I would not aid him, and God help me, it was not true. I won't leave him, though he marries a blackamoor," thought George as he sat alone.

Presently Harry came in, looking ghastly pale. He came up and took his brother's hand.

"Perhaps what you did was right," he said, "though I, for one, will never believe that you would throw your brother off in distress. At dinner I thought suddenly, I'll say to her, 'Maria, poor as I am, I am yours to take or to leave. If you will have me, here I am: I will enlist: I will work: I will try and make a livelihood for myself somehow, and my bro--my relations will relent, and give us enough to live on.' That's what I determined to tell her; and I did, George. I found them all at dinner, all except Will; that is, I spoke out that very moment to them all, sitting round the table over their wine. 'Maria,' says I, 'a poor fellow wants to redeem his promise which he made when he fancied he was rich. Will you take him?' I found I had plenty of words, and I ended by saying 'I would do my best and my duty by her, so help me God!'

"When I had done, she came up to me quite kind. She took my hand, and kissed it before the rest. 'My dear,' she said, 'I have long seen it was only duty and a foolish promise made by a young man to an old woman, that has held you to your engagement. To keep it would make you miserable, and I absolve you from it, thanking you with all my heart for your fidelity, and blessing my dear cousin always.' And she came up to me and kissed me before them all, and went out of the room quite stately, and without a single tear. Oh, George, isn't she a noble creature?"

"Here's her health," cries George, filling a glass.

"Hip, hip, huzzay!" says Harry. He was wild with delight at being free.

Madame Bernstein was scarcely less pleased than her Virginian nephews at the result of Harry's final interview with Lady Maria.

_IV.--From the Warrington MSS._

My brother Harry Warrington went to Canada to serve tinder General Wolfe, and remained with the army after the death of his glorious commander. And I, George Warrington, stayed in London, read law in the Temple, and wrote plays which were performed at Covent Garden, and was in love with Miss Theodosia Lambert. Madame Esmond Warrington, however, refused her consent to the match, and Major General Lambert declared an engagement impossible under the circumstances.

Then in 1760, when George II. was dead, and George III. was king, General Lambert was appointed to be governor and commander-in-chief of the Island of Jamaica. His speedy departure was announced, he would have a frigate given him, and _take his family with him._ Merciful powers! and were we to be parted?

At last, one day, almost the last of his stay, when the General's preparations for departure were all made, the good man (His Excellency we call him now) canoe home to his dinner and sighed out to his wife:

"I wish, Molly, George was here. I may go away and never see him again, and take his foolish little sweetheart along with me. I suppose you will write to each other, children? I can't prevent that, you know."

"George is in the drawing-room," says mamma, quietly.

"Is he? my dearest boy!" cries the general. "Come to me--come in!" And when I entered he held me to his heart and kissed me.

"Always loved you as a son--haven't I, Molly?" he mutters hurriedly. "Broke my heart nearly when I quarrelled with you about this little--What, all down on your knees! In heaven's name, tell me what has happened!"

What had happened was, that George Esmond Warrington and Theodosia Lambert had been married in Southwark Church that morning.

I pass over the scenes of forgiveness, of reconciliation, of final separation when the ship sailed away before us, leaving me and Theo on the shore. And there is no need to recall her expressions of maternal indignation when my mother was informed of the step I had taken. On the pacification of Canada, my dear Harry dutifully paid a visit to Virginia, and wrote describing his reception at home.

Many were the doubts and anxieties which, for my last play had been a failure, now beset us, and plan after plan I tried for procuring work and adding to our dwindling stock of money. By a hard day's labour at translating from foreign languages for the booksellers, I could earn a few shillings--so few that a week's work would hardly bring me a guinea. Hard times were not over with us till some time after the Baroness Bernstein's death (she left everything she had to her dear nephew, Henry Esmond Warrington), when my uncle Sir Miles procured me a post as one of his Majesty's commissioners for licensing hackney coaches. His only child was dead, and I was now heir to the Baronetcy.

Then one morning, before almost I had heard of my uncle's illness, a lawyer waits upon me at my lodgings in Bloomsbury, and salutes me by the name of Sir George Warrington.

The records of a prosperous country life are easily told. Obedient tenants bowed and curtsied as we went to church, and we drove to visit our neighbours in the great family coach.

Shall I ever see the old mother again, I wonder! When Hal was in England, we sent her pictures of both her sons painted by the admirable Sir Joshua Reynolds. We never let Harry rest until he had asked Hetty in marriage. He obeyed, and it was she who declined. "She had always," she wrote, "the truest regard for him from the dear old time when they had met almost children together. But she would never leave her father. When it pleased God to take him, she hoped she would be too old to think of bearing any other name but her own."

My brother Hal is still a young man, being little more than 50, and Hetty is now a staid little lady. There are days when she looks surprisingly young and blooming. Why should Theo and I have been so happy, and thou so lonely?

* * * * *

Vanity Fair

"Vanity Fair" was published in 1848, and at once placed its author in the front rank of novelists. It was followed by "Pendennis" in 1850, "Esmond" in 1852, "The Newcomes" in 1855, and "The Virginians" in 1859. Some critics profess to see manifested in "Vanity Fair" a certain sharpness and sarcasm in Thackeray's character which does not appear in his later works, but however much the author may have mellowed in his later novels, "Vanity Fair" continues to be his acknowledged masterpiece, and of all the characters he drew, Becky Sharp is the best known.

_I.--Miss Sharp Opens Her Campaign_

One sunshiny morning in June there drove up to the great iron gate of Miss Pinkerton's academy for young ladies, on Chiswick Mall, a large family coach with two fat horses in blazing harness.

"It is Mrs. Sedley's coach, sister," said Miss Jemima. The day of departure had come, and Miss Amelia Sedley, an amiable young lady, was glad to go home, and yet woefully sad at leaving school. Miss Rebecca Sharp, whose father had been an artist, accompanied Amelia, to pass a week with her friend in Russell Square before she entered upon her duties as governess in Sir Pitt Crawley's family.

Thus the world began for these two young ladies. For Amelia it was quite a new, fresh, brilliant world, with all the bloom upon it. It was not quite a new one for Rebecca, who, before she came to the Mall, as a governess-pupil, had turned many a dun away from her father's door. She had never been a girl, she said: she had been a woman since she was eight years old.

At Russell Square Rebecca saw the two magnificent Cashmere shawls which Joseph Sedley of the East India Company's Civil Service had brought home to his sister, said with perfect truth that it must be delightful to have a brother, and easily got the pity of the tender-hearted Amelia for being alone in the world. A series of queries, addressed to her friend, brought Rebecca, who was but nineteen, to the following conclusion:--"As Mr. Joseph Sedley is rich and unmarried, why should I not marry him? I have only a fortnight, to be sure, but there is no harm in trying." I don't think we have any right to blame her, if Rebecca did not set her heart upon the conquest of this beau, for she had no kind parents to arrange these delicate matters for her.

But Mr. Joseph Sedley, greedy, vain, and cowardly, would not be brought up to the sticking point. Young George Osborne, Captain of the --th, old Sedley's godson, and the accepted lover of Amelia, thought Joseph was a milksop. He turned over in his mind, as the Sedleys did, the possibility of marriage between Joseph and Rebecca, and was not over well pleased that a member of a family into which he, George Osborne, was going to marry, should make a mesalliance with a little nobody--a little upstart governess. "Hang it, the family's low enough already without _her_," Osborne said to his friend Captain Dobbin. "A governess is all very well, but I'd rather have a lady for my sister-in-law. I'm a liberal man; but I've proper pride, and know my own station: let her know hers. And I'll take down that hectoring Nabob, and prevent him from being made a greater fool than he is. That's why I told him to look out, lest she brought an action against him."

Joseph Sedley fled to Cheltenham, and Rebecca said in her heart, "It was George Osborne who prevented my marriage." And she loved George Osborne accordingly.

Miss Amelia would have been delighted that Joseph should carry back a wife to India. Old Mr. Sedley was neutral. "Let Joseph marry whom he likes," he said to his wife. "It's no affair of mine. This girl has no fortune; no more had Mrs. Sedley. She seems good-humoured and clever, and will keep him in order, perhaps. Better she, my dear, than a black Mrs. Sedley, and a dozen of mahogany grandchildren. As I am perfectly sure that if you and I and his sister were to die to-morrow, he would say 'Good Gad!' and eat his dinner just as well as usual, I am not going to make myself anxious about him. Let him marry whom he likes. It's no affair of mine."

If he had had the courage, Joseph Sedley's bachelorhood would have been at an end. He did not lie awake all night thinking whether or not he was in love with Miss Sharp; the passion of love never interfered with the appetite or the slumber of Mr. Joseph Sedley; but he thought to himself how delightful it would be to hear such songs as Miss Sharp could sing in India--what a _distinguée_ girl she was--how she could speak French better than the governor-general's lady herself--and what a sensation she would make at the Calcutta balls. "It's evident the poor devil's in love with me" thought he. "She is just as rich as most of the girls who come out to India. I might go further and fare worse, egad!"

Then came an evening at Vauxhall, on which occasion Dobbin, George Osborne, and Joseph Sedley escorted Amelia and Rebecca, and the Indian civilian got hopelessly tipsy on a bowl of rack punch. The next morning, which Rebecca thought was to dawn upon her fortune, found Sedley groaning in agonies, soothing the fever of his previous night's potation with small beer--for soda water was not invented yet. George Osborne, calling upon him, so frightened the unhappy Joseph with stories of his overnight performance, that instead of proposing marriage Joseph Sedley hastened away to Cheltenham that day, sending a note to Amelia praying her to excuse him to Miss Sharp for his conduct.

It was now clear to every soul in the house, except poor Amelia, that Rebecca should take her departure, and accordingly she set out for the residence of Sir Pitt Crawley, Baronet, of Queen's Crawley, Hants. Sir Pitt had two sons by his first wife, Pitt and Rawdon; and by his second wife, two daughters,--for whose benefit Miss Rebecca Sharp was now engaged as governess. It will be seen that the young lady was come into a family of very genteel connections, and was about to move in a much more distinguished circle than the one she had just quitted in Russell Square.

_II.--Two Marriages_

Before Rebecca had been a year at Queen's Crawley she had quite won the Baronet's confidence. She was almost mistress of the house when Mr. Crawley was absent, but conducted herself in her new and exalted situation with such circumspection and modesty as not to offend the authorities of the kitchen and stable.

The elder and younger son of the house of Crawley hated each other cordially, and Rawdon Crawley, who was in the heavy dragoons, seldom came to the place except when Miss Crawley paid her annual visit. The great good quality of this old lady was that she possessed seventy thousand pounds, and had almost adopted Rawdon.

Both Miss Crawley and Rawdon were charmed with Rebecca, and on Lady Crawley's death Sir Pitt said to his children's governess, "I can't get on without you. Come and be my wife. You're as good a lady as ever I see. Say yes, Becky. I'm good for twenty years. I'll make you happy, see if I don't."

Rebecca started back a picture of consternation, "O Sir Pitt!" she said--"O sir--I--I'm married already!"

* * * * *

"Suppose the old lady doesn't come round, eh, Becky?" Rawdon said to his little wife, as they sat together in their snug Brompton lodgings, a few weeks later.

"_I'll_ make your fortune," she said.

But old Miss Crawley did not come round, and Captain Rawdon Crawley and Rebecca went to Brussels in June 1815 with the flower of the British Army.

Another young married couple also went to Brussels at that time, Captain George Osborne and Amelia his wife.

The landing of Napoleon at Cannes in March, 1815, brought, amongst other things, ruin to the worthy old stockbroker John Sedley, and the most determined and obstinate of his creditors was his old friend and neighbour John Osborne--whom he had set up in life, and whose son was to marry his daughter, and who consequently had the intolerable sense of former benefit to goad and irritate him.

Joseph Sedley acted as a man of his disposition would; when the announcement of the family misfortune reached him. He did not come to London, but he wrote to his mother to draw upon his agents for whatever money was wanted, so that his kind broken-spirited old parents had no present poverty to fear. This done, Joseph went on at his boarding-house at Cheltenham pretty much as before.

Amelia took the news very pale and calmly. A brutal letter from John Osborne told her in a few curt lines that all engagements between the families were at an end, and old Joseph Sedley spoke with almost equal bitterness. No power on earth, he swore, would induce him to marry his daughter to the son of such a villain, and he ordered Emmy to banish George from her mind.

It was Captain William Dobbin, who, having made up his mind that Miss Sedley would die of the disappointment, found himself the great promoter of the match between George Osborne and Amelia.

To old Sedley's refusal Dobbin answered finally, "If you don't give your daughter your consent it will be her duty to marry without it. What better answer can there be to Osborne's attacks on you, than that his son claims to enter your family and marry your daughter?"

George Osborne parted in anger from his father.

"I ain't going to have any of this damn sentimental nonsense here, sir," old Osborne cried out at the end of the interview. "There shall be no beggar-marriages in my family." He pulled frantically at the cord to summon the butler and, almost black in the face, ordered that functionary to call a coach for Captain Osborne.

George told Dobbin what had passed between his father and himself.