Sharp tore them to tatters, to the infinite amusement
of her audience.
"My dear, you are a perfect trouvaille," Miss Crawley
would say. "I wish you could come to me in London,
but I couldn't make a butt of you as I do of poor Briggs
no, no, you little sly creature; you are too clever--Isn't
she, Firkin?"
Mrs. Firkin (who was dressing the very small
remnant of hair which remained on Miss Crawley's pate),
flung up her head and said, "I think Miss is very clever,"
with the most killing sarcastic air. In fact, Mrs. Firkin
had that natural jealousy which is one of the main
principles of every honest woman.
After rebuffing Sir Huddleston Fuddleston, Miss
Crawley ordered that Rawdon Crawley should lead her in
to dinner every day, and that Becky should follow with her
cushion--or else she would have Becky's arm and
Rawdon with the pillow. "We must sit together," she said.
"We're the only three Christians in the county, my love"
--in which case, it must be confessed, that religion was
at a very low ebb in the county of Hants.
Besides being such a fine religionist, Miss Crawley
was, as we have said, an Ultra-liberal in opinions, and
always took occasion to express these in the most candid
manner.
"What is birth, my dear!" she would say to Rebecca--
"Look at my brother Pitt; look at the Huddlestons, who
have been here since Henry II; look at poor Bute at the
parsonage--is any one of them equal to you in intelligence
or breeding? Equal to you--they are not even equal to
poor dear Briggs, my companion, or Bowls, my butler.
You, my love, are a little paragon--positively a little
jewel--You have more brains than half the shire--if
merit had its reward you ought to be a Duchess--no,
there ought to be no duchesses at all--but you ought to
have no superior, and I consider you, my love, as my
equal in every respect; and--will you put some coals on
the fire, my dear; and will you pick this dress of mine, and
alter it, you who can do it so well?" So this old philanthropist
used to make her equal run of her errands, execute her
millinery, and read her to sleep with French novels,
every night.
At this time, as some old readers may recollect, the
genteel world had been thrown into a considerable state
of excitement by two events, which, as the papers say,
might give employment to the gentlemen of the long robe.
Ensign Shafton had run away with Lady Barbara Fitzurse,
the Earl of Bruin's daughter and heiress; and poor Vere
Vane, a gentleman who, up to forty, had maintained a
most respectable character and reared a numerous family,
suddenly and outrageously left his home, for the sake of
Mrs. Rougemont, the actress, who was sixty-five years
of age.
"That was the most beautiful part of dear Lord
Nelson's character," Miss Crawley said. "He went to the
deuce for a woman. There must be good in a man who will
do that. I adore all impudent matches.--What I like
best, is for a nobleman to marry a miller's daughter, as
Lord Flowerdale did--it makes all the women so angry
--I wish some great man would run away with you, my
dear; I'm sure you're pretty enough."
"Two post-boys!--Oh, it would be delightful!" Rebecca
owned.
"And what I like next best, is for a poor fellow to run
away with a rich girl. I have set my heart on Rawdon
running away with some one."
"A rich some one, or a poor some one?"
"Why, you goose! Rawdon has not a shilling but what I
give him. He is crible de dettes--he must repair his
fortunes, and succeed in the world."
"Is he very clever?" Rebecca asked.
"Clever, my love?--not an idea in the world beyond his
horses, and his regiment, and his hunting, and his play;
but he must succeed--he's so delightfully wicked. Don't
you know he has hit a man, and shot an injured father
through the hat only? He's adored in his regiment; and all
the young men at Wattier's and the Cocoa-Tree swear by
him."
When Miss Rebecca Sharp wrote to her beloved friend
the account of the little ball at Queen's Crawley, and the
manner in which, for the first time, Captain Crawley had
distinguished her, she did not, strange to relate, give an
altogether accurate account of the transaction. The Captain
had distinguished her a great number of times before. The
Captain had met her in a half-score of walks. The Captain
had lighted upon her in a half-hundred of corridors and
passages. The Captain had hung over her piano twenty
times of an evening (my Lady was now upstairs, being ill,
and nobody heeded her) as Miss Sharp sang. The Captain had
written her notes (the best that the great blundering
dragoon could devise and spell; but dulness gets on
as well as any other quality with women). But when he
put the first of the notes into the leaves of the song she
was singing, the little governess, rising and looking him
steadily in the face, took up the triangular missive daintily,
and waved it about as if it were a cocked hat, and she,
advancing to the enemy, popped the note into the fire, and
made him a very low curtsey, and went back to her
place, and began to sing away again more merrily than
ever.
"What's that?" said Miss Crawley, interrupted in her
after-dinner doze by the stoppage of the music.
"It's a false note," Miss Sharp said with a laugh; and
Rawdon Crawley fumed with rage and mortification.
Seeing the evident partiality of Miss Crawley for the
new governess, how good it was of Mrs. Bute Crawley not
to be jealous, and to welcome the young lady to the
Rectory, and not only her, but Rawdon Crawley, her
husband's rival in the Old Maid's five per cents! They
became very fond of each other's society, Mrs. Crawley
and her nephew. He gave up hunting; he declined
entertainments at Fuddleston: he would not dine with the
mess of the depot at Mudbury: his great pleasure was to stroll
over to Crawley parsonage--whither Miss Crawley came
too; and as their mamma was ill, why not the children
with Miss Sharp? So the children (little dears!) came with
Miss Sharp; and of an evening some of the party would
walk back together. Not Miss Crawley--she preferred her
carriage--but the walk over the Rectory fields, and in at
the little park wicket, and through the dark plantation,
and up the checkered avenue to Queen's Crawley, was
charming in the moonlight to two such lovers of the
picturesque as the Captain and Miss Rebecca.
"O those stars, those stars!" Miss Rebecca would say,
turning her twinkling green eyes up towards them. "I
feel myself almost a spirit when I gaze upon them."
"O--ah--Gad--yes, so do I exactly, Miss Sharp," the
other enthusiast replied. "You don't mind my cigar, do
you, Miss Sharp?" Miss Sharp loved the smell of a cigar
out of doors beyond everything in the world--and she just
tasted one too, in the prettiest way possible, and gave a
little puff, and a little scream, and a little giggle, and
restored the delicacy to the Captain, who twirled his
moustache, and straightway puffed it into a blaze that
glowed quite red in the dark plantation, and swore--"Jove
--aw--Gad--aw--it's the finest segaw I ever smoked in
the world aw," for his intellect and conversation were
alike brilliant and becoming to a heavy young dragoon.
Old Sir Pitt, who was taking his pipe and beer, and
talking to John Horrocks about a "ship" that was to be killed,
espied the pair so occupied from his study-window, and
with dreadful oaths swore that if it wasn't for Miss
Crawley, he'd take Rawdon and bundle un out of doors, like a
rogue as he was.
"He be a bad'n, sure enough," Mr. Horrocks remarked;
"and his man Flethers is wuss, and have made such a row
in the housekeeper's room about the dinners and hale, as
no lord would make--but I think Miss Sharp's a match
for'n, Sir Pitt," he added, after a pause.
And so, in truth, she was--for father and son too.
CHAPTER XII
Quite a Sentimental Chapter
We must now take leave of Arcadia, and those amiable
people practising the rural virtues there, and travel back
to London, to inquire what has become of Miss Amelia
"We don't care a fig for her," writes some unknown
correspondent with a pretty little handwriting and a pink seal
to her note. "She is fade and insipid," and adds some more
kind remarks in this strain, which I should never have
repeated at all, but that they are in truth prodigiously
complimentary to the young lady whom they concern.
Has the beloved reader, in his experience of society,
never heard similar remarks by good-natured female
friends; who always wonder what you CAN see in Miss
Smith that is so fascinating; or what COULD induce Major
Jones to propose for that silly insignificant simpering Miss
Thompson, who has nothing but her wax-doll face to
recommend her? What is there in a pair of pink cheeks
and blue eyes forsooth? these dear Moralists ask, and hint
wisely that the gifts of genius, the accomplishments of the
mind, the mastery of Mangnall's Questions, and a ladylike
knowledge of botany and geology, the knack of making
poetry, the power of rattling sonatas in the Herz-manner,
and so forth, are far more valuable endowments for a
female, than those fugitive charms which a few years will
inevitably tarnish. It is quite edifying to hear women
speculate upon the worthlessness and the duration of
beauty.
But though virtue is a much finer thing, and those
hapless creatures who suffer under the misfortune of good
looks ought to be continually put in mind of the fate
which awaits them; and though, very likely, the heroic
female character which ladies admire is a more glorious
and beautiful object than the kind, fresh, smiling, artless,
tender little domestic goddess, whom men are inclined
to worship--yet the latter and inferior sort of women
must have this consolation--that the men do admire them
after all; and that, in spite of all our kind friends' warnings
and protests, we go on in our desperate error and
folly, and shall to the end of the chapter. Indeed, for my
own part, though I have been repeatedly told by persons
for whom I have the greatest respect, that Miss Brown is
an insignificant chit, and Mrs. White has nothing but her
petit minois chiffonne, and Mrs. Black has not a word to
say for herself; yet I know that I have had the most
delightful conversations with Mrs. Black (of course, my
dear Madam, they are inviolable): I see all the men in a
cluster round Mrs. White's chair: all the young fellows
battling to dance with Miss Brown; and so I am tempted
to think that to be despised by her sex is a very great
compliment to a woman.
The young ladies in Amelia's society did this for her
very satisfactorily. For instance, there was scarcely any
point upon which the Misses Osborne, George's sisters,
and the Mesdemoiselles Dobbin agreed so well as in their
estimate of her very trifling merits: and their wonder that
their brothers could find any charms in her. "We are kind
to her," the Misses Osborne said, a pair of fine black-
browed young ladies who had had the best of governesses,
masters, and milliners; and they treated her with
such extreme kindness and condescension, and patronised
her so insufferably, that the poor little thing was in fact
perfectly dumb in their presence, and to all outward
appearance as stupid as they thought her. She made efforts
to like them, as in duty bound, and as sisters of her
future husband. She passed "long mornings" with them
--the most dreary and serious of forenoons. She drove
out solemnly in their great family coach with them, and
Miss Wirt their governess, that raw-boned Vestal. They
took her to the ancient concerts by way of a treat, and
to the oratorio, and to St. Paul's to see the charity
children, where in such terror was she of her friends, she
almost did not dare be affected by the hymn the children
sang. Their house was comfortable; their papa's table
rich and handsome; their society solemn and genteel;
their self-respect prodigious; they had the best pew at
the Foundling: all their habits were pompous and orderly,
and all their amusements intolerably dull and decorous.
After every one of her visits (and oh how glad she was
when they were over!) Miss Osborne and Miss Maria
Osborne, and Miss Wirt, the vestal governess, asked each
other with increased wonder, "What could George find in
that creature?"
How is this? some carping reader exclaims. How is it
that Amelia, who had such a number of friends at
school, and was so beloved there, comes out into the
world and is spurned by her discriminating sex? My dear
sir, there were no men at Miss Pinkerton's establishment
except the old dancing-master; and you would not have
had the girls fall out about HIM? When George, their
handsome brother, ran off directly after breakfast, and
dined from home half-a-dozen times a week, no wonder
the neglected sisters felt a little vexation. When young
Bullock (of the firm of Hulker, Bullock & Co., Bankers,
Lombard Street), who had been making up to Miss Maria
the last two seasons, actually asked Amelia to dance the
cotillon, could you expect that the former young lady
should be pleased? And yet she said she was, like an
artless forgiving creature. "I'm so delighted you like dear
Amelia," she said quite eagerly to Mr. Bullock after the
dance. "She's engaged to my brother George; there's not
much in her, but she's the best-natured and most
unaffected young creature: at home we're all so fond of her."
Dear girl! who can calculate the depth of affection
