She lived upon the recollections of that happy evening
for many days afterwards, remembering his words; his
looks; the song he sang; his attitude, as he leant over her
or looked at her from a distance. As it seemed to her,
no night ever passed so quickly at Mr. Osborne's house
before; and for once this young person was almost
provoked to be angry by the premature arrival of Mr.
Sambo with her shawl.
George came and took a tender leave of her the next
morning; and then hurried off to the City, where he
visited Mr. Chopper, his father's head man, and received
from that gentleman a document which he exchanged at
Hulker & Bullock's for a whole pocketful of money. As
George entered the house, old John Sedley was passing
out of the banker's parlour, looking very dismal. But his
godson was much too elated to mark the worthy
stockbroker's depression, or the dreary eyes which the kind
old gentleman cast upon him. Young Bullock did not
come grinning out of the parlour with him as had been
his wont in former years.
And as the swinging doors of Hulker, Bullock & Co.
closed upon Mr. Sedley, Mr. Quill, the cashier (whose
benevolent occupation it is to hand out crisp bank-notes
from a drawer and dispense sovereigns out of a copper
shovel), winked at Mr. Driver, the clerk at the desk on
his right. Mr. Driver winked again.
"No go," Mr. D. whispered.
"Not at no price," Mr. Q. said. "Mr. George Osborne,
sir, how will you take it?" George crammed eagerly a
quantity of notes into his pockets, and paid Dobbin fifty
pounds that very evening at mess.
That very evening Amelia wrote him the tenderest of
long letters. Her heart was overflowing with tenderness,
but it still foreboded evil. What was the cause of Mr.
Osborne's dark looks? she asked. Had any difference
arisen between him and her papa? Her poor papa
returned so melancholy from the City, that all were
alarmed about him at home--in fine, there were four
pages of loves and fears and hopes and forebodings.
"Poor little Emmy--dear little Emmy. How fond she
is of me," George said, as he perused the missive--"and
Gad, what a headache that mixed punch has given me!"
Poor little Emmy, indeed.
CHAPTER XIV
Miss Crawley at Home
About this time there drove up to an exceedingly snug
and well-appointed house in Park Lane, a travelling chariot
with a lozenge on the panels, a discontented female in a
green veil and crimped curls on the rumble, and a large
and confidential man on the box. It was the equipage of
our friend Miss Crawley, returning from Hants. The
carriage windows were shut; the fat spaniel, whose head and
tongue ordinarily lolled out of one of them, reposed on the
lap of the discontented female. When the vehicle stopped,
a large round bundle of shawls was taken out of the
carriage by the aid of various domestics and a young
lady who accompanied the heap of cloaks. That bundle
contained Miss Crawley, who was conveyed upstairs
forthwith, and put into a bed and chamber warmed properly
as for the reception of an invalid. Messengers went off
for her physician and medical man. They came,
consulted, prescribed, vanished. The young companion of
Miss Crawley, at the conclusion of their interview, came
in to receive their instructions, and administered those
antiphlogistic medicines which the eminent men ordered.
Captain Crawley of the Life Guards rode up from
Knightsbridge Barracks the next day; his black charger
pawed the straw before his invalid aunt's door. He was
most affectionate in his inquiries regarding that amiable
relative. There seemed to be much source of apprehension.
He found Miss Crawley's maid (the discontented
female) unusually sulky and despondent; he found Miss
Briggs, her dame de compagnie, in tears alone in the
drawing-room. She had hastened home, hearing of her
beloved friend's illness. She wished to fly to her couch,
that couch which she, Briggs, had so often smoothed in
the hour of sickness. She was denied admission to Miss
Crawley's apartment. A stranger was administering her
medicines--a stranger from the country--an odious Miss
. . .--tears choked the utterance of the dame de
compagnie, and she buried her crushed affections and her
poor old red nose in her pocket handkerchief.
Rawdon Crawley sent up his name by the sulky femme
de chambre, and Miss Crawley's new companion, coming
tripping down from the sick-room, put a little hand into
his as he stepped forward eagerly to meet her, gave a
glance of great scorn at the bewildered Briggs, and
beckoning the young Guardsman out of the back drawing-
room, led him downstairs into that now desolate dining-
parlour, where so many a good dinner had been
celebrated.
Here these two talked for ten minutes, discussing, no
doubt, the symptoms of the old invalid above stairs; at
the end of which period the parlour bell was rung briskly,
and answered on that instant by Mr. Bowls, Miss
Crawley's large confidential butler (who, indeed, happened to
be at the keyhole during the most part of the interview);
and the Captain coming out, curling his mustachios,
mounted the black charger pawing among the straw, to
the admiration of the little blackguard boys collected in
the street. He looked in at the dining-room window,
managing his horse, which curvetted and capered beautifully
--for one instant the young person might be seen at the
window, when her figure vanished, and, doubtless, she
went upstairs again to resume the affecting duties of
benevolence.
Who could this young woman be, I wonder? That
evening a little dinner for two persons was laid in the dining-
room--when Mrs. Firkin, the lady's maid, pushed into her
mistress's apartment, and bustled about there during
the vacancy occasioned by the departure of the new
nurse--and the latter and Miss Briggs sat down to the
neat little meal.
Briggs was so much choked by emotion that she could
hardly take a morsel of meat. The young person carved a
fowl with the utmost delicacy, and asked so distinctly for
egg-sauce, that poor Briggs, before whom that delicious
condiment was placed, started, made a great clattering
with the ladle, and once more fell back in the most
gushing hysterical state.
"Had you not better give Miss Briggs a glass of wine?"
said the person to Mr. Bowls, the large confidential man.
He did so. Briggs seized it mechanically, gasped it down
convulsively, moaned a little, and began to play with the
chicken on her plate.
"I think we shall be able to help each other," said
the person with great suavity: "and shall have no need
of Mr. Bowls's kind services. Mr. Bowls, if you please,
we will ring when we want you." He went downstairs,
where, by the way, he vented the most horrid curses
upon the unoffending footman, his subordinate.
"It is a pity you take on so, Miss Briggs," the young
lady said, with a cool, slightly sarcastic, air.
"My dearest friend is so ill, and wo--o--on't see
me," gurgled out Briggs in an agony of renewed grief.
"She's not very ill any more. Console yourself, dear
Miss Briggs. She has only overeaten herself--that is all.
She is greatly better. She will soon be quite restored again.
She is weak from being cupped and from medical
treatment, but she will rally immediately. Pray console
yourself, and take a little more wine."
"But why, why won't she see me again?" Miss Briggs
bleated out. "Oh, Matilda, Matilda, after three-and-
twenty years' tenderness! is this the return to your poor,
poor Arabella?"
"Don't cry too much, poor Arabella," the other said
(with ever so little of a grin); "she only won't see you,
because she says you don't nurse her as well as I do.
It's no pleasure to me to sit up all night. I wish you
might do it instead."
"Have I not tended that dear couch for years?"
Arabella said, "and now--"
"Now she prefers somebody else. Well, sick people
have these fancies, and must be humoured. When she's
well I shall go."
"Never, never," Arabella exclaimed, madly inhaling her
salts-bottle.
"Never be well or never go, Miss Briggs?" the other
said, with the same provoking good-nature. "Pooh--she
will be well in a fortnight, when I shall go back to my
little pupils at Queen's Crawley, and to their mother,
who is a great deal more sick than our friend. You need
not be jealous about me, my dear Miss Briggs. I am a
poor little girl without any friends, or any harm in me.
I don't want to supplant you in Miss Crawley's good
graces. She will forget me a week after I am gone: and
her affection for you has been the work of years. Give
me a little wine if you please, my dear Miss Briggs,
and let us be friends. I'm sure I want friends."
The placable and soft-hearted Briggs speechlessly
pushed out her hand at this appeal; but she felt the
desertion most keenly for all that, and bitterly, bitterly
moaned the fickleness of her Matilda. At the end of half
an hour, the meal over, Miss Rebecca Sharp (for such,
astonishing to state, is the name of her who has been
described ingeniously as "the person" hitherto), went
upstairs again to her patient's rooms, from which, with
the most engaging politeness, she eliminated poor Firkin.
"Thank you, Mrs. Firkin, that will quite do; how nicely
you make it! I will ring when anything is wanted." "Thank
you"; and Firkin came downstairs in a tempest of
jealousy, only the more dangerous because she was forced
to confine it in her own bosom.
Could it be the tempest which, as she passed the
landing of the first floor, blew open the drawing-room door?
No; it was stealthily opened by the hand of Briggs.
Briggs had been on the watch. Briggs too well heard the
creaking Firkin descend the stairs, and the clink of the
spoon and gruel-basin the neglected female carried.
"Well, Firkin?" says she, as the other entered the
apartment. "Well, Jane?"
"Wuss and wuss, Miss B.," Firkin said, wagging her
head.
"Is she not better then?"
"She never spoke but once, and I asked her if she felt
a little more easy, and she told me to hold my stupid
tongue. Oh, Miss B., I never thought to have seen this
day!" And the water-works again began to play.
"What sort of a person is this Miss Sharp, Firkin? I
little thought, while enjoying my Christmas revels in the
elegant home of my firm friends, the Reverend Lionel
Delamere and his amiable lady, to find a stranger had
taken my place in the affections of my dearest, my still
dearest Matilda!" Miss Briggs, it will be seen by her
language, was of a literary and sentimental turn, and had
once published a volume of poems--"Trills of the
Nightingale"--by subscription.
"Miss B., they are all infatyated about that young
woman," Firkin replied. "Sir Pitt wouldn't have let her
go, but he daredn't refuse Miss Crawley anything. Mrs.
Bute at the Rectory jist as bad--never happy out of her
sight. The Capting quite wild about her. Mr. Crawley
mortial jealous. Since Miss C. was took ill, she won't
have nobody near her but Miss Sharp, I can't tell for
where nor for why; and I think somethink has bewidged
everybody."
Rebecca passed that night in constant watching upon
Miss Crawley; the next night the old lady slept so
comfortably, that Rebecca had time for several hours'
comfortable repose herself on the sofa, at the foot of her
patroness's bed; very soon, Miss Crawley was so well
that she sat up and laughed heartily at a perfect
imitation of Miss Briggs and her grief, which Rebecca
described to her. Briggs' weeping snuffle, and her manner
of using the handkerchief, were so completely rendered
that Miss Crawley became quite cheerful, to the
admiration of the doctors when they visited her, who usually
found this worthy woman of the world, when the least
sickness attacked her, under the most abject depression
and terror of death.
Captain Crawley came every day, and received bulletins
from Miss Rebecca respecting his aunt's health.
This improved so rapidly, that poor Briggs was allowed
to see her patroness; and persons with tender hearts
may imagine the smothered emotions of that sentimental
female, and the affecting nature of the interview.
Miss Crawley liked to have Briggs in a good deal
soon. Rebecca used to mimic her to her face with the
most admirable gravity, thereby rendering the imitation
doubly piquant to her worthy patroness.
The causes which had led to the deplorable illness of
Miss Crawley, and her departure from her brother's
house in the country, were of such an unromantic nature
that they are hardly fit to be explained in this genteel
and sentimental novel. For how is it possible to hint of a
delicate female, living in good society, that she ate and
drank too much, and that a hot supper of lobsters
profusely enjoyed at the Rectory was the reason of an
indisposition which Miss Crawley herself persisted was
solely attributable to the dampness of the weather? The
attack was so sharp that Matilda--as his Reverence
expressed it--was very nearly "off the hooks"; all the
family were in a fever of expectation regarding the will,
and Rawdon Crawley was making sure of at least forty
thousand pounds before the commencement of the
London season. Mr. Crawley sent over a choice parcel of
tracts, to prepare her for the change from Vanity Fair
and Park Lane for another world; but a good doctor
from Southampton being called in in time, vanquished
the lobster which was so nearly fatal to her, and gave
