good women, besides his paragon of a wife. All except
her and his kind sister Lady Jane, whose gentle nature
had tamed and won him, scared the worthy Colonel,
and on occasion of his first dinner at Gaunt House he
was not heard to make a single remark except to state
that the weather was very hot. Indeed Becky would have
left him at home, but that virtue ordained that her
husband should be by her side to protect the timid and
fluttering little creature on her first appearance in polite
society.
On her first appearance Lord Steyne stepped forward,
taking her hand, and greeting her with great courtesy,
and presenting her to Lady Steyne, and their ladyships,
her daughters. Their ladyships made three stately curtsies,
and the elder lady to be sure gave her hand to the
newcomer, but it was as cold and lifeless as marble.
Becky took it, however, with grateful humility, and
performing a reverence which would have done credit
to the best dancer-master, put herself at Lady Steyne's
feet, as it were, by saying that his Lordship had been
her father's earliest friend and patron, and that she,
Becky, had learned to honour and respect the Steyne
family from the days of her childhood. The fact is that Lord
Steyne had once purchased a couple of pictures of the
late Sharp, and the affectionate orphan could never
forget her gratitude for that favour.
The Lady Bareacres then came under Becky's cognizance
--to whom the Colonel's lady made also a most respectful
obeisance: it was returned with severe dignity by the
exalted person in question.
"I had the pleasure of making your Ladyship's
acquaintance at Brussels, ten years ago," Becky said in
the most winning manner. "I had the good fortune to
meet Lady Bareacres at the Duchess of Richmond's ball,
the night before the Battle of Waterloo. And I recollect
your Ladyship, and my Lady Blanche, your daughter,
sitting in the carriage in the porte-cochere at the Inn,
waiting for horses. I hope your Ladyship's diamonds are
safe."
Everybody's eyes looked into their neighbour's. The
famous diamonds had undergone a famous seizure, it
appears, about which Becky, of course, knew nothing.
Rawdon Crawley retreated with Lord Southdown into a
window, where the latter was heard to laugh immoderately,
as Rawdon told him the story of Lady Bareacres
wanting horses and "knuckling down by Jove," to Mrs.
Crawley. "I think I needn't be afraid of THAT woman,"
Becky thought. Indeed, Lady Bareacres exchanged
terrified and angry looks with her daughter and retreated
to a table, where she began to look at pictures with
great energy.
When the Potentate from the Danube made his appearance,
the conversation was carried on in the French language,
and the Lady Bareacres and the younger ladies
found, to their farther mortification, that Mrs. Crawley
was much better acquainted with that tongue, and spoke
it with a much better accent than they. Becky had met
other Hungarian magnates with the army in France in
1816-17. She asked after her friends with great interest
The foreign personages thought that she was a lady of
great distinction, and the Prince and the Princess asked
severally of Lord Steyne and the Marchioness, whom
they conducted to dinner, who was that petite dame who
spoke so well?
Finally, the procession being formed in the order
described by the American diplomatist, they marched into
the apartment where the banquet was served, and which,
as I have promised the reader he shall enjoy it, he shall
have the liberty of ordering himself so as to suit his
fancy.
But it was when the ladies were alone that Becky
knew the tug of war would come. And then indeed the
little woman found herself in such a situation as made
her acknowledge the correctness of Lord Steyne's
caution to her to beware of the society of ladies above her
own sphere. As they say, the persons who hate Irishmen
most are Irishmen; so, assuredly, the greatest tyrants
over women are women. When poor little Becky,
alone with the ladies, went up to the fire-place whither
the great ladies had repaired, the great ladies marched
away and took possession of a table of drawings. When
Becky followed them to the table of drawings, they
dropped off one by one to the fire again. She tried to
speak to one of the children (of whom she was
commonly fond in public places), but Master George Gaunt
was called away by his mamma; and the stranger was
treated with such cruelty finally, that even Lady Steyne
herself pitied her and went up to speak to the friendless
little woman.
"Lord Steyne," said her Ladyship, as her wan cheeks
glowed with a blush, "says you sing and play very
beautifully, Mrs. Crawley--I wish you would do me the
kindness to sing to me."
"I will do anything that may give pleasure to my Lord
Steyne or to you," said Rebecca, sincerely grateful, and
seating herself at the piano, began to sing.
She sang religious songs of Mozart, which had been
early favourites of Lady Steyne, and with such sweetness
and tenderness that the lady, lingering round the piano,
sat down by its side and listened until the tears rolled
down her eyes. It is true that the opposition ladies at
the other end of the room kept up a loud and ceaseless
buzzing and talking, but the Lady Steyne did not hear
those rumours. She was a child again--and had
wandered back through a forty years' wilderness to her
convent garden. The chapel organ had pealed the same tones,
the organist, the sister whom she loved best of the
community, had taught them to her in those early happy
days. She was a girl once more, and the brief period of
her happiness bloomed out again for an hour--she
started when the jarring doors were flung open, and with
a loud laugh from Lord Steyne, the men of the party
entered full of gaiety.
He saw at a glance what had happened in his absence,
and was grateful to his wife for once. He went
and spoke to her, and called her by her Christian name,
so as again to bring blushes to her pale face--"My wife
says you have been singing like an angel," he said to
Becky. Now there are angels of two kinds, and both sorts,
it is said, are charming in their way.
Whatever the previous portion of the evening had
been, the rest of that night was a great triumph for
Becky. She sang her very best, and it was so good that
every one of the men came and crowded round the
piano. The women, her enemies, were left quite alone.
And Mr. Paul Jefferson Jones thought he had made a
conquest of Lady Gaunt by going up to her Ladyship
and praising her delightful friend's first-rate singing.
CHAPTER L
Contains a Vulgar Incident
The Muse, whoever she be, who presides over this
Comic History must now descend from the genteel heights
in which she has been soaring and have the goodness
to drop down upon the lowly roof of John Sedley at
Brompton, and describe what events are taking place
there. Here, too, in this humble tenement, live care, and
distrust, and dismay. Mrs. Clapp in the kitchen is
grumbling in secret to her husband about the rent, and
urging the good fellow to rebel against his old friend
and patron and his present lodger. Mrs. Sedley has
ceased to visit her landlady in the lower regions now,
and indeed is in a position to patronize Mrs. Clapp
no longer. How can one be condescending to a lady to
whom one owes a matter of forty pounds, and who is
perpetually throwing out hints for the money? The Irish
maidservant has not altered in the least in her kind and
respectful behaviour; but Mrs. Sedley fancies that she
is growing insolent and ungrateful, and, as the guilty
thief who fears each bush an officer, sees threatening
innuendoes and hints of capture in all the girl's speeches
and answers. Miss Clapp, grown quite a young woman
now, is declared by the soured old lady to be an unbearable
and impudent little minx. Why Amelia can be so
fond of her, or have her in her room so much, or walk
out with her so constantly, Mrs. Sedley cannot conceive.
The bitterness of poverty has poisoned the life of the
once cheerful and kindly woman. She is thankless for
Amelia's constant and gentle bearing towards her; carps
at her for her efforts at kindness or service; rails at her
for her silly pride in her child and her neglect of her
parents. Georgy's house is not a very lively one since
Uncle Jos's annuity has been withdrawn and the little
family are almost upon famine diet.
Amelia thinks, and thinks, and racks her brain, to find
some means of increasing the small pittance upon which
the household is starving. Can she give lessons in
anything? paint card-racks? do fine work? She finds that
women are working hard, and better than she can, for
twopence a day. She buys a couple of begilt Bristol
boards at the Fancy Stationer's and paints her very best
upon them--a shepherd with a red waistcoat on one, and
a pink face smiling in the midst of a pencil landscape
--a shepherdess on the other, crossing a little bridge,
with a little dog, nicely shaded. The man of the Fancy
Repository and Brompton Emporium of Fine Arts (of
whom she bought the screens, vainly hoping that he
would repurchase them when ornamented by her hand)
can hardly hide the sneer with which he examines these
feeble works of art. He looks askance at the lady who
waits in the shop, and ties up the cards again in their
envelope of whitey-brown paper, and hands them to the
poor widow and Miss Clapp, who had never seen such
beautiful things in her life, and had been quite
confident that the man must give at least two guineas for
the screens. They try at other shops in the interior of
London, with faint sickening hopes. "Don't want 'em,"
says one. "Be off," says another fiercely. Three-and-sixpence
has been spent in vain--the screens retire to Miss
Clapp's bedroom, who persists in thinking them lovely.
She writes out a little card in her neatest hand, and
after long thought and labour of composition, in which the
public is informed that "A Lady who has some time at
her disposal, wishes to undertake the education of some
little girls, whom she would instruct in English, in French,
in Geography, in History, and in Music--address A. O.,
at Mr. Brown's"; and she confides the card to the gentleman
of the Fine Art Repository, who consents to allow
it to lie upon the counter, where it grows dingy and
fly-blown. Amelia passes the door wistfully many a time,
in hopes that Mr. Brown will have some news to give
her, but he never beckons her in. When she goes to
make little purchases, there is no news for her. Poor
simple lady, tender and weak--how are you to battle
with the struggling violent world?
She grows daily more care-worn and sad, fixing upon
her child alarmed eyes, whereof the little boy cannot
interpret the expression. She starts up of a night and
peeps into his room stealthily, to see that he is sleeping
and not stolen away. She sleeps but little now. A
constant thought and terror is haunting her. How she
weeps and prays in the long silent nights--how she tries
to hide from herself the thought which will return to her,
that she ought to part with the boy, that she is the only
barrier between him and prosperity. She can't, she can't.
Not now, at least. Some other day. Oh! it is too hard to
think of and to bear.
A thought comes over her which makes her blush and
turn from herself--her parents might keep the annuity
--the curate would marry her and give a home to her
and the boy. But George's picture and dearest memory
are there to rebuke her. Shame and love say no to the
sacrifice. She shrinks from it as from something unholy,
and such thoughts never found a resting-place in that
pure and gentle bosom.
The combat, which we describe in a sentence or two,
lasted for many weeks in poor Amelia's heart, during
which she had no confidante; indeed, she could never
have one, as she would not allow to herself the
possibility of yielding, though she was giving way daily
before the enemy with whom she had to battle. One truth
after another was marshalling itself silently against her
and keeping its ground. Poverty and misery for all, want
and degradation for her parents, injustice to the boy--
one by one the outworks of the little citadel were taken,
in which the poor soul passionately guarded her only
love and treasure.
At the beginning of the struggle, she had written off a
letter of tender supplication to her brother at Calcutta,
imploring him not to withdraw the support which he had
granted to their parents and painting in terms of artless
pathos their lonely and hapless condition. She did not
know the truth of the matter. The payment of Jos's
annuity was still regular, but it was a money-lender in the
City who was receiving it: old Sedley had sold it for a
sum of money wherewith to prosecute his bootless
schemes. Emmy was calculating eagerly the time that
would elapse before the letter would arrive and be
answered. She had written down the date in her pocket-
book of the day when she dispatched it. To her son's
guardian, the good Major at Madras, she had not
communicated any of her griefs and perplexities. She had
not written to him since she wrote to congratulate him on
his approaching marriage. She thought with sickening
despondency, that that friend--the only one, the one
who had felt such a regard for her--was fallen away.
One day, when things had come to a very bad pass
--when the creditors were pressing, the mother in
hysteric grief, the father in more than usual gloom, the
inmates of the family avoiding each other, each secretly
oppressed with his private unhappiness and notion of
wrong--the father and daughter happened to be left
