CHAPTER XXI

A Quarrel About an Heiress

Love may be felt for any young lady endowed with such qualities as Miss

Swartz possessed; and a great dream of ambition entered into old Mr.

Osborne's soul, which she was to realize. He encouraged, with the

utmost enthusiasm and friendliness, his daughters' amiable attachment

to the young heiress, and protested that it gave him the sincerest

pleasure as a father to see the love of his girls so well disposed.

"You won't find," he would say to Miss Rhoda, "that splendour and rank

to which you are accustomed at the West End, my dear Miss, at our

humble mansion in Russell Square. My daughters are plain,

disinterested girls, but their hearts are in the right place, and

they've conceived an attachment for you which does them honour--I say,

which does them honour. I'm a plain, simple, humble British

merchant--an honest one, as my respected friends Hulker and Bullock

will vouch, who were the correspondents of your late lamented father.

You'll find us a united, simple, happy, and I think I may say

respected, family--a plain table, a plain people, but a warm welcome,

my dear Miss Rhoda--Rhoda, let me say, for my heart warms to you, it

does really. I'm a frank man, and I like you. A glass of Champagne!

Hicks, Champagne to Miss Swartz."

There is little doubt that old Osborne believed all he said, and that

the girls were quite earnest in their protestations of affection for

Miss Swartz. People in Vanity Fair fasten on to rich folks quite

naturally. If the simplest people are disposed to look not a little

kindly on great Prosperity (for I defy any member of the British public

to say that the notion of Wealth has not something awful and pleasing

to him; and you, if you are told that the man next you at dinner has

got half a million, not to look at him with a certain interest)--if the

simple look benevolently on money, how much more do your old worldlings

regard it! Their affections rush out to meet and welcome money. Their

kind sentiments awaken spontaneously towards the interesting possessors

of it. I know some respectable people who don't consider themselves at

liberty to indulge in friendship for any individual who has not a

certain competency, or place in society. They give a loose to their

feelings on proper occasions. And the proof is, that the major part of

the Osborne family, who had not, in fifteen years, been able to get up

a hearty regard for Amelia Sedley, became as fond of Miss Swartz in the

course of a single evening as the most romantic advocate of friendship

at first sight could desire.

What a match for George she'd be (the sisters and Miss Wirt agreed),

and how much better than that insignificant little Amelia! Such a

dashing young fellow as he is, with his good looks, rank, and

accomplishments, would be the very husband for her. Visions of balls

in Portland Place, presentations at Court, and introductions to half

the peerage, filled the minds of the young ladies; who talked of

nothing but George and his grand acquaintances to their beloved new

friend.

Old Osborne thought she would be a great match, too, for his son. He

should leave the army; he should go into Parliament; he should cut a

figure in the fashion and in the state. His blood boiled with honest

British exultation, as he saw the name of Osborne ennobled in the

person of his son, and thought that he might be the progenitor of a

glorious line of baronets. He worked in the City and on 'Change, until

he knew everything relating to the fortune of the heiress, how her

money was placed, and where her estates lay. Young Fred Bullock, one

of his chief informants, would have liked to make a bid for her himself

(it was so the young banker expressed it), only he was booked to Maria

Osborne. But not being able to secure her as a wife, the disinterested

Fred quite approved of her as a sister-in-law. "Let George cut in

directly and win her," was his advice. "Strike while the iron's hot,

you know--while she's fresh to the town: in a few weeks some d----

fellow from the West End will come in with a title and a rotten

rent-roll and cut all us City men out, as Lord Fitzrufus did last year

with Miss Grogram, who was actually engaged to Podder, of Podder &

Brown's. The sooner it is done the better, Mr. Osborne; them's my

sentiments," the wag said; though, when Osborne had left the bank

parlour, Mr. Bullock remembered Amelia, and what a pretty girl she was,

and how attached to George Osborne; and he gave up at least ten seconds

of his valuable time to regretting the misfortune which had befallen

that unlucky young woman.

While thus George Osborne's good feelings, and his good friend and

genius, Dobbin, were carrying back the truant to Amelia's feet,

George's parent and sisters were arranging this splendid match for him,

which they never dreamed he would resist.

When the elder Osborne gave what he called "a hint," there was no

possibility for the most obtuse to mistake his meaning. He called

kicking a footman downstairs a hint to the latter to leave his service.

With his usual frankness and delicacy he told Mrs. Haggistoun that he

would give her a cheque for five thousand pounds on the day his son was

married to her ward; and called that proposal a hint, and considered it

a very dexterous piece of diplomacy. He gave George finally such

another hint regarding the heiress; and ordered him to marry her out of

hand, as he would have ordered his butler to draw a cork, or his clerk

to write a letter.

This imperative hint disturbed George a good deal. He was in the very

first enthusiasm and delight of his second courtship of Amelia, which

was inexpressibly sweet to him. The contrast of her manners and

appearance with those of the heiress, made the idea of a union with the

latter appear doubly ludicrous and odious. Carriages and opera-boxes,

thought he; fancy being seen in them by the side of such a mahogany

charmer as that! Add to all that the junior Osborne was quite as

obstinate as the senior: when he wanted a thing, quite as firm in his

resolution to get it; and quite as violent when angered, as his father

in his most stern moments.

On the first day when his father formally gave him the hint that he was

to place his affections at Miss Swartz's feet, George temporised with

the old gentleman. "You should have thought of the matter sooner,

sir," he said. "It can't be done now, when we're expecting every day to

go on foreign service. Wait till my return, if I do return"; and then

he represented, that the time when the regiment was daily expecting to

quit England, was exceedingly ill-chosen: that the few days or weeks

during which they were still to remain at home, must be devoted to

business and not to love-making: time enough for that when he came home

with his majority; "for, I promise you," said he, with a satisfied air,

"that one way or other you shall read the name of George Osborne in the

Gazette."

The father's reply to this was founded upon the information which he

had got in the City: that the West End chaps would infallibly catch

hold of the heiress if any delay took place: that if he didn't marry

Miss S., he might at least have an engagement in writing, to come into

effect when he returned to England; and that a man who could get ten

thousand a year by staying at home, was a fool to risk his life abroad.

"So that you would have me shown up as a coward, sir, and our name

dishonoured for the sake of Miss Swartz's money," George interposed.

This remark staggered the old gentleman; but as he had to reply to it,

and as his mind was nevertheless made up, he said, "You will dine here

to-morrow, sir, and every day Miss Swartz comes, you will be here to

pay your respects to her. If you want for money, call upon Mr.

Chopper." Thus a new obstacle was in George's way, to interfere with

his plans regarding Amelia; and about which he and Dobbin had more than

one confidential consultation. His friend's opinion respecting the

line of conduct which he ought to pursue, we know already. And as for

Osborne, when he was once bent on a thing, a fresh obstacle or two only

rendered him the more resolute.

The dark object of the conspiracy into which the chiefs of the Osborne

family had entered, was quite ignorant of all their plans regarding her

(which, strange to say, her friend and chaperon did not divulge), and,

taking all the young ladies' flattery for genuine sentiment, and being,

as we have before had occasion to show, of a very warm and impetuous

nature, responded to their affection with quite a tropical ardour. And

if the truth may be told, I dare say that she too had some selfish

attraction in the Russell Square house; and in a word, thought George

Osborne a very nice young man. His whiskers had made an impression upon

her, on the very first night she beheld them at the ball at Messrs.

Hulkers; and, as we know, she was not the first woman who had been

charmed by them. George had an air at once swaggering and melancholy,

languid and fierce. He looked like a man who had passions, secrets,

and private harrowing griefs and adventures. His voice was rich and

deep. He would say it was a warm evening, or ask his partner to take

an ice, with a tone as sad and confidential as if he were breaking her

mother's death to her, or preluding a declaration of love. He trampled

over all the young bucks of his father's circle, and was the hero among

those third-rate men. Some few sneered at him and hated him. Some,

like Dobbin, fanatically admired him. And his whiskers had begun to do

their work, and to curl themselves round the affections of Miss Swartz.

Whenever there was a chance of meeting him in Russell Square, that

simple and good-natured young woman was quite in a flurry to see her

dear Misses Osborne. She went to great expenses in new gowns, and

bracelets, and bonnets, and in prodigious feathers. She adorned her

person with her utmost skill to please the Conqueror, and exhibited all

her simple accomplishments to win his favour. The girls would ask her,

with the greatest gravity, for a little music, and she would sing her

three songs and play her two little pieces as often as ever they asked,

and with an always increasing pleasure to herself. During these

delectable entertainments, Miss Wirt and the chaperon sate by, and

conned over the peerage, and talked about the nobility.

The day after George had his hint from his father, and a short time

before the hour of dinner, he was lolling upon a sofa in the

drawing-room in a very becoming and perfectly natural attitude of

melancholy. He had been, at his father's request, to Mr. Chopper in

the City (the old gentleman, though he gave great sums to his son,

would never specify any fixed allowance for him, and rewarded him only

as he was in the humour). He had then been to pass three hours with

Amelia, his dear little Amelia, at Fulham; and he came home to find his

sisters spread in starched muslin in the drawing-room, the dowagers

cackling in the background, and honest Swartz in her favourite

amber-coloured satin, with turquoise bracelets, countless rings,

flowers, feathers, and all sorts of tags and gimcracks, about as

elegantly decorated as a she chimney-sweep on May-day.

The girls, after vain attempts to engage him in conversation, talked

about fashions and the last drawing-room until he was perfectly sick of

their chatter. He contrasted their behaviour with little Emmy's--their

shrill voices with her tender ringing tones; their attitudes and their

elbows and their starch, with her humble soft movements and modest

graces. Poor Swartz was seated in a place where Emmy had been

accustomed to sit. Her bejewelled hands lay sprawling in her amber

satin lap. Her tags and ear-rings twinkled, and her big eyes rolled

about. She was doing nothing with perfect contentment, and thinking

herself charming. Anything so becoming as the satin the sisters had

never seen.

"Dammy," George said to a confidential friend, "she looked like a China

doll, which has nothing to do all day but to grin and wag its head. By

Jove, Will, it was all I I could do to prevent myself from throwing the

sofa-cushion at her." He restrained that exhibition of sentiment,

however.

The sisters began to play the Battle of Prague. "Stop that d----

thing," George howled out in a fury from the sofa. "It makes me mad.

You play us something, Miss Swartz, do. Sing something, anything but

the Battle of Prague."

"Shall I sing 'Blue Eyed Mary' or the air from the Cabinet?" Miss

Swartz asked.

"That sweet thing from the Cabinet," the sisters said.

"We've had that," replied the misanthrope on the sofa.

"I can sing 'Fluvy du Tajy,'" Swartz said, in a meek voice, "if I had

the words." It was the last of the worthy young woman's collection.

"O, 'Fleuve du Tage,'" Miss Maria cried; "we have the song," and went

off to fetch the book in which it was.

Now it happened that this song, then in the height of the fashion, had

been given to the young ladies by a young friend of theirs, whose name

was on the title, and Miss Swartz, having concluded the ditty with

George's applause (for he remembered that it was a favourite of

Amelia's), was hoping for an encore perhaps, and fiddling with the

leaves of the music, when her eye fell upon the title, and she saw

"Amelia Sedley" written in the comer.

"Lor!" cried Miss Swartz, spinning swiftly round on the music-stool,

"is it my Amelia? Amelia that was at Miss P.'s at Hammersmith? I know

it is. It's her, and-- Tell me about her--where is she?"

"Don't mention her," Miss Maria Osborne said hastily. "Her family has

disgraced itself. Her father cheated Papa, and as for her, she is

never to be mentioned HERE." This was Miss Maria's return for George's

rudeness about the Battle of Prague.

"Are you a friend of Amelia's?" George said, bouncing up. "God bless

you for it, Miss Swartz. Don't believe what the girls say. SHE'S not

to blame at any rate. She's the best--"

"You know you're not to speak about her, George," cried Jane. "Papa

forbids it."

"Who's to prevent me?" George cried out. "I will speak of her. I say

she's the best, the kindest, the gentlest, the sweetest girl in

England; and that, bankrupt or no, my sisters are not fit to hold

candles to her. If you like her, go and see her, Miss Swartz; she

wants friends now; and I say, God bless everybody who befriends her.

Anybody who speaks kindly of her is my friend; anybody who speaks

against her is my enemy. Thank you, Miss Swartz"; and he went up and

wrung her hand.

"George! George!" one of the sisters cried imploringly.

"I say," George said fiercely, "I thank everybody who loves Amelia

Sed--" He stopped. Old Osborne was in the room with a face livid with

rage, and eyes like hot coals.

Though George had stopped in his sentence, yet, his blood being up, he

was not to be cowed by all the generations of Osborne; rallying

instantly, he replied to the bullying look of his father, with another

so indicative of resolution and defiance that the elder man quailed in

his turn, and looked away. He felt that the tussle was coming. "Mrs.

Haggistoun, let me take you down to dinner," he said. "Give your arm to

Miss Swartz, George," and they marched.

"Miss Swartz, I love Amelia, and we've been engaged almost all our

lives," Osborne said to his partner; and during all the dinner, George

rattled on with a volubility which surprised himself, and made his

father doubly nervous for the fight which was to take place as soon as

the ladies were gone.

The difference between the pair was, that while the father was violent

and a bully, the son had thrice the nerve and courage of the parent,

and could not merely make an attack, but resist it; and finding that

the moment was now come when the contest between him and his father was

to be decided, he took his dinner with perfect coolness and appetite

before the engagement began. Old Osborne, on the contrary, was

nervous, and drank much. He floundered in his conversation with the

ladies, his neighbours: George's coolness only rendering him more

angry. It made him half mad to see the calm way in which George,

flapping his napkin, and with a swaggering bow, opened the door for the

ladies to leave the room; and filling himself a glass of wine, smacked

it, and looked his father full in the face, as if to say, "Gentlemen of

the Guard, fire first." The old man also took a supply of ammunition,

but his decanter clinked against the glass as he tried to fill it.

After giving a great heave, and with a purple choking face, he then

began. "How dare you, sir, mention that person's name before Miss

Swartz to-day, in my drawing-room? I ask you, sir, how dare you do it?"

"Stop, sir," says George, "don't say dare, sir. Dare isn't a word to

be used to a Captain in the British Army."

"I shall say what I like to my son, sir. I can cut him off with a

shilling if I like. I can make him a beggar if I like. I WILL say what

I like," the elder said.

"I'm a gentleman though I AM your son, sir," George answered haughtily.

"Any communications which you have to make to me, or any orders which

you may please to give, I beg may be couched in that kind of language

which I am accustomed to hear."

Whenever the lad assumed his haughty manner, it always created either

great awe or great irritation in the parent. Old Osborne stood in

secret terror of his son as a better gentleman than himself; and

perhaps my readers may have remarked in their experience of this Vanity

Fair of ours, that there is no character which a low-minded man so much

mistrusts as that of a gentleman.

"My father didn't give me the education you have had, nor the

advantages you have had, nor the money you have had. If I had kept the

company SOME FOLKS have had through MY MEANS, perhaps my son wouldn't

have any reason to brag, sir, of his SUPERIORITY and WEST END AIRS

(these words were uttered in the elder Osborne's most sarcastic tones).

But it wasn't considered the part of a gentleman, in MY time, for a man

to insult his father. If I'd done any such thing, mine would have

kicked me downstairs, sir."

"I never insulted you, sir. I said I begged you to remember your son

was a gentleman as well as yourself. I know very well that you give me

plenty of money," said George (fingering a bundle of notes which he had

got in the morning from Mr. Chopper). "You tell it me often enough,

sir. There's no fear of my forgetting it."

"I wish you'd remember other things as well, sir," the sire answered.

"I wish you'd remember that in this house--so long as you choose to

HONOUR it with your COMPANY, Captain--I'm the master, and that name,

and that that--that you--that I say--"

"That what, sir?" George asked, with scarcely a sneer, filling another

glass of claret.

"----!" burst out his father with a screaming oath--"that the name of

those Sedleys never be mentioned here, sir--not one of the whole damned

lot of 'em, sir."

"It wasn't I, sir, that introduced Miss Sedley's name. It was my

sisters who spoke ill of her to Miss Swartz; and by Jove I'll defend

her wherever I go. Nobody shall speak lightly of that name in my

presence. Our family has done her quite enough injury already, I

think, and may leave off reviling her now she's down. I'll shoot any

man but you who says a word against her."

"Go on, sir, go on," the old gentleman said, his eyes starting out of

his head.

"Go on about what, sir? about the way in which we've treated that angel

of a girl? Who told me to love her? It was your doing. I might have

chosen elsewhere, and looked higher, perhaps, than your society: but I

obeyed you. And now that her heart's mine you give me orders to fling

it away, and punish her, kill her perhaps--for the faults of other

people. It's a shame, by Heavens," said George, working himself up

into passion and enthusiasm as he proceeded, "to play at fast and loose

with a young girl's affections--and with such an angel as that--one so

superior to the people amongst whom she lived, that she might have

excited envy, only she was so good and gentle, that it's a wonder

anybody dared to hate her. If I desert her, sir, do you suppose she

forgets me?"

"I ain't going to have any of this dam sentimental nonsense and humbug

here, sir," the father cried out. "There shall be no beggar-marriages

in my family. If you choose to fling away eight thousand a year, which

you may have for the asking, you may do it: but by Jove you take your

pack and walk out of this house, sir. Will you do as I tell you, once

for all, sir, or will you not?"

"Marry that mulatto woman?" George said, pulling up his shirt-collars.

"I don't like the colour, sir. Ask the black that sweeps opposite

Fleet Market, sir. I'm not going to marry a Hottentot Venus."

Mr. Osborne pulled frantically at the cord by which he was accustomed

to summon the butler when he wanted wine--and almost black in the face,

ordered that functionary to call a coach for Captain Osborne.

"I've done it," said George, coming into the Slaughters' an hour

afterwards, looking very pale.

"What, my boy?" says Dobbin.

George told what had passed between his father and himself.

"I'll marry her to-morrow," he said with an oath. "I love her more

every day, Dobbin."