Vanity Fair (5 page)

Downstairs, then, they went, Joseph very red and blushing, Rebecca
very modest, and holding her green eyes downwards. She was dressed
in white, with bare shoulders as white as snow—the picture of
youth, unprotected innocence, and humble virgin simplicity. "I must
be very quiet," thought Rebecca, "and very much interested about
India."

Now we have heard how Mrs. Sedley had prepared a fine curry for her
son, just as he liked it, and in the course of dinner a portion of
this dish was offered to Rebecca. "What is it?" said she, turning
an appealing look to Mr. Joseph.

"Capital," said he. His mouth was full of it: his face quite red
with the delightful exercise of gobbling. "Mother, it's as good as
my own curries in India."

"Oh, I must try some, if it is an Indian dish," said Miss Rebecca.
"I am sure everything must be good that comes from there."

"Give Miss Sharp some curry, my dear," said Mr. Sedley, laughing.

Rebecca had never tasted the dish before.

"Do you find it as good as everything else from India?" said Mr.
Sedley.

"Oh, excellent!" said Rebecca, who was suffering tortures with the
cayenne pepper.

"Try a chili with it, Miss Sharp," said Joseph, really interested.

"A chili," said Rebecca, gasping. "Oh yes!" She thought a chili
was something cool, as its name imported, and was served with some.
"How fresh and green they look," she said, and put one into her
mouth. It was hotter than the curry; flesh and blood could bear it
no longer. She laid down her fork. "Water, for Heaven's sake,
water!" she cried. Mr. Sedley burst out laughing (he was a coarse
man, from the Stock Exchange, where they love all sorts of practical
jokes). "They are real Indian, I assure you," said he. "Sambo,
give Miss Sharp some water."

The paternal laugh was echoed by Joseph, who thought the joke
capital. The ladies only smiled a little. They thought poor
Rebecca suffered too much. She would have liked to choke old
Sedley, but she swallowed her mortification as well as she had the
abominable curry before it, and as soon as she could speak, said,
with a comical, good-humoured air, "I ought to have remembered the
pepper which the Princess of Persia puts in the cream-tarts in the
Arabian Nights. Do you put cayenne into your cream-tarts in India,
sir?"

Old Sedley began to laugh, and thought Rebecca was a good-humoured
girl. Joseph simply said, "Cream-tarts, Miss? Our cream is very bad
in Bengal. We generally use goats' milk; and, 'gad, do you know,
I've got to prefer it!"

"You won't like EVERYTHING from India now, Miss Sharp," said the old
gentleman; but when the ladies had retired after dinner, the wily
old fellow said to his son, "Have a care, Joe; that girl is setting
her cap at you."

"Pooh! nonsense!" said Joe, highly flattered. "I recollect, sir,
there was a girl at Dumdum, a daughter of Cutler of the Artillery,
and afterwards married to Lance, the surgeon, who made a dead set at
me in the year '4—at me and Mulligatawney, whom I mentioned to you
before dinner—a devilish good fellow Mulligatawney—he's a
magistrate at Budgebudge, and sure to be in council in five years.
Well, sir, the Artillery gave a ball, and Quintin, of the King's
14th, said to me, 'Sedley,' said he, 'I bet you thirteen to ten that
Sophy Cutler hooks either you or Mulligatawney before the rains.'
'Done,' says I; and egad, sir—this claret's very good. Adamson's
or Carbonell's?"

A slight snore was the only reply: the honest stockbroker was
asleep, and so the rest of Joseph's story was lost for that day.
But he was always exceedingly communicative in a man's party, and
has told this delightful tale many scores of times to his
apothecary, Dr. Gollop, when he came to inquire about the liver and
the blue-pill.

Being an invalid, Joseph Sedley contented himself with a bottle of
claret besides his Madeira at dinner, and he managed a couple of
plates full of strawberries and cream, and twenty-four little rout
cakes that were lying neglected in a plate near him, and certainly
(for novelists have the privilege of knowing everything) he thought
a great deal about the girl upstairs. "A nice, gay, merry young
creature," thought he to himself. "How she looked at me when I
picked up her handkerchief at dinner! She dropped it twice. Who's
that singing in the drawing-room? 'Gad! shall I go up and see?"

But his modesty came rushing upon him with uncontrollable force.
His father was asleep: his hat was in the hall: there was a hackney-
coach standing hard by in Southampton Row. "I'll go and see the
Forty Thieves," said he, "and Miss Decamp's dance"; and he slipped
away gently on the pointed toes of his boots, and disappeared,
without waking his worthy parent.

"There goes Joseph," said Amelia, who was looking from the open
windows of the drawing-room, while Rebecca was singing at the piano.

"Miss Sharp has frightened him away," said Mrs. Sedley. "Poor Joe,
why WILL he be so shy?"

The Green Silk Purse

Poor Joe's panic lasted for two or three days; during which he did
not visit the house, nor during that period did Miss Rebecca ever
mention his name. She was all respectful gratitude to Mrs. Sedley;
delighted beyond measure at the Bazaars; and in a whirl of wonder at
the theatre, whither the good-natured lady took her. One day,
Amelia had a headache, and could not go upon some party of pleasure
to which the two young people were invited: nothing could induce her
friend to go without her. "What! you who have shown the poor orphan
what happiness and love are for the first time in her life—quit
YOU? Never!" and the green eyes looked up to Heaven and filled
with tears; and Mrs. Sedley could not but own that her daughter's
friend had a charming kind heart of her own.

As for Mr. Sedley's jokes, Rebecca laughed at them with a cordiality
and perseverance which not a little pleased and softened that good-
natured gentleman. Nor was it with the chiefs of the family alone
that Miss Sharp found favour. She interested Mrs. Blenkinsop by
evincing the deepest sympathy in the raspberry-jam preserving, which
operation was then going on in the Housekeeper's room; she persisted
in calling Sambo "Sir," and "Mr. Sambo," to the delight of that
attendant; and she apologised to the lady's maid for giving her
trouble in venturing to ring the bell, with such sweetness and
humility, that the Servants' Hall was almost as charmed with her as
the Drawing Room.

Once, in looking over some drawings which Amelia had sent from
school, Rebecca suddenly came upon one which caused her to burst
into tears and leave the room. It was on the day when Joe Sedley
made his second appearance.

Amelia hastened after her friend to know the cause of this display
of feeling, and the good-natured girl came back without her
companion, rather affected too. "You know, her father was our
drawing-master, Mamma, at Chiswick, and used to do all the best
parts of our drawings."

"My love! I'm sure I always heard Miss Pinkerton say that he did not
touch them—he only mounted them." "It was called mounting, Mamma.
Rebecca remembers the drawing, and her father working at it, and the
thought of it came upon her rather suddenly—and so, you know, she—"

"The poor child is all heart," said Mrs. Sedley.

"I wish she could stay with us another week," said Amelia.

"She's devilish like Miss Cutler that I used to meet at Dumdum, only
fairer. She's married now to Lance, the Artillery Surgeon. Do you
know, Ma'am, that once Quintin, of the 14th, bet me—"

"O Joseph, we know that story," said Amelia, laughing. Never mind
about telling that; but persuade Mamma to write to Sir Something
Crawley for leave of absence for poor dear Rebecca: here she comes,
her eyes red with weeping."

"I'm better, now," said the girl, with the sweetest smile possible,
taking good-natured Mrs. Sedley's extended hand and kissing it
respectfully. "How kind you all are to me! All," she added, with a
laugh, "except you, Mr. Joseph."

"Me!" said Joseph, meditating an instant departure "Gracious
Heavens! Good Gad! Miss Sharp!'

"Yes; how could you be so cruel as to make me eat that horrid
pepper-dish at dinner, the first day I ever saw you? You are not so
good to me as dear Amelia."

"He doesn't know you so well," cried Amelia.

"I defy anybody not to be good to you, my dear," said her mother.

"The curry was capital; indeed it was," said Joe, quite gravely.
"Perhaps there was NOT enough citron juice in it—no, there was
NOT."

"And the chilis?"

"By Jove, how they made you cry out!" said Joe, caught by the
ridicule of the circumstance, and exploding in a fit of laughter
which ended quite suddenly, as usual.

"I shall take care how I let YOU choose for me another time," said
Rebecca, as they went down again to dinner. "I didn't think men
were fond of putting poor harmless girls to pain."

"By Gad, Miss Rebecca, I wouldn't hurt you for the world."

"No," said she, "I KNOW you wouldn't"; and then she gave him ever so
gentle a pressure with her little hand, and drew it back quite
frightened, and looked first for one instant in his face, and then
down at the carpet-rods; and I am not prepared to say that Joe's
heart did not thump at this little involuntary, timid, gentle motion
of regard on the part of the simple girl.

It was an advance, and as such, perhaps, some ladies of indisputable
correctness and gentility will condemn the action as immodest; but,
you see, poor dear Rebecca had all this work to do for herself. If
a person is too poor to keep a servant, though ever so elegant, he
must sweep his own rooms: if a dear girl has no dear Mamma to settle
matters with the young man, she must do it for herself. And oh,
what a mercy it is that these women do not exercise their powers
oftener! We can't resist them, if they do. Let them show ever so
little inclination, and men go down on their knees at once: old or
ugly, it is all the same. And this I set down as a positive truth.
A woman with fair opportunities, and without an absolute hump, may
marry WHOM SHE LIKES. Only let us be thankful that the darlings are
like the beasts of the field, and don't know their own power. They
would overcome us entirely if they did.

"Egad!" thought Joseph, entering the dining-room, "I exactly begin
to feel as I did at Dumdum with Miss Cutler." Many sweet little
appeals, half tender, half jocular, did Miss Sharp make to him about
the dishes at dinner; for by this time she was on a footing of
considerable familiarity with the family, and as for the girls, they
loved each other like sisters. Young unmarried girls always do, if
they are in a house together for ten days.

As if bent upon advancing Rebecca's plans in every way—what must
Amelia do, but remind her brother of a promise made last Easter
holidays—"When I was a girl at school," said she, laughing—a
promise that he, Joseph, would take her to Vauxhall. "Now," she
said, "that Rebecca is with us, will be the very time."

"O, delightful!" said Rebecca, going to clap her hands; but she
recollected herself, and paused, like a modest creature, as she was.

"To-night is not the night," said Joe.

"Well, to-morrow."

"To-morrow your Papa and I dine out," said Mrs. Sedley.

"You don't suppose that I'm going, Mrs. Sed?" said her husband, "and
that a woman of your years and size is to catch cold, in such an
abominable damp place?"

'The children must have someone with them," cried Mrs. Sedley.

"Let Joe go," said-his father, laughing. "He's big enough." At
which speech even Mr. Sambo at the sideboard burst out laughing, and
poor fat Joe felt inclined to become a parricide almost.

"Undo his stays!" continued the pitiless old gentleman. "Fling some
water in his face, Miss Sharp, or carry him upstairs: the dear
creature's fainting. Poor victim! carry him up; he's as light as a
feather!"

"If I stand this, sir, I'm d——!" roared Joseph.

"Order Mr. Jos's elephant, Sambo!" cried the father. "Send to Exeter
'Change, Sambo"; but seeing Jos ready almost to cry with vexation,
the old joker stopped his laughter, and said, holding out his hand
to his son, "It's all fair on the Stock Exchange, Jos—and, Sambo,
never mind the elephant, but give me and Mr. Jos a glass of
Champagne. Boney himself hasn't got such in his cellar, my boy!"

A goblet of Champagne restored Joseph's equanimity, and before the
bottle was emptied, of which as an invalid he took two-thirds, he
had agreed to take the young ladies to Vauxhall.

"The girls must have a gentleman apiece," said the old gentleman.
"Jos will be sure to leave Emmy in the crowd, he will be so taken up
with Miss Sharp here. Send to 96, and ask George Osborne if he'll
come."

At this, I don't know in the least for what reason, Mrs. Sedley
looked at her husband and laughed. Mr. Sedley's eyes twinkled in a
manner indescribably roguish, and he looked at Amelia; and Amelia,
hanging down her head, blushed as only young ladies of seventeen
know how to blush, and as Miss Rebecca Sharp never blushed in her
life—at least not since she was eight years old, and when she was
caught stealing jam out of a cupboard by her godmother. "Amelia had
better write a note," said her father; "and let George Osborne see
what a beautiful handwriting we have brought back from Miss
Pinkerton's. Do you remember when you wrote to him to come on
Twelfth-night, Emmy, and spelt twelfth without the f?"

"That was years ago," said Amelia.

"It seems like yesterday, don't it, John?" said Mrs. Sedley to her
husband; and that night in a conversation which took place in a
front room in the second floor, in a sort of tent, hung round with
chintz of a rich and fantastic India pattern, and double with calico
of a tender rose-colour; in the interior of which species of marquee
was a featherbed, on which were two pillows, on which were two round
red faces, one in a laced nightcap, and one in a simple cotton one,
ending in a tassel—in a CURTAIN LECTURE, I say, Mrs. Sedley took
her husband to task for his cruel conduct to poor Joe.