Vanity Fair. Уильям Мейкпис Теккерей

dear Rebecca,” said Amelia.

      “Why?” answered the other, still more sadly. “That I may be only the more unhap—unwilling to lose you?” And she turned away her head. Amelia began to give way to that natural infirmity of tears, which, we have said, was one of the defects of this silly little thing. George Osborne looked at the two young women with a touched curiosity; and Joseph Sedley heaved something very like a sigh out of his big chest, as he cast his eyes down towards his favourite Hessian boots.

      “Let us have some music, Miss Sedley—Amelia,” said George, who felt at that moment an extraordinary, almost irresistible impulse to seize the above-mentioned young woman in his arms, and to kiss her in the face of the company; and she looked at him for a moment, and if I should say that they fell in love with each other at that single instant of time, I should perhaps be telling an untruth, for the fact is, that these two young people had been bred up by their parents for this very purpose, and their banns had, as it were, been read in their respective families any time these ten years. They went off to the piano, which was situated, as pianos usually are, in the back drawing-room; and as it was rather dark, Miss Amelia, in the most unaffected way in the world, put her hand into Mr. Osborne’s, who, of course, could see the way among the chairs and ottomans a great deal better than she could. But this arrangement left Mr. Joseph Sedley tête-à-tête with Rebecca, at the drawing-room table, where the latter was occupied in knitting a green silk purse.

      “There is no need to ask family secrets,” said Miss Sharp. “Those two have told theirs.”

      “As soon as he gets his company,” said Joseph, “I believe the affair is settled. George Osborne is a capital fellow.”

      “And your sister the dearest creature in the world,” said Rebecca. “Happy the man who wins her!” With this, Miss Sharp gave a great sigh.

      When two unmarried persons get together, and talk upon such delicate subjects as the present, a great deal of confidence and intimacy is presently established between them. There is no need of giving a special report of the conversation which now took place between Mr. Sedley and the young lady; for the conversation, as may be judged from the foregoing specimen, was not especially witty or eloquent; it seldom is in private societies, or anywhere except in very high-flown and ingenious novels. As there was music in the next room, the talk was carried on, of course, in a low and becoming tone, though, for the matter of that, the couple in the next apartment would not have been disturbed, had the talking been ever so loud, so occupied were they with their own pursuits.

      Almost for the first time in his life, Mr. Sedley found himself talking, without the least timidity or hesitation, to a person of the other sex. Miss Rebecca asked him a great number of questions about India, which gave him an opportunity of narrating many interesting anecdotes about that country and himself. He described the balls at Government House, and the manner in which they kept themselves cool in the hot weather, with punkahs, tatties, and other contrivances; and he was very witty regarding the number of Scotchmen whom Lord Minto, the Governor-General, patronised; and then he described a tiger-hunt; and the manner in which the mahout of his elephant had been pulled off his seat by one of the infuriated animals. How delighted Miss Rebecca was at the Government balls, and how she laughed at the stories of the Scotch aides-de-camp, and called Mr. Sedley a sad wicked satirical creature; and how frightened she was at the story of the elephant! “For your mother’s sake, dear Mr. Sedley,” she said, “for the sake of all your friends, promise never to go on one of those horrid expeditions.”

      “Pooh, pooh, Miss Sharp,” said he, pulling up his shirt-collars; “the dangers make the sport only the pleasanter.” He had never been but once at a tiger-hunt, when the accident in question occurred, and when he was half killed—not by the tiger, but by the fright. And as he talked on, he grew quite bold, and actually had the audacity to ask Miss Rebecca for whom she was knitting the green silk purse? He was quite surprised and delighted at his own graceful familiar manner.

      “For any one who wants a purse,” replied Miss Rebecca, looking at him in the most gentle winning way. Sedley was going to make one of the most eloquent speeches possible, and had begun—“O Miss Sharp, how—” when some song which was performed in the other room came to an end, and caused him to hear his own voice so distinctly that he stopped, blushed, and blew his nose in great agitation.

      “Did you ever hear anything like your brother’s eloquence?” whispered Mr. Osborne to Amelia. “Why, your friend has worked miracles.”

      “The more the better,” said Miss Amelia; who, like almost all women who are worth a pin, was a match-maker in her heart, and would have been delighted that Joseph should carry back a wife to India. She had, too, in the course of this few days’ constant intercourse, warmed into a most tender friendship for Rebecca, and discovered a million of virtues and amiable qualities in her which she had not perceived when they were at Chiswick together. For the affection of young ladies is of as rapid growth as Jack’s beanstalk, and reaches up to the sky in a night. It is no blame to them that after marriage this Sehnsucht nach der Liebe subsides. It is what sentimentalists, who deal in very big words, call a yearning after the Ideal, and simply means that women are commonly not satisfied until they have husbands and children on whom they may centre affections, which are spent elsewhere, as it were, in small change.

      Having expended her little store of songs, or having stayed long enough in the back drawing-room, it now appeared proper to Miss Amelia to ask her friend to sing. “You would not have listened to me,” she said to Mr. Osborne (though she knew she was telling a fib), “had you heard Rebecca first.”

      “I give Miss Sharp warning, though,” said Osborne, “that, right or wrong, I consider Miss Amelia Sedley the first singer in the world.”

      “You shall hear,” said Amelia; and Joseph Sedley was actually polite enough to carry the candles to the piano. Osborne hinted that he should like quite as well to sit in the dark; but Miss Sedley, laughing, declined to bear him company any farther and the two accordingly followed Mr. Joseph. Rebecca sang far better than her friend (though of course Osborne was free to keep his opinion), and exerted herself to the utmost, and, indeed, to the wonder of Amelia, who had never known her perform so well. She sang a French song, which Joseph did not understand in the least, and which George confessed he did not understand, and then a number of those simple ballads, which were the fashion forty years ago, and in which British tars, our King, poor Susan, blue-eyed Mary, and the like, were the principal themes. They are not, it is said, very brilliant, in a musical point of view, but contain numberless good-natured, simple appeals to the affections, which people understood better than the milk-and-water lagrime, sospiri, and felicità of the eternal Donizettian music with which we are favoured now-a-days.

      Conversation of a sentimental sort, befitting the subject, was carried on between the songs, to which Sambo, after he had brought the tea, the delighted cook, and even Mrs. Blenkinsop, the housekeeper, condescended to listen on the landing-place.

      Among these ditties was one, the last of the concert, and to the following effect:—

       Ah! bleak and barren was the moor,

       Ah! loud and piercing was the storm,

       The cottage roof was shelter’d sure,

       The cottage hearth was bright and warm—

       An orphan boy the lattice pass’d,

       And, as he mark’d its cheerful glow,

       Felt doubly keen the midnight blast,

       And doubly cold the fallen snow.

       They mark’d him as he onward prest,

       With fainting heart and weary limb;

       Kind voices bade him turn and rest,

       And gentle faces welcomed him.

       The dawn is up—the guest is gone,