Vanity Fair - Page 160/573

"We're going to hunt Boney out, sir," Dobbin said, rather alarmed at

the fury of the old man, the veins of whose forehead began to swell,

and who sate drumming his papers with his clenched fist. "We are going

to hunt him out, sir--the Duke's in Belgium already, and we expect

marching orders every day."

"Give him no quarter. Bring back the villain's head, sir. Shoot the

coward down, sir," Sedley roared. "I'd enlist myself, by--; but I'm a

broken old man--ruined by that damned scoundrel--and by a parcel of

swindling thieves in this country whom I made, sir, and who are rolling

in their carriages now," he added, with a break in his voice.

Dobbin was not a little affected by the sight of this once kind old

friend, crazed almost with misfortune and raving with senile anger.

Pity the fallen gentleman: you to whom money and fair repute are the

chiefest good; and so, surely, are they in Vanity Fair.

"Yes," he continued, "there are some vipers that you warm, and they

sting you afterwards. There are some beggars that you put on

horseback, and they're the first to ride you down. You know whom I

mean, William Dobbin, my boy. I mean a purse-proud villain in Russell

Square, whom I knew without a shilling, and whom I pray and hope to see

a beggar as he was when I befriended him."

"I have heard something of this, sir, from my friend George," Dobbin

said, anxious to come to his point. "The quarrel between you and his

father has cut him up a great deal, sir. Indeed, I'm the bearer of a

message from him."

"O, THAT'S your errand, is it?" cried the old man, jumping up. "What!

perhaps he condoles with me, does he? Very kind of him, the

stiff-backed prig, with his dandified airs and West End swagger. He's

hankering about my house, is he still? If my son had the courage of a

man, he'd shoot him. He's as big a villain as his father. I won't

have his name mentioned in my house. I curse the day that ever I let

him into it; and I'd rather see my daughter dead at my feet than

married to him."

"His father's harshness is not George's fault, sir. Your daughter's

love for him is as much your doing as his. Who are you, that you are

to play with two young people's affections and break their hearts at

your will?"

"Recollect it's not his father that breaks the match off," old Sedley

cried out. "It's I that forbid it. That family and mine are separated

for ever. I'm fallen low, but not so low as that: no, no. And so you

may tell the whole race--son, and father and sisters, and all."

"It's my belief, sir, that you have not the power or the right to

separate those two," Dobbin answered in a low voice; "and that if you

don't give your daughter your consent it will be her duty to marry

without it. There's no reason she should die or live miserably because

you are wrong-headed. To my thinking, she's just as much married as if

the banns had been read in all the churches in London. And what better

answer can there be to Osborne's charges against you, as charges there

are, than that his son claims to enter your family and marry your

daughter?"