Vanity Fair - Page 190/573

To this study old Osborne retired then, greatly to the relief of the

small party whom he left. When the servants had withdrawn, they began

to talk for a while volubly but very low; then they went upstairs

quietly, Mr. Bullock accompanying them stealthily on his creaking

shoes. He had no heart to sit alone drinking wine, and so close to the

terrible old gentleman in the study hard at hand.

An hour at least after dark, the butler, not having received any

summons, ventured to tap at his door and take him in wax candles and

tea. The master of the house sate in his chair, pretending to read the

paper, and when the servant, placing the lights and refreshment on the

table by him, retired, Mr. Osborne got up and locked the door after

him. This time there was no mistaking the matter; all the household

knew that some great catastrophe was going to happen which was likely

direly to affect Master George.

In the large shining mahogany escritoire Mr. Osborne had a drawer

especially devoted to his son's affairs and papers. Here he kept all

the documents relating to him ever since he had been a boy: here were

his prize copy-books and drawing-books, all bearing George's hand, and

that of the master: here were his first letters in large round-hand

sending his love to papa and mamma, and conveying his petitions for a

cake. His dear godpapa Sedley was more than once mentioned in them.

Curses quivered on old Osborne's livid lips, and horrid hatred and

disappointment writhed in his heart, as looking through some of these

papers he came on that name. They were all marked and docketed, and

tied with red tape. It was--"From Georgy, requesting 5s., April 23,

18--; answered, April 25"--or "Georgy about a pony, October 13"--and so

forth. In another packet were "Dr. S.'s accounts"--"G.'s tailor's bills

and outfits, drafts on me by G. Osborne, jun.," &c.--his letters from

the West Indies--his agent's letters, and the newspapers containing his

commissions: here was a whip he had when a boy, and in a paper a locket

containing his hair, which his mother used to wear.

Turning one over after another, and musing over these memorials, the

unhappy man passed many hours. His dearest vanities, ambitious hopes,

had all been here. What pride he had in his boy! He was the

handsomest child ever seen. Everybody said he was like a nobleman's

son. A royal princess had remarked him, and kissed him, and asked his

name in Kew Gardens. What City man could show such another? Could a

prince have been better cared for? Anything that money could buy had

been his son's. He used to go down on speech-days with four horses and

new liveries, and scatter new shillings among the boys at the school

where George was: when he went with George to the depot of his

regiment, before the boy embarked for Canada, he gave the officers such

a dinner as the Duke of York might have sat down to. Had he ever

refused a bill when George drew one? There they were--paid without a

word. Many a general in the army couldn't ride the horses he had! He

had the child before his eyes, on a hundred different days when he

remembered George after dinner, when he used to come in as bold as a

lord and drink off his glass by his father's side, at the head of the

table--on the pony at Brighton, when he cleared the hedge and kept up

with the huntsman--on the day when he was presented to the Prince

Regent at the levee, when all Saint James's couldn't produce a finer

young fellow. And this, this was the end of all!--to marry a bankrupt

and fly in the face of duty and fortune! What humiliation and fury:

what pangs of sickening rage, balked ambition and love; what wounds of

outraged vanity, tenderness even, had this old worldling now to suffer

under!