Vanity Fair - Page 199/573

"Gad, what a fine night, and how bright the moon is!" George said, with

a puff of his cigar, which went soaring up skywards.

"How delicious they smell in the open air! I adore them. Who'd think

the moon was two hundred and thirty-six thousand eight hundred and

forty-seven miles off?" Becky added, gazing at that orb with a smile.

"Isn't it clever of me to remember that? Pooh! we learned it all at

Miss Pinkerton's! How calm the sea is, and how clear everything. I

declare I can almost see the coast of France!" and her bright green

eyes streamed out, and shot into the night as if they could see through

it.

"Do you know what I intend to do one morning?" she said; "I find I can

swim beautifully, and some day, when my Aunt Crawley's companion--old

Briggs, you know--you remember her--that hook-nosed woman, with the

long wisps of hair--when Briggs goes out to bathe, I intend to dive

under her awning, and insist on a reconciliation in the water. Isn't

that a stratagem?"

George burst out laughing at the idea of this aquatic meeting. "What's

the row there, you two?" Rawdon shouted out, rattling the box. Amelia

was making a fool of herself in an absurd hysterical manner, and

retired to her own room to whimper in private.

Our history is destined in this chapter to go backwards and forwards in

a very irresolute manner seemingly, and having conducted our story to

to-morrow presently, we shall immediately again have occasion to step

back to yesterday, so that the whole of the tale may get a hearing. As

you behold at her Majesty's drawing-room, the ambassadors' and high

dignitaries' carriages whisk off from a private door, while Captain

Jones's ladies are waiting for their fly: as you see in the Secretary

of the Treasury's antechamber, a half-dozen of petitioners waiting

patiently for their audience, and called out one by one, when suddenly

an Irish member or some eminent personage enters the apartment, and

instantly walks into Mr. Under-Secretary over the heads of all the

people present: so in the conduct of a tale, the romancer is obliged to

exercise this most partial sort of justice. Although all the little

incidents must be heard, yet they must be put off when the great events

make their appearance; and surely such a circumstance as that which

brought Dobbin to Brighton, viz., the ordering out of the Guards and

the line to Belgium, and the mustering of the allied armies in that

country under the command of his Grace the Duke of Wellington--such a

dignified circumstance as that, I say, was entitled to the pas over all

minor occurrences whereof this history is composed mainly, and hence a

little trifling disarrangement and disorder was excusable and becoming.

We have only now advanced in time so far beyond Chapter XXII as to have

got our various characters up into their dressing-rooms before the

dinner, which took place as usual on the day of Dobbin's arrival.