Vanity Fair - Page 213/573

In honour of the young bride's arrival, her mother thought it necessary

to prepare I don't know what festive entertainment, and after the first

ebullition of talk, took leave of Mrs. George Osborne for a while, and

dived down to the lower regions of the house to a sort of

kitchen-parlour (occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Clapp, and in the evening,

when her dishes were washed and her curl-papers removed, by Miss

Flannigan, the Irish servant), there to take measures for the preparing

of a magnificent ornamented tea. All people have their ways of

expressing kindness, and it seemed to Mrs. Sedley that a muffin and a

quantity of orange marmalade spread out in a little cut-glass saucer

would be peculiarly agreeable refreshments to Amelia in her most

interesting situation.

While these delicacies were being transacted below, Amelia, leaving the

drawing-room, walked upstairs and found herself, she scarce knew how,

in the little room which she had occupied before her marriage, and in

that very chair in which she had passed so many bitter hours. She sank

back in its arms as if it were an old friend; and fell to thinking over

the past week, and the life beyond it. Already to be looking sadly and

vaguely back: always to be pining for something which, when obtained,

brought doubt and sadness rather than pleasure; here was the lot of our

poor little creature and harmless lost wanderer in the great struggling

crowds of Vanity Fair.

Here she sate, and recalled to herself fondly that image of George to

which she had knelt before marriage. Did she own to herself how

different the real man was from that superb young hero whom she had

worshipped? It requires many, many years--and a man must be very bad

indeed--before a woman's pride and vanity will let her own to such a

confession. Then Rebecca's twinkling green eyes and baleful smile

lighted upon her, and filled her with dismay. And so she sate for

awhile indulging in her usual mood of selfish brooding, in that very

listless melancholy attitude in which the honest maid-servant had found

her, on the day when she brought up the letter in which George renewed

his offer of marriage.

She looked at the little white bed, which had been hers a few days

before, and thought she would like to sleep in it that night, and wake,

as formerly, with her mother smiling over her in the morning: Then she

thought with terror of the great funereal damask pavilion in the vast

and dingy state bedroom, which was awaiting her at the grand hotel in

Cavendish Square. Dear little white bed! how many a long night had she

wept on its pillow! How she had despaired and hoped to die there; and

now were not all her wishes accomplished, and the lover of whom she had

despaired her own for ever? Kind mother! how patiently and tenderly

she had watched round that bed! She went and knelt down by the bedside;

and there this wounded and timorous, but gentle and loving soul, sought

for consolation, where as yet, it must be owned, our little girl had

but seldom looked for it. Love had been her faith hitherto; and the

sad, bleeding disappointed heart began to feel the want of another

consoler.