Vanity Fair - Page 356/573

Considerable time has elapsed since we have seen our respectable

friend, old Mr. Osborne of Russell Square. He has not been the

happiest of mortals since last we met him. Events have occurred which

have not improved his temper, and in more in stances than one he has

not been allowed to have his own way. To be thwarted in this

reasonable desire was always very injurious to the old gentleman; and

resistance became doubly exasperating when gout, age, loneliness, and

the force of many disappointments combined to weigh him down. His

stiff black hair began to grow quite white soon after his son's death;

his-face grew redder; his hands trembled more and more as he poured out

his glass of port wine. He led his clerks a dire life in the City:

his family at home were not much happier. I doubt if Rebecca, whom we

have seen piously praying for Consols, would have exchanged her poverty

and the dare-devil excitement and chances of her life for Osborne's

money and the humdrum gloom which enveloped him. He had proposed for

Miss Swartz, but had been rejected scornfully by the partisans of that

lady, who married her to a young sprig of Scotch nobility. He was a

man to have married a woman out of low life and bullied her dreadfully

afterwards; but no person presented herself suitable to his taste, and,

instead, he tyrannized over his unmarried daughter, at home. She had a

fine carriage and fine horses and sat at the head of a table loaded

with the grandest plate. She had a cheque-book, a prize footman to

follow her when she walked, unlimited credit, and bows and compliments

from all the tradesmen, and all the appurtenances of an heiress; but

she spent a woeful time. The little charity-girls at the Foundling, the

sweeperess at the crossing, the poorest under-kitchen-maid in the

servants' hall, was happy compared to that unfortunate and now

middle-aged young lady.

Frederick Bullock, Esq., of the house of Bullock, Hulker, and Bullock,

had married Maria Osborne, not without a great deal of difficulty and

grumbling on Mr. Bullock's part. George being dead and cut out of his

father's will, Frederick insisted that the half of the old gentleman's

property should be settled upon his Maria, and indeed, for a long time,

refused, "to come to the scratch" (it was Mr. Frederick's own

expression) on any other terms. Osborne said Fred had agreed to take

his daughter with twenty thousand, and he should bind himself to no

more. "Fred might take it, and welcome, or leave it, and go and be

hanged." Fred, whose hopes had been raised when George had been

disinherited, thought himself infamously swindled by the old merchant,

and for some time made as if he would break off the match altogether.

Osborne withdrew his account from Bullock and Hulker's, went on 'Change

with a horsewhip which he swore he would lay across the back of a

certain scoundrel that should be nameless, and demeaned himself in his

usual violent manner. Jane Osborne condoled with her sister Maria

during this family feud. "I always told you, Maria, that it was your

money he loved and not you," she said, soothingly.