The boy said
"No."
"Give me your word of honour as a gentleman that you never will."
"Why?" said the boy; "it seems very good fun."
And, in a very eloquent and impressive manner, the Major showed him why he shouldn't, and would have enforced his precepts by the example of Georgy's own father, had he liked to say anything that should reflect on the other's memory.
When he had housed him, he went to bed and saw his light, in the little room outside of Amelia's, presently disappear.
Amelia's followed half an hour afterwards.
I don't know what made the Major note it so accurately.
Jos, however, remained behind over the play-table; he was no gambler, but not averse to the little excitement of the sport now and then, and he had some Napoleons chinking in the embroidered pockets of his court waistcoat.
He put down one over the fair shoulder of the little gambler before him, and they won.
She made a little movement to make room for him by her side, and just took the skirt of her gown from a vacant chair there.
"Come and give me good luck," she said, still in a foreign accent, quite different from that frank and perfectly English "Thank you," with which she had saluted Georgy's coup in her favour.
The portly gentleman, looking round to see that nobody of rank observed him, sat down; he muttered--"Ah, really, well now, God bless my soul.
I'm very fortunate; I'm sure to give you good fortune," and other words of compliment and confusion.
"Do you play much?" the foreign mask said.
"I put a Nap or two down," said Jos with a superb air, flinging down a gold piece.
"Yes; ay nap after dinner," said the mask archly.
But Jos looking frightened, she continued, in her pretty French accent, "You do not play to win.
No more do I.
I play to forget, but I cannot. I cannot forget old times, monsieur.
Your little nephew is the image of his father; and you--you are not changed--but yes, you are. Everybody changes, everybody forgets; nobody has any heart."
"Good God, who is it?" asked Jos in a flutter.
"Can't you guess, Joseph Sedley?" said the little woman in a sad voice, and undoing her mask, she looked at him.
"You have forgotten me."
"Good heavens!
Mrs. Crawley!" gasped out Jos.
"Rebecca," said the other, putting her hand on his; but she followed the game still, all the time she was looking at him.
"I am stopping at the Elephant," she continued.
"Ask for Madame de Raudon.
I saw my dear Amelia to-day; how pretty she looked, and how happy!
So do you!
Everybody but me, who am wretched, Joseph Sedley."
And she put her money over from the red to the black, as if by a chance movement of her hand, and while she was wiping her eyes with a pocket-handkerchief fringed with torn lace.
The red came up again, and she lost the whole of that stake.
"Come away," she said.
"Come with me a little--we are old friends, are we not, dear Mr. Sedley?"
And Mr. Kirsch having lost all his money by this time, followed his master out into the moonlight, where the illuminations were winking out and the transparency over our mission was scarcely visible.
CHAPTER LXIV
A Vagabond Chapter
We must pass over a part of Mrs. Rebecca Crawley's biography with that lightness and delicacy which the world demands--the moral world, that has, perhaps, no particular objection to vice, but an insuperable repugnance to hearing vice called by its proper name.
There are things we do and know perfectly well in Vanity Fair, though we never speak of them: as the Ahrimanians worship the devil, but don't mention him: and a polite public will no more bear to read an authentic description of vice than a truly refined English or American female will permit the word breeches to be pronounced in her chaste hearing.
And yet, madam, both are walking the world before our faces every day, without much shocking us.
If you were to blush every time they went by, what complexions you would have!
It is only when their naughty names are called out that your modesty has any occasion to show alarm or sense of outrage, and it has been the wish of the present writer, all through this story, deferentially to submit to the fashion at present prevailing, and only to hint at the existence of wickedness in a light, easy, and agreeable manner, so that nobody's fine feelings may be offended.
I defy any one to say that our Becky, who has certainly some vices, has not been presented to the public in a perfectly genteel and inoffensive manner.
In describing this Siren, singing and smiling, coaxing and cajoling, the author, with modest pride, asks his readers all round, has he once forgotten the laws of politeness, and showed the monster's hideous tail above water?
No!
Those who like may peep down under waves that are pretty transparent and see it writhing and twirling, diabolically hideous and slimy, flapping amongst bones, or curling round corpses; but above the waterline, I ask, has not everything been proper, agreeable, and decorous, and has any the most squeamish immoralist in Vanity Fair a right to cry fie?
When, however, the Siren disappears and dives below, down among the dead men, the water of course grows turbid over her, and it is labour lost to look into it ever so curiously.
They look pretty enough when they sit upon a rock, twanging their harps and combing their hair, and sing, and beckon to you to come and hold the looking-glass; but when they sink into their native element, depend on it, those mermaids are about no good, and we had best not examine the fiendish marine cannibals, revelling and feasting on their wretched pickled victims.