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to the window with a vague notion that their father
might have arrived from Bombay. The great hulking
scholar of three-and-twenty, who was crying secretly over a
passage of Eutropius, flattened his neglected nose against
the panes and looked at the drag, as the laquais de place
sprang from the box and let out the persons in the carriage.
"It's a fat one and a thin one," Mr. Bluck said as a
thundering knock came to the door.
Everybody was interested, from the domestic chaplain
himself, who hoped he saw the fathers of some future
pupils, down to Master Georgy, glad of any pretext for
laying his book down.
The boy in the shabby livery with the faded copper
buttons, who always thrust himself into the tight coat
to open the door, came into the study and said, "Two
gentlemen want to see Master Osborne." The professor
had had a trifling altercation in the morning with that
young gentleman, owing to a difference about the
introduction of crackers in school-time; but his face
resumed its habitual expression of bland courtesy as he
said, "Master Osborne, I give you full permission to go
and see your carriage friends--to whom I beg you to
convey the respectful compliments of myself and Mrs.
Veal."
Georgy went into the reception-room and saw two
strangers, whom he looked at with his head up, in his
usual haughty manner. One was fat, with mustachios,
and the other was lean and long, in a blue frock-coat,
with a brown face and a grizzled head.
"My God, how like he is!" said the long gentleman
with a start. "Can you guess who we are, George?"
The boy's face flushed up, as it did usually when he
was moved, and his eyes brightened. "I don't know the
other," he said, "but I should think you must be Major
Dobbin."
Indeed it was our old friend. His voice trembled
with pleasure as he greeted the boy, and taking both the
other's hands in his own, drew the lad to him.
"Your mother has talked to you about me--has
she?" he said.
"That she has," Georgy answered, "hundreds and
hundreds of times."
CHAPTER LVII
Eothen
It was one of the many causes for personal pride
with which old Osborne chose to recreate himself
that Sedley, his ancient rival, enemy, and benefactor,
was in his last days so utterly defeated and humiliated
as to be forced to accept pecuniary obligations at the
hands of the man who had most injured and insulted
him. The successful man of the world cursed the old
pauper and relieved him from time to time. As he
furnished George with money for his mother, he gave
the boy to understand by hints, delivered in his brutal,
coarse way, that George's maternal grandfather was
but a wretched old bankrupt and dependant, and that
John Sedley might thank the man to whom he already
owed ever so much money for the aid which his generosity
now chose to administer. George carried the pompous
supplies to his mother and the shattered old widower whom
it was now the main business of her life to tend and
comfort. The little fellow patronized the feeble and
disappointed old man.
It may have shown a want of "proper pride" in
Amelia that she chose to accept these money benefits at
the hands of her father's enemy. But proper pride and
this poor lady had never had much acquaintance together.
A disposition naturally simple and demanding protection;
a long course of poverty and humility, of daily privations,
and hard words, of kind offices and no returns, had been
her lot ever since womanhood almost, or since her
luckless marriage with George Osborne. You who see your
betters bearing up under this shame every day, meekly
suffering under the slights of fortune, gentle and unpitied,
poor, and rather despised for their poverty, do you ever
step down from your prosperity and wash the feet of
these poor wearied beggars? The very thought of them is
odious and low. "There must be classes--there must be
rich and poor," Dives says, smacking his claret (it is
well if he even sends the broken meat out to Lazarus
sitting under the window). Very true; but think how
mysterious and often unaccountable it is--that lottery
of life which gives to this man the purple and fine linen
and sends to the other rags for garments and dogs for
comforters.
So I must own that, without much repining, on the
contrary with something akin to gratitude, Amelia took the
crumbs that her father-in-law let drop now and then,
and with them fed her own parent. Directly she understood
it to be her duty, it was this young woman's nature
(ladies, she is but thirty still, and we choose to call her
a young woman even at that age) it was, I say, her
nature to sacrifice herself and to fling all that she had at
the feet of the beloved object. During what long thankless
nights had she worked out her fingers for little Georgy
whilst at home with her; what buffets, scorns, privations,
poverties had she endured for father and mother! And
in the midst of all these solitary resignations and unseen
sacrifices, she did not respect herself any more than the
world respected her, but I believe thought in her heart
that she was a poor-spirited, despicable little creature,
whose luck in life was only too good for her merits. O
you poor women! O you poor secret martyrs and victims,
whose life is a torture, who are stretched on racks in
your bedrooms, and who lay your heads down on the
block daily at the drawing-room table; every man who
watches your pains, or peers into those dark places where
the torture is administered to you, must pity you--and
--and thank God that he has a beard. I recollect seeing,
years ago, at the prisons for idiots and madmen at
Bicetre, near Paris, a poor wretch bent down under
the bondage of his imprisonment and his personal
infirmity, to whom one of our party gave a halfpenny worth
of snuff in a cornet or "screw" of paper. The kindness
was too much for the poor epileptic creature. He cried
in an anguish of delight and gratitude: if anybody gave
you and me a thousand a year, or saved our lives, we
could not be so affected. And so, if you properly tyrannize
over a woman, you will find a h'p'orth of kindness act
upon her and bring tears into her eyes, as though you
were an angel benefiting her.
Some such boons as these were the best which Fortune
allotted to poor little Amelia. Her life, begun not
unprosperously, had come down to this--to a mean prison
and a long, ignoble bondage. Little George visited her
captivity sometimes and consoled it with feeble gleams
of encouragement. Russell Square was the boundary of
her prison: she might walk thither occasionally, but was
always back to sleep in her cell at night; to perform
cheerless duties; to watch by thankless sick-beds; to
suffer the harassment and tyranny of querulous
disappointed old age. How many thousands of people are
there, women for the most part, who are doomed to endure
this long slavery?--who are hospital nurses without
wages--sisters of Charity, if you like, without the
romance and the sentiment of sacrifice--who strive, fast,
watch, and suffer, unpitied, and fade away ignobly and
unknown.
The hidden and awful Wisdom which apportions the
destinies of mankind is pleased so to humiliate and cast
down the tender, good, and wise, and to set up the selfish,
the foolish, or the wicked. Oh, be humble, my brother,
in your prosperity! Be gentle with those who are less
lucky, if not more deserving. Think, what right have you
to be scornful, whose virtue is a deficiency of temptation,
whose success may be a chance, whose rank may be
an ancestor's accident, whose prosperity is very likely
a satire.
They buried Amelia's mother in the churchyard at
Brompton, upon just such a rainy, dark day as Amelia
recollected when first she had been there to marry George.
Her little boy sat by her side in pompous new sables.
She remembered the old pew-woman and clerk. Her
thoughts were away in other times as the parson read.
But that she held George's hand in her own, perhaps she
would have liked to change places with.... Then, as
usual, she felt ashamed of her selfish thoughts and prayed
inwardly to be strengthened to do her duty.
So she determined with all her might and strength to
try and make her old father happy. She slaved, toiled,
patched, and mended, sang and played backgammon, read
out the newspaper, cooked dishes, for old Sedley, walked
him out sedulously into Kensington Gardens or the Brompton
Lanes, listened to his stories with untiring smiles and
affectionate hypocrisy, or sat musing by his side and
communing with her own thoughts and reminiscences,
as the old man, feeble and querulous, sunned himself on
the garden benches and prattled about his wrongs or his
sorrows. What sad, unsatisfactory thoughts those of the
widow were! The children running up and down the
slopes and broad paths in the gardens reminded her of
George, who was taken from her; the first George was
taken from her; her selfish, guilty love, in both instances,
had been rebuked and bitterly chastised. She strove to
think it was right that she should be so punished. She
was such a miserable wicked sinner. She was quite
alone in the world.
I know that the account of this kind of solitary
imprisonment is insufferably tedious, unless there is some
cheerful or humorous incident to enliven it--a tender gaoler,
for instance, or a waggish commandant of the fortress,
or a mouse to come out and play about Latude's beard
and whiskers, or a subterranean passage under the castle,
dug by Trenck with his nails and a toothpick: the historian
has no such enlivening incident to relate in the narrative
of Amelia's captivity. Fancy her, if you please, during this
period, very sad, but always ready to smile when spoken
to; in a very mean, poor, not to say vulgar position of
life; singing songs, making puddings, playing cards,
mending stockings, for her old father's benefit. So, never
mind, whether she be a heroine or no; or you and I, however
old, scolding, and bankrupt--may we have in our last days
a kind soft shoulder on which to lean and a gentle hand
to soothe our gouty old pillows.
Old Sedley grew very fond of his daughter after his
wife's death, and Amelia had her consolation in doing her
duty by the old man.
But we are not going to leave these two people long in
such a low and ungenteel station of life. Better days, as
far as worldly prosperity went, were in store for both.
Perhaps the ingenious reader has guessed who was the
stout gentleman who called upon Georgy at his school in
company with our old friend Major Dobbin. It was
another old acquaintance returned to England, and at a time
when his presence was likely to be of great comfort to
his relatives there.
Major Dobbin having easily succeeded in getting leave
from his good-natured commandant to proceed to
Madras, and thence probably to Europe, on urgent private
affairs, never ceased travelling night and day until he
reached his journey's end, and had directed his march
with such celerity that he arrived at Madras in a high
fever. His servants who accompanied him brought him
to the house of the friend with whom he had resolved to
stay until his departure for Europe in a state of delirium;
and it was thought for many, many days that he would
never travel farther than the burying-ground of the church
of St. George's, where the troops should fire a salvo over
his grave, and where many a gallant officer lies far away
from his home.
Here, as the poor fellow lay tossing in his fever, the
people who watched him might have heard him raving
about Amelia. The idea that he should never see her again
depressed him in his lucid hours. He thought his last day
was come, and he made his solemn preparations for
departure, setting his affairs in this world in order and
leaving the little property of which he was possessed to
those whom he most desired to benefit. The friend in
whose house he was located witnessed his testament. He
desired to be buried with a little brown hair-chain which
he wore round his neck and which, if the truth must be
known, he had got from Amelia's maid at Brussels, when
the young widow's hair was cut off, during the fever
which prostrated her after the death of George Osborne
on the plateau at Mount St. John.
He recovered, rallied, relapsed again, having undergone
such a process of blood-letting and calomel as
showed the strength of his original constitution. He was
almost a skeleton when they put him on board the
Ramchunder East Indiaman, Captain Bragg, from Calcutta,
touching at Madras, and so weak and prostrate that his
friend who had tended him through his illness prophesied
that the honest Major would never survive the voyage,
and that he would pass some morning, shrouded in
flag and hammock, over the ship's side, and carrying
down to the sea with him the relic that he wore at his
heart. But whether it was the sea air, or the hope which
sprung up in him afresh, from the day that the ship
spread her canvas and stood out of the roads towards
home, our friend began to amend, and he was quite
well (though as gaunt as a greyhound) before they
reached the Cape. "Kirk will be disappointed of his
majority this time," he said with a smile; "he will
expect to find himself gazetted by the time the regiment
reaches home." For it must be premised that while the
Major was lying ill at Madras, having made such
prodigious haste to go thither, the gallant --th, which had
passed many years abroad, which after its return from
the West Indies had been baulked of its stay at home by
the Waterloo campaign, and had been ordered from
Flanders to India, had received orders home; and the Major
might have accompanied his comrades, had he chosen to
wait for their arrival at Madras.
Perhaps he was not inclined to put himself in his
exhausted state again under the guardianship of Glorvina.
"I think Miss O'Dowd would have done for me," he said
laughingly to a fellow-passenger, "if we had had her on
board, and when she had sunk me, she would have fallen
upon you, depend upon it, and carried you in as a prize
to Southampton, Jos, my boy."
For indeed it was no other than our stout friend
who was also a passenger on board the Ramchunder. He
had passed ten years in Bengal. Constant dinners, tiffins,
pale ale and claret, the prodigious labour of cutcherry,
and the refreshment of brandy-pawnee which he was
forced to take there, had their effect upon Waterloo Sedley.
A voyage to Europe was pronounced necessary for him--
and having served his full time in India and had fine
appointments which had enabled him to lay by a considerable
sum of money, he was free to come home and stay
with a good pension, or to return and resume that rank
in the service to which his seniority and his vast talents
entitled him.
He was rather thinner than when we last saw him,
but had gained in majesty and solemnity of demeanour.
He had resumed the mustachios to which his services at
Waterloo entitled him, and swaggered about on deck in a
magnificent velvet cap with a gold band and a profuse
ornamentation of pins and jewellery about his person.
He took breakfast in his cabin and dressed as solemnly to
appear on the quarter-deck as if he were going to turn out
for Bond Street, or the Course at Calcutta. He brought a
native servant with him, who was his valet and pipe-
bearer and who wore the Sedley crest in silver on his
turban. That oriental menial had a wretched life under
the tyranny of Jos Sedley. Jos was as vain of his person
as a woman, and took as long a time at his toilette as
any fading beauty. The youngsters among the
passengers, Young Chaffers of the 150th, and poor little
Ricketts, coming home after his third fever, used to draw
out Sedley at the cuddy-table and make him tell
prodigious stories about himself and his exploits against tigers
and Napoleon. He was great when he visited the
Emperor's tomb at Longwood, when to these gentlemen and
the young officers of the ship, Major Dobbin not being by,
he described the whole battle of Waterloo and all but
announced that Napoleon never would have gone to Saint
Helena at all but for him, Jos Sedley.
After leaving St. Helena he became very generous,
disposing of a great quantity of ship stores, claret,
preserved meats, and great casks packed with soda-water,
brought out for his private delectation. There were no
ladies on board; the Major gave the pas of precedency
to the civilian, so that he was the first dignitary at
table, and treated by Captain Bragg and the officers of
the Ramchunder with the respect which his rank
warranted. He disappeared rather in a panic during a two-
days' gale, in which he had the portholes of his cabin
battened down, and remained in his cot reading the
Washerwoman of Finchley Common, left on board the
Ramchunder by the Right Honourable the Lady Emily
Hornblower, wife of the Rev. Silas Hornblower, when on
their passage out to the Cape, where the Reverend gentleman
was a missionary; but, for common reading, he had
brought a stock of novels and plays which he lent to the
rest of the ship, and rendered himself agreeable to all by
his kindness and condescension.
Many and many a night as the ship was cutting through
the roaring dark sea, the moon and stars shining
overhead and the bell singing out the watch, Mr. Sedley and
the Major would sit on the quarter-deck of the vessel
talking about home, as the Major smoked his cheroot and
the civilian puffed at the hookah which his servant
prepared for him.
In these conversations it was wonderful with what
perseverance and ingenuity Major Dobbin would manage
to bring the talk round to the subject of Amelia and her
little boy. Jos, a little testy about his father's misfortunes
and unceremonious applications to him, was soothed
down by the Major, who pointed out the elder's ill
fortunes and old age. He would not perhaps like to live with
the old couple, whose ways and hours might not agree
with those of a younger man, accustomed to different
society (Jos bowed at this compliment); but, the Major
pointed out, how advantageous it would be for Jos Sedley
to have a house of his own in London, and not a
mere bachelor's establishment as before; how his sister
Amelia would be the very person to preside over it; how
elegant, how gentle she was, and of what refined good
manners. He recounted stories of the success which Mrs.
George Osborne had had in former days at Brussels, and
in London, where she was much admired by people of
very great fashion; and he then hinted how becoming it
would be for Jos to send Georgy to a good school and
make a man of him, for his mother and her parents
would be sure to spoil him. In a word, this artful Major
made the civilian promise to take charge of Amelia and
her unprotected child. He did not know as yet what
events had happened in the little Sedley family, and how
death had removed the mother, and riches had carried
off George from Amelia. But the fact is that every day
and always, this love-smitten and middle-aged gentleman
was thinking about Mrs. Osborne, and his whole heart
was bent upon doing her good. He coaxed, wheedled,
cajoled, and complimented Jos Sedley with a perseverance
and cordiality of which he was not aware himself,
very likely; but some men who have unmarried sisters
or daughters even, may remember how uncommonly
agreeable gentlemen are to the male relations when they
are courting the females; and perhaps this rogue of a
Dobbin was urged by a similar hypocrisy.
The truth is, when Major Dobbin came on board the
Ramchumder, very sick, and for the three days she lay
in the Madras Roads, he did not begin to rally, nor did
even the appearance and recognition of his old acquaintance,
Mr. Sedley, on board much cheer him, until after a
conversation which they had one day, as the Major was
laid languidly on the deck. He said then he thought he
was doomed; he had left a little something to his godson
in his will, and he trusted Mrs. Osborne would remember
him kindly and be happy in the marriage she was
about to make. "Married? not the least," Jos answered;
"he had heard from her: she made no mention of the
marriage, and by the way, it was curious, she wrote to
say that Major Dobbin was going to be married, and
hoped that HE would be happy." What were the dates of
Sedley's letters from Europe? The civilian fetched them.
They were two months later than the Major's; and the
ship's surgeon congratulated himself upon the treatment
adopted by him towards his new patient, who had been
consigned to shipboard by the Madras practitioner with
very small hopes indeed; for, from that day, the very
day that he changed the draught, Major Dobbin began
to mend. And thus it was that deserving officer, Captain
Kirk, was disappointed of his majority.
After they passed St. Helena, Major Dobbin's gaiety
and strength was such as to astonish all his fellow
passengers. He larked with the midshipmen, played single-
stick with the mates, ran up the shrouds like a boy, sang
a comic song one night to the amusement of the whole
party assembled over their grog after supper, and
rendered himself so gay, lively, and amiable that even
Captain Bragg, who thought there was nothing in his
passenger, and considered he was a poor-spirited feller at
first, was constrained to own that the Major was a
reserved but well-informed and meritorious officer. "He
ain't got distangy manners, dammy," Bragg observed to
his first mate; "he wouldn't do at Government House,
Roper, where his Lordship and Lady William was as kind
to me, and shook hands with me before the whole
company, and asking me at dinner to take beer with him,
before the Commander-in-Chief himself; he ain't got
manners, but there's something about him--" And thus
Captain Bragg showed that he possessed discrimination
as a man, as well as ability as a commander.
But a calm taking place when the Ramchunder was
within ten days' sail of England, Dobbin became so
impatient and ill-humoured as to surprise those comrades
who had before admired his vivacity and good temper.
He did not recover until the breeze sprang up again, and
was in a highly excited state when the pilot came on
board. Good God, how his heart beat as the two friendly
spires of Southampton came in sight.
CHAPTER LVIII
Our Friend the Major
Our Major had rendered himself so popular on board
the Ramchunder that when he and Mr. Sedley descended
into the welcome shore-boat which was to take them
from the ship, the whole crew, men and officers, the
great Captain Bragg himself leading off, gave three cheers
for Major Dobbin, who blushed very much and ducked
his head in token of thanks. Jos, who very likely thought
the cheers were for himself, took off his gold-laced cap
and waved it majestically to his friends, and they were
pulled to shore and landed with great dignity at the pier,
whence they proceeded to the Royal George Hotel.
Although the sight of that magnificent round of beef,
and the silver tankard suggestive of real British home-
brewed ale and porter, which perennially greet the eyes
of the traveller returning from foreign parts who enters
the coffee-room of the George, are so invigorating and
delightful that a man entering such a comfortable snug
homely English inn might well like to stop some days
there, yet Dobbin began to talk about a post-chaise
instantly, and was no sooner at Southampton than he
wished to be on the road to London. Jos, however, would
not hear of moving that evening. Why was he to pass a
night in a post-chaise instead of a great large undulating
downy feather-bed which was there ready to replace
the horrid little narrow crib in which the portly Bengal
gentleman had been confined during the voyage? He
could not think of moving till his baggage was cleared,
or of travelling until he could do so with his chillum. So
the Major was forced to wait over that night, and
dispatched a letter to his family announcing his arrival,
entreating from Jos a promise to write to his own
friends. Jos promised, but didn't keep his promise. The
Captain, the surgeon, and one or two passengers came
and dined with our two gentlemen at the inn, Jos exerting
himself in a sumptuous way in ordering the dinner
and promising to go to town the next day with the Major.
The landlord said it did his eyes good to see Mr. Sedley
take off his first pint of porter. If I had time and dared
to enter into digressions, I would write a chapter about
that first pint of porter drunk upon English ground. Ah,
how good it is! It is worth-while to leave home for a
year, just to enjoy that one draught.
Major Dobbin made his appearance the next morning
very neatly shaved and dressed, according to his wont.
Indeed, it was so early in the morning that nobody was
up in the house except that wonderful Boots of an inn
who never seems to want sleep; and the Major could
hear the snores of the various inmates of the house roaring
through the corridors as he creaked about in those
dim passages. Then the sleepless Boots went shirking
round from door to door, gathering up at each the
Bluchers, Wellingtons, Oxonians, which stood outside. Then
Jos's native servant arose and began to get ready his
master's ponderous dressing apparatus and prepare his
hookah; then the maidservants got up, and meeting the
dark man in the passages, shrieked, and mistook him for
the devil. He and Dobbin stumbled over their pails in
the passages as they were scouring the decks of the
Royal George. When the first unshorn waiter appeared
and unbarred the door of the inn, the Major thought that
the time for departure was arrived, and ordered a post-
chaise to be fetched instantly, that they might set off.
He then directed his steps to Mr. Sedley's room and
opened the curtains of the great large family bed wherein
Mr. Jos was snoring. "Come, up! Sedley," the Major
said, "it's time to be off; the chaise will be at the door in
half an hour."
Jos growled from under the counterpane to know
what the time was; but when he at last extorted from the
blushing Major (who never told fibs, however they might
be to his advantage) what was the real hour of the
morning, he broke out into a volley of bad language, which
we will not repeat here, but by which he gave Dobbin to
understand that he would jeopardy his soul if he got up
at that moment, that the Major might go and be hanged,
that he would not travel with Dobbin, and that it was
most unkind and ungentlemanlike to disturb a man out
of his sleep in that way; on which the discomfited Major
was obliged to retreat, leaving Jos to resume his
interrupted slumbers.
The chaise came up presently, and the Major would
wait no longer.
If he had been an English nobleman travelling on a
pleasure tour, or a newspaper courier bearing dispatches
(government messages are generally carried much more
quietly), he could not have travelled more quickly. The
post-boys wondered at the fees he flung amongst them.
How happy and green the country looked as the chaise
whirled rapidly from mile-stone to mile-stone, through
neat country towns where landlords came out to
welcome him with smiles and bows; by pretty roadside inns,
where the signs hung on the elms, and horses and
waggoners were drinking under the chequered shadow of the
trees; by old halls and parks; rustic hamlets clustered
round ancient grey churches--and through the charming
friendly English landscape. Is there any in the world
like it? To a traveller returning home it looks so kind--
it seems to shake hands with you as you pass through it.
Well, Major Dobbin passed through all this from
Southampton to London, and without noting much beyond the
milestones along the road. You see he was so eager to
see his parents at Camberwell.
He grudged the time lost between Piccadilly and his
old haunt at the Slaughters', whither he drove faithfully.
Long years had passed since he saw it last, since he and
George, as young men, had enjoyed many a feast, and
held many a revel there. He had now passed into the
stage of old-fellow-hood. His hair was grizzled, and many
a passion and feeling of his youth had grown grey in that
interval. There, however, stood the old waiter at the
door, in the same greasy black suit, with the same
double chin and flaccid face, with the same huge bunch of
seals at his fob, rattling his money in his pockets as
before, and receiving the Major as if he had gone away
only a week ago. "Put the Major's things in twenty-three,
that's his room," John said, exhibiting not the least
surprise. "Roast fowl for your dinner, I suppose. You ain't
got married? They said you was married--the Scotch
surgeon of yours was here. No, it was Captain Humby of
the thirty-third, as was quartered with the --th in Injee.
Like any warm water? ~What do you come in a chay for--
ain't the coach good enough?" And with this, the faithful
waiter, who knew and remembered every officer who
used the house, and with whom ten years were but as
yesterday, led the way up to Dobbin's old room, where
stood the great moreen bed, and the shabby carpet, a
thought more dingy, and all the old black furniture
covered with faded chintz, just as the Major recollected
them in his youth.
He remembered George pacing up and down the room,
and biting his nails, and swearing that the Governor must
come round, and that if he didn't, he didn't care a straw,
on the day before he was married. He could fancy him
walking in, banging the door of Dobbin's room, and his
own hard by--
"You ain't got young," John said, calmly surveying his
friend of former days.
Dobbin laughed. "Ten years and a fever don't make a
man young, John," he said. "It is you that are always
young--no, you are always old."
"What became of Captain Osborne's widow?" John
said. "Fine young fellow that. Lord, how he used to
spend his money. He never came back after that day he
was marched from here. He owes me three pound at this
minute. Look here, I have it in my book. 'April 10,
1815, Captain Osborne: '3pounds.' I wonder whether his
father would pay me," and so saying, John of the Slaughters'
pulled out the very morocco pocket-book in which
he had noted his loan to the Captain, upon a greasy
faded page still extant, with many other scrawled
memoranda regarding the bygone frequenters of the house.
Having inducted his customer into the room, John
retired with perfect calmness; and Major Dobbin, not
without a blush and a grin at his own absurdity, chose out of
his kit the very smartest and most becoming civil
costume he possessed, and laughed at his own tanned face
and grey hair, as he surveyed them in the dreary little
toilet-glass on the dressing-table.
"I'm glad old John didn't forget me," he thought.
"She'll know me, too, I hope." And he sallied out of the
inn, bending his steps once more in the direction of
Brompton.
Every minute incident of his last meeting with Amelia
was present to the constant man's mind as he walked
towards her house. The arch and the Achilles statue were
up since he had last been in Piccadilly; a hundred
changes had occurred which his eye and mind vaguely
noted. He began to tremble as he walked up the lane
from Brompton, that well-remembered lane leading to
the street where she lived. Was she going to be married
or not? If he were to meet her with the little boy--Good
God, what should he do? He saw a woman coming to him
with a child of five years old--was that she? He began
to shake at the mere possibility. When he came up to
the row of houses, at last, where she lived, and to the
gate, he caught hold of it and paused. He might have
heard the thumping of his own heart. "May God Almighty
bless her, whatever has happened," he thought to
himself. "Psha! she may be gone from here," he said
and went in through the gate.
The window of the parlour which she used to occupy
was open, and there were no inmates in the room. The
Major thought he recognized the piano, though, with the
picture over it, as it used to be in former days, and his
perturbations were renewed. Mr. Clapp's brass plate was
still on the door, at the knocker of which Dobbin
performed a summons.
A buxom-looking lass of sixteen, with bright eyes and
purple cheeks, came to answer the knock and looked
hard at the Major as he leant back against the little
porch.
He was as pale as a ghost and could hardly falter out
the words--"Does Mrs. Osborne live here?"
She looked him hard in the face for a moment--and
then turning white too--said, "Lord bless me--it's
Major Dobbin." She held out both her hands shaking--
"Don't you remember me?" she said. "I used to call you
Major Sugarplums." On which, and I believe it was for
the first time that he ever so conducted himself in his
life, the Major took the girl in his arms and kissed her.
She began to laugh and cry hysterically, and calling out
"Ma, Pa!" with all her voice, brought up those worthy
people, who had already been surveying the Major from
the casement of the ornamental kitchen, and were
astonished to find their daughter in the little passage in
the embrace of a great tall man in a blue frock-coat and
white duck trousers.
"I'm an old friend," he said--not without blushing
though. "Don't you remember me, Mrs. Clapp, and those
good cakes you used to make for tea? Don't you recollect
me, Clapp? I'm George's godfather, and just come
back from India." A great shaking of hands ensued--
Mrs. Clapp was greatly affected and delighted; she called
upon heaven to interpose a vast many times in that
passage.
The landlord and landlady of the house led the worthy
Major into the Sedleys' room (whereof he remembered
every single article of furniture, from the old brass
ornamented piano, once a natty little instrument, Stothard
maker, to the screens and the alabaster miniature tombstone,
in the midst of which ticked Mr. Sedley's gold
watch), and there, as he sat down in the lodger's vacant
arm-chair, the father, the mother, and the daughter,
with a thousand ejaculatory breaks in the narrative,
informed Major Dobbin of what we know already, but of
particulars in Amelia's history of which he was not aware
--namely of Mrs. Sedley's death, of George's reconcilement
with his grandfather Osborne, of the way in which
the widow took on at leaving him, and of other particulars
of her life. Twice or thrice he was going to ask
about the marriage question, but his heart failed him.
He did not care to lay it bare to these people. Finally,
he was informed that Mrs. O. was gone to walk with her
pa in Kensington Gardens, whither she always went with
the old gentleman (who was very weak and peevish now,
and led her a sad life, though she behaved to him like an
angel, to be sure), of a fine afternoon, after dinner.
"I'm very much pressed for time," the Major said,
"and have business to-night of importance. I should like
to see Mrs. Osborne tho'. Suppose Miss Polly would
come with me and show me the way?"
Miss Polly was charmed and astonished at this
proposal. She knew the way. She would show Major
Dobbin. She had often been with Mr. Sedley when Mrs. O.
was gone--was gone Russell Square way--and knew the
bench where he liked to sit. She bounced away to her
apartment and appeared presently in her best bonnet
and her mamma's yellow shawl and large pebble brooch,
of which she assumed the loan in order to make herself
a worthy companion for the Major.
That officer, then, in his blue frock-coat and buckskin
gloves, gave the young lady his arm, and they walked
away very gaily. He was glad to have a friend at hand
for the scene which he dreaded somehow. He asked a
thousand more questions from his companion about
Amelia: his kind heart grieved to think that she should
have had to part with her son. How did she bear it? Did
she see him often? Was Mr. Sedley pretty comfortable
now in a worldly point of view? Polly answered all these
questions of Major Sugarplums to the very best of her
power.
And in the midst of their walk an incident occurred
which, though very simple in its nature, was productive
of the greatest delight to Major Dobbin. A pale young
man with feeble whiskers and a stiff white neckcloth came
walking down the lane, en sandwich--having a lady, that
is, on each arm. One was a tall and commanding middle-
aged female, with features and a complexion similar to
those of the clergyman of the Church of England by
whose side she marched, and the other a stunted little
woman with a dark face, ornamented by a fine new bonnet
and white ribbons, and in a smart pelisse, with a rich
gold watch in the midst of her person. The gentleman,
pinioned as he was by these two ladies, carried further a
parasol, shawl, and basket, so that his arms were entirely
engaged, and of course he was unable to touch his hat in
acknowledgement of the curtsey with which Miss Mary
Clapp greeted him.
He merely bowed his head in reply to her salutation,
which the two ladies returned with a patronizing air, and
at the same time looking severely at the individual in the
blue coat and bamboo cane who accompanied Miss Polly.
"Who's that?" asked the Major, amused by the group,
and after he had made way for the three to pass up the
lane. Mary looked at him rather roguishly.
"That is our curate, the Reverend Mr. Binny (a twitch
from Major Dobbin), and his sister Miss B. Lord bless us,
how she did use to worret us at Sunday-school; and the
other lady, the little one with a cast in her eye and the
handsome watch, is Mrs. Binny--Miss Grits that was;
her pa was a grocer, and kept the Little Original Gold
Tea Pot in Kensington Gravel Pits. They were married last
month, and are just come back from Margate. She's five
thousand pound to her fortune; but her and Miss B., who
made the match, have quarrelled already."
If the Major had twitched before, he started now, and
slapped the bamboo on the ground with an emphasis
which made Miss Clapp cry, "Law," and laugh too. He
stood for a moment, silent, with open mouth, looking
after the retreating young couple, while Miss Mary told
their history; but he did not hear beyond the announcement
of the reverend gentleman's marriage; his head was
swimming with felicity. After this rencontre he began to
walk double quick towards the place of his destination
--and yet they were too soon (for he was in a great
tremor at the idea of a meeting for which he had been
longing any time these ten years)--through the Brompton
lanes, and entering at the little old portal in Kensington
Garden wall.
"There they are," said Miss Polly, and she felt him
again start back on her arm. She was a confidante at once
of the whole business. She knew the story as well as if
she had read it in one of her favourite novel-books--
Fatherless Fanny, or the Scottish Chiefs.
"Suppose you were to run on and tell her," the Major
said. Polly ran forward, her yellow shawl streaming in the
breeze.
Old Sedley was seated on a bench, his handkerchief
placed over his knees, prattling away, according to his
wont, with some old story about old times to which
Amelia had listened and awarded a patient smile many
a time before. She could of late think of her own affairs,
and smile or make other marks of recognition of her
father's stories, scarcely hearing a word of the old man's
tales. As Mary came bouncing along, and Amelia caught
sight of her, she started up from her bench. Her first
thought was that something had happened to Georgy,
but the sight of the messenger's eager and happy face
dissipated that fear in the timorous mother's bosom.
"News! News!" cried the emissary of Major Dobbin.
"He's come! He's come!"
"Who is come?" said Emmy, still thinking of her son.
"Look there," answered Miss Clapp, turning round and
pointing; in which direction Amelia looking, saw
Dobbin's lean figure and long shadow stalking across the
grass. Amelia started in her turn, blushed up, and, of
course, began to cry. At all this simple little creature's
fetes, the grandes eaux were accustomed to play.
He looked at her--oh, how fondly--as she came
running towards him, her hands before her, ready to give
them to him. She wasn't changed. She was a little pale,
a little stouter in figure. Her eyes were the same, the
kind trustful eyes. There were scarce three lines of silver
in her soft brown hair. She gave him both her hands as
she looked up flushing and smiling through her tears into
his honest homely face. He took the two little hands
between his two and held them there. He was speechless
for a moment. Why did he not take her in his arms and
swear that he would never leave her? She must have
yielded: she could not but have obeyed him.
"I--I've another arrival to announce," he said after a
pause.
"Mrs. Dobbin?" Amelia said, making a movement
back--why didn't he speak?
"No," he said, letting her hands go: "Who has told
you those lies? I mean, your brother Jos came in the
same ship with me, and is come home to make you all
happy."
"Papa, Papa!" Emmy cried out, "here are news! My
brother is in England. He is come to take care of you.
Here is Major Dobbin."
Mr. Sedley started up, shaking a great deal and gathering
up his thoughts. Then he stepped forward and made an
old-fashioned bow to the Major, whom he called Mr.
Dobbin, and hoped his worthy father, Sir William, was
quite well. He proposed to call upon Sir William, who had
done him the honour of a visit a short time ago. Sir
William had not called upon the old gentleman for eight
years--it was that visit he was thinking of returning.
"He is very much shaken," Emmy whispered as Dobbin
went up and cordially shook hands with the old man.
Although he had such particular business in London
that evening, the Major consented to forego it upon Mr.
Sedley's invitation to him to come home and partake of
tea. Amelia put her arm under that of her young friend
with the yellow shawl and headed the party on their
return homewards, so that Mr. Sedley fell to Dobbin's share.
The old man walked very slowly and told a number of
ancient histories about himself and his poor Bessy, his
former prosperity, and his bankruptcy. His thoughts, as is
usual with failing old men, were quite in former times.
The present, with the exception of the one catastrophe
which he felt, he knew little about. The Major was glad to
let him talk on. His eyes were fixed upon the figure in
front of him--the dear little figure always present to his
imagination and in his prayers, and visiting his dreams
wakeful or slumbering.
Amelia was very happy, smiling, and active all that
evening, performing her duties as hostess of the little
entertainment with the utmost grace and propriety, as
Dobbin thought. His eyes followed her about as they sat
in the twilight. How many a time had he longed for that
moment and thought of her far away under hot winds
and in weary marches, gentle and happy, kindly ministering
to the wants of old age, and decorating poverty with
sweet submission--as he saw her now. I do not say that
his taste was the highest, or that it is the duty of great
intellects to be content with a bread-and-butter paradise,
such as sufficed our simple old friend; but his desires
were of this sort, whether for good or bad, and, with
Amelia to help him, he was as ready to drink as many
cups of tea as Doctor Johnson.
Amelia seeing this propensity, laughingly encouraged
it and looked exceedingly roguish as she administered to
him cup after cup. It is true she did not know that the
Major had had no dinner and that the cloth was laid for
him at the Slaughters', and a plate laid thereon to mark
that the table was retained, in that very box in which
the Major and George had sat many a time carousing,
when she was a child just come home from Miss
Pinkerton's school.
The first thing Mrs. Osborne showed the Major was
Georgy's miniature, for which she ran upstairs on her
arrival at home. It was not half handsome enough of
course for the boy, but wasn't it noble of him to think of
bringing it to his mother? Whilst her papa was awake she
did not talk much about Georgy. To hear about Mr.
Osborne and Russell Square was not agreeable to the
old man, who very likely was unconscious that he had
been living for some months past mainly on the bounty
of his richer rival, and lost his temper if allusion was
made to the other.
Dobbin told him all, and a little more perhaps than
all, that had happened on board the Ramchunder, and
exaggerated Jos's benevolent dispositions towards his
father and resolution to make him comfortable in his
old days. The truth is that during the voyage the Major
had impressed this duty most strongly upon his fellow-
passenger and extorted promises from him that he would
take charge of his sister and her child. He soothed Jos's
irritation with regard to the bills which the old gentleman
had drawn upon him, gave a laughing account of his
own sufferings on the same score and of the famous
consignment of wine with which the old man had favoured
him, and brought Mr. Jos, who was by no means an ill-
natured person when well-pleased and moderately
flattered, to a very good state of feeling regarding his
relatives in Europe.
And in fine I am ashamed to say that the Major
stretched the truth so far as to tell old Mr. Sedley that it
was mainly a desire to see his parent which brought Jos
once more to Europe.
At his accustomed hour Mr. Sedley began to doze in
his chair, and then it was Amelia's opportunity to
commence her conversation, which she did with great
eagerness--it related exclusively to Georgy. She did not talk
at all about her own sufferings at breaking from him, for
indeed, this worthy woman, though she was half-killed
by the separation from the child, yet thought it was very
wicked in her to repine at losing him; but everything
concerning him, his virtues, talents, and prospects, she
poured out. She described his angelic beauty; narrated
a hundred instances of his generosity and greatness of
mind whilst living with her; how a Royal Duchess had
stopped and admired him in Kensington Gardens; how
splendidly he was cared for now, and how he had a
groom and a pony; what quickness and cleverness he
might have arrived from Bombay. The great hulking
scholar of three-and-twenty, who was crying secretly over a
passage of Eutropius, flattened his neglected nose against
the panes and looked at the drag, as the laquais de place
sprang from the box and let out the persons in the carriage.
"It's a fat one and a thin one," Mr. Bluck said as a
thundering knock came to the door.
Everybody was interested, from the domestic chaplain
himself, who hoped he saw the fathers of some future
pupils, down to Master Georgy, glad of any pretext for
laying his book down.
The boy in the shabby livery with the faded copper
buttons, who always thrust himself into the tight coat
to open the door, came into the study and said, "Two
gentlemen want to see Master Osborne." The professor
had had a trifling altercation in the morning with that
young gentleman, owing to a difference about the
introduction of crackers in school-time; but his face
resumed its habitual expression of bland courtesy as he
said, "Master Osborne, I give you full permission to go
and see your carriage friends--to whom I beg you to
convey the respectful compliments of myself and Mrs.
Veal."
Georgy went into the reception-room and saw two
strangers, whom he looked at with his head up, in his
usual haughty manner. One was fat, with mustachios,
and the other was lean and long, in a blue frock-coat,
with a brown face and a grizzled head.
"My God, how like he is!" said the long gentleman
with a start. "Can you guess who we are, George?"
The boy's face flushed up, as it did usually when he
was moved, and his eyes brightened. "I don't know the
other," he said, "but I should think you must be Major
Dobbin."
Indeed it was our old friend. His voice trembled
with pleasure as he greeted the boy, and taking both the
other's hands in his own, drew the lad to him.
"Your mother has talked to you about me--has
she?" he said.
"That she has," Georgy answered, "hundreds and
hundreds of times."
CHAPTER LVII
Eothen
It was one of the many causes for personal pride
with which old Osborne chose to recreate himself
that Sedley, his ancient rival, enemy, and benefactor,
was in his last days so utterly defeated and humiliated
as to be forced to accept pecuniary obligations at the
hands of the man who had most injured and insulted
him. The successful man of the world cursed the old
pauper and relieved him from time to time. As he
furnished George with money for his mother, he gave
the boy to understand by hints, delivered in his brutal,
coarse way, that George's maternal grandfather was
but a wretched old bankrupt and dependant, and that
John Sedley might thank the man to whom he already
owed ever so much money for the aid which his generosity
now chose to administer. George carried the pompous
supplies to his mother and the shattered old widower whom
it was now the main business of her life to tend and
comfort. The little fellow patronized the feeble and
disappointed old man.
It may have shown a want of "proper pride" in
Amelia that she chose to accept these money benefits at
the hands of her father's enemy. But proper pride and
this poor lady had never had much acquaintance together.
A disposition naturally simple and demanding protection;
a long course of poverty and humility, of daily privations,
and hard words, of kind offices and no returns, had been
her lot ever since womanhood almost, or since her
luckless marriage with George Osborne. You who see your
betters bearing up under this shame every day, meekly
suffering under the slights of fortune, gentle and unpitied,
poor, and rather despised for their poverty, do you ever
step down from your prosperity and wash the feet of
these poor wearied beggars? The very thought of them is
odious and low. "There must be classes--there must be
rich and poor," Dives says, smacking his claret (it is
well if he even sends the broken meat out to Lazarus
sitting under the window). Very true; but think how
mysterious and often unaccountable it is--that lottery
of life which gives to this man the purple and fine linen
and sends to the other rags for garments and dogs for
comforters.
So I must own that, without much repining, on the
contrary with something akin to gratitude, Amelia took the
crumbs that her father-in-law let drop now and then,
and with them fed her own parent. Directly she understood
it to be her duty, it was this young woman's nature
(ladies, she is but thirty still, and we choose to call her
a young woman even at that age) it was, I say, her
nature to sacrifice herself and to fling all that she had at
the feet of the beloved object. During what long thankless
nights had she worked out her fingers for little Georgy
whilst at home with her; what buffets, scorns, privations,
poverties had she endured for father and mother! And
in the midst of all these solitary resignations and unseen
sacrifices, she did not respect herself any more than the
world respected her, but I believe thought in her heart
that she was a poor-spirited, despicable little creature,
whose luck in life was only too good for her merits. O
you poor women! O you poor secret martyrs and victims,
whose life is a torture, who are stretched on racks in
your bedrooms, and who lay your heads down on the
block daily at the drawing-room table; every man who
watches your pains, or peers into those dark places where
the torture is administered to you, must pity you--and
--and thank God that he has a beard. I recollect seeing,
years ago, at the prisons for idiots and madmen at
Bicetre, near Paris, a poor wretch bent down under
the bondage of his imprisonment and his personal
infirmity, to whom one of our party gave a halfpenny worth
of snuff in a cornet or "screw" of paper. The kindness
was too much for the poor epileptic creature. He cried
in an anguish of delight and gratitude: if anybody gave
you and me a thousand a year, or saved our lives, we
could not be so affected. And so, if you properly tyrannize
over a woman, you will find a h'p'orth of kindness act
upon her and bring tears into her eyes, as though you
were an angel benefiting her.
Some such boons as these were the best which Fortune
allotted to poor little Amelia. Her life, begun not
unprosperously, had come down to this--to a mean prison
and a long, ignoble bondage. Little George visited her
captivity sometimes and consoled it with feeble gleams
of encouragement. Russell Square was the boundary of
her prison: she might walk thither occasionally, but was
always back to sleep in her cell at night; to perform
cheerless duties; to watch by thankless sick-beds; to
suffer the harassment and tyranny of querulous
disappointed old age. How many thousands of people are
there, women for the most part, who are doomed to endure
this long slavery?--who are hospital nurses without
wages--sisters of Charity, if you like, without the
romance and the sentiment of sacrifice--who strive, fast,
watch, and suffer, unpitied, and fade away ignobly and
unknown.
The hidden and awful Wisdom which apportions the
destinies of mankind is pleased so to humiliate and cast
down the tender, good, and wise, and to set up the selfish,
the foolish, or the wicked. Oh, be humble, my brother,
in your prosperity! Be gentle with those who are less
lucky, if not more deserving. Think, what right have you
to be scornful, whose virtue is a deficiency of temptation,
whose success may be a chance, whose rank may be
an ancestor's accident, whose prosperity is very likely
a satire.
They buried Amelia's mother in the churchyard at
Brompton, upon just such a rainy, dark day as Amelia
recollected when first she had been there to marry George.
Her little boy sat by her side in pompous new sables.
She remembered the old pew-woman and clerk. Her
thoughts were away in other times as the parson read.
But that she held George's hand in her own, perhaps she
would have liked to change places with.... Then, as
usual, she felt ashamed of her selfish thoughts and prayed
inwardly to be strengthened to do her duty.
So she determined with all her might and strength to
try and make her old father happy. She slaved, toiled,
patched, and mended, sang and played backgammon, read
out the newspaper, cooked dishes, for old Sedley, walked
him out sedulously into Kensington Gardens or the Brompton
Lanes, listened to his stories with untiring smiles and
affectionate hypocrisy, or sat musing by his side and
communing with her own thoughts and reminiscences,
as the old man, feeble and querulous, sunned himself on
the garden benches and prattled about his wrongs or his
sorrows. What sad, unsatisfactory thoughts those of the
widow were! The children running up and down the
slopes and broad paths in the gardens reminded her of
George, who was taken from her; the first George was
taken from her; her selfish, guilty love, in both instances,
had been rebuked and bitterly chastised. She strove to
think it was right that she should be so punished. She
was such a miserable wicked sinner. She was quite
alone in the world.
I know that the account of this kind of solitary
imprisonment is insufferably tedious, unless there is some
cheerful or humorous incident to enliven it--a tender gaoler,
for instance, or a waggish commandant of the fortress,
or a mouse to come out and play about Latude's beard
and whiskers, or a subterranean passage under the castle,
dug by Trenck with his nails and a toothpick: the historian
has no such enlivening incident to relate in the narrative
of Amelia's captivity. Fancy her, if you please, during this
period, very sad, but always ready to smile when spoken
to; in a very mean, poor, not to say vulgar position of
life; singing songs, making puddings, playing cards,
mending stockings, for her old father's benefit. So, never
mind, whether she be a heroine or no; or you and I, however
old, scolding, and bankrupt--may we have in our last days
a kind soft shoulder on which to lean and a gentle hand
to soothe our gouty old pillows.
Old Sedley grew very fond of his daughter after his
wife's death, and Amelia had her consolation in doing her
duty by the old man.
But we are not going to leave these two people long in
such a low and ungenteel station of life. Better days, as
far as worldly prosperity went, were in store for both.
Perhaps the ingenious reader has guessed who was the
stout gentleman who called upon Georgy at his school in
company with our old friend Major Dobbin. It was
another old acquaintance returned to England, and at a time
when his presence was likely to be of great comfort to
his relatives there.
Major Dobbin having easily succeeded in getting leave
from his good-natured commandant to proceed to
Madras, and thence probably to Europe, on urgent private
affairs, never ceased travelling night and day until he
reached his journey's end, and had directed his march
with such celerity that he arrived at Madras in a high
fever. His servants who accompanied him brought him
to the house of the friend with whom he had resolved to
stay until his departure for Europe in a state of delirium;
and it was thought for many, many days that he would
never travel farther than the burying-ground of the church
of St. George's, where the troops should fire a salvo over
his grave, and where many a gallant officer lies far away
from his home.
Here, as the poor fellow lay tossing in his fever, the
people who watched him might have heard him raving
about Amelia. The idea that he should never see her again
depressed him in his lucid hours. He thought his last day
was come, and he made his solemn preparations for
departure, setting his affairs in this world in order and
leaving the little property of which he was possessed to
those whom he most desired to benefit. The friend in
whose house he was located witnessed his testament. He
desired to be buried with a little brown hair-chain which
he wore round his neck and which, if the truth must be
known, he had got from Amelia's maid at Brussels, when
the young widow's hair was cut off, during the fever
which prostrated her after the death of George Osborne
on the plateau at Mount St. John.
He recovered, rallied, relapsed again, having undergone
such a process of blood-letting and calomel as
showed the strength of his original constitution. He was
almost a skeleton when they put him on board the
Ramchunder East Indiaman, Captain Bragg, from Calcutta,
touching at Madras, and so weak and prostrate that his
friend who had tended him through his illness prophesied
that the honest Major would never survive the voyage,
and that he would pass some morning, shrouded in
flag and hammock, over the ship's side, and carrying
down to the sea with him the relic that he wore at his
heart. But whether it was the sea air, or the hope which
sprung up in him afresh, from the day that the ship
spread her canvas and stood out of the roads towards
home, our friend began to amend, and he was quite
well (though as gaunt as a greyhound) before they
reached the Cape. "Kirk will be disappointed of his
majority this time," he said with a smile; "he will
expect to find himself gazetted by the time the regiment
reaches home." For it must be premised that while the
Major was lying ill at Madras, having made such
prodigious haste to go thither, the gallant --th, which had
passed many years abroad, which after its return from
the West Indies had been baulked of its stay at home by
the Waterloo campaign, and had been ordered from
Flanders to India, had received orders home; and the Major
might have accompanied his comrades, had he chosen to
wait for their arrival at Madras.
Perhaps he was not inclined to put himself in his
exhausted state again under the guardianship of Glorvina.
"I think Miss O'Dowd would have done for me," he said
laughingly to a fellow-passenger, "if we had had her on
board, and when she had sunk me, she would have fallen
upon you, depend upon it, and carried you in as a prize
to Southampton, Jos, my boy."
For indeed it was no other than our stout friend
who was also a passenger on board the Ramchunder. He
had passed ten years in Bengal. Constant dinners, tiffins,
pale ale and claret, the prodigious labour of cutcherry,
and the refreshment of brandy-pawnee which he was
forced to take there, had their effect upon Waterloo Sedley.
A voyage to Europe was pronounced necessary for him--
and having served his full time in India and had fine
appointments which had enabled him to lay by a considerable
sum of money, he was free to come home and stay
with a good pension, or to return and resume that rank
in the service to which his seniority and his vast talents
entitled him.
He was rather thinner than when we last saw him,
but had gained in majesty and solemnity of demeanour.
He had resumed the mustachios to which his services at
Waterloo entitled him, and swaggered about on deck in a
magnificent velvet cap with a gold band and a profuse
ornamentation of pins and jewellery about his person.
He took breakfast in his cabin and dressed as solemnly to
appear on the quarter-deck as if he were going to turn out
for Bond Street, or the Course at Calcutta. He brought a
native servant with him, who was his valet and pipe-
bearer and who wore the Sedley crest in silver on his
turban. That oriental menial had a wretched life under
the tyranny of Jos Sedley. Jos was as vain of his person
as a woman, and took as long a time at his toilette as
any fading beauty. The youngsters among the
passengers, Young Chaffers of the 150th, and poor little
Ricketts, coming home after his third fever, used to draw
out Sedley at the cuddy-table and make him tell
prodigious stories about himself and his exploits against tigers
and Napoleon. He was great when he visited the
Emperor's tomb at Longwood, when to these gentlemen and
the young officers of the ship, Major Dobbin not being by,
he described the whole battle of Waterloo and all but
announced that Napoleon never would have gone to Saint
Helena at all but for him, Jos Sedley.
After leaving St. Helena he became very generous,
disposing of a great quantity of ship stores, claret,
preserved meats, and great casks packed with soda-water,
brought out for his private delectation. There were no
ladies on board; the Major gave the pas of precedency
to the civilian, so that he was the first dignitary at
table, and treated by Captain Bragg and the officers of
the Ramchunder with the respect which his rank
warranted. He disappeared rather in a panic during a two-
days' gale, in which he had the portholes of his cabin
battened down, and remained in his cot reading the
Washerwoman of Finchley Common, left on board the
Ramchunder by the Right Honourable the Lady Emily
Hornblower, wife of the Rev. Silas Hornblower, when on
their passage out to the Cape, where the Reverend gentleman
was a missionary; but, for common reading, he had
brought a stock of novels and plays which he lent to the
rest of the ship, and rendered himself agreeable to all by
his kindness and condescension.
Many and many a night as the ship was cutting through
the roaring dark sea, the moon and stars shining
overhead and the bell singing out the watch, Mr. Sedley and
the Major would sit on the quarter-deck of the vessel
talking about home, as the Major smoked his cheroot and
the civilian puffed at the hookah which his servant
prepared for him.
In these conversations it was wonderful with what
perseverance and ingenuity Major Dobbin would manage
to bring the talk round to the subject of Amelia and her
little boy. Jos, a little testy about his father's misfortunes
and unceremonious applications to him, was soothed
down by the Major, who pointed out the elder's ill
fortunes and old age. He would not perhaps like to live with
the old couple, whose ways and hours might not agree
with those of a younger man, accustomed to different
society (Jos bowed at this compliment); but, the Major
pointed out, how advantageous it would be for Jos Sedley
to have a house of his own in London, and not a
mere bachelor's establishment as before; how his sister
Amelia would be the very person to preside over it; how
elegant, how gentle she was, and of what refined good
manners. He recounted stories of the success which Mrs.
George Osborne had had in former days at Brussels, and
in London, where she was much admired by people of
very great fashion; and he then hinted how becoming it
would be for Jos to send Georgy to a good school and
make a man of him, for his mother and her parents
would be sure to spoil him. In a word, this artful Major
made the civilian promise to take charge of Amelia and
her unprotected child. He did not know as yet what
events had happened in the little Sedley family, and how
death had removed the mother, and riches had carried
off George from Amelia. But the fact is that every day
and always, this love-smitten and middle-aged gentleman
was thinking about Mrs. Osborne, and his whole heart
was bent upon doing her good. He coaxed, wheedled,
cajoled, and complimented Jos Sedley with a perseverance
and cordiality of which he was not aware himself,
very likely; but some men who have unmarried sisters
or daughters even, may remember how uncommonly
agreeable gentlemen are to the male relations when they
are courting the females; and perhaps this rogue of a
Dobbin was urged by a similar hypocrisy.
The truth is, when Major Dobbin came on board the
Ramchumder, very sick, and for the three days she lay
in the Madras Roads, he did not begin to rally, nor did
even the appearance and recognition of his old acquaintance,
Mr. Sedley, on board much cheer him, until after a
conversation which they had one day, as the Major was
laid languidly on the deck. He said then he thought he
was doomed; he had left a little something to his godson
in his will, and he trusted Mrs. Osborne would remember
him kindly and be happy in the marriage she was
about to make. "Married? not the least," Jos answered;
"he had heard from her: she made no mention of the
marriage, and by the way, it was curious, she wrote to
say that Major Dobbin was going to be married, and
hoped that HE would be happy." What were the dates of
Sedley's letters from Europe? The civilian fetched them.
They were two months later than the Major's; and the
ship's surgeon congratulated himself upon the treatment
adopted by him towards his new patient, who had been
consigned to shipboard by the Madras practitioner with
very small hopes indeed; for, from that day, the very
day that he changed the draught, Major Dobbin began
to mend. And thus it was that deserving officer, Captain
Kirk, was disappointed of his majority.
After they passed St. Helena, Major Dobbin's gaiety
and strength was such as to astonish all his fellow
passengers. He larked with the midshipmen, played single-
stick with the mates, ran up the shrouds like a boy, sang
a comic song one night to the amusement of the whole
party assembled over their grog after supper, and
rendered himself so gay, lively, and amiable that even
Captain Bragg, who thought there was nothing in his
passenger, and considered he was a poor-spirited feller at
first, was constrained to own that the Major was a
reserved but well-informed and meritorious officer. "He
ain't got distangy manners, dammy," Bragg observed to
his first mate; "he wouldn't do at Government House,
Roper, where his Lordship and Lady William was as kind
to me, and shook hands with me before the whole
company, and asking me at dinner to take beer with him,
before the Commander-in-Chief himself; he ain't got
manners, but there's something about him--" And thus
Captain Bragg showed that he possessed discrimination
as a man, as well as ability as a commander.
But a calm taking place when the Ramchunder was
within ten days' sail of England, Dobbin became so
impatient and ill-humoured as to surprise those comrades
who had before admired his vivacity and good temper.
He did not recover until the breeze sprang up again, and
was in a highly excited state when the pilot came on
board. Good God, how his heart beat as the two friendly
spires of Southampton came in sight.
CHAPTER LVIII
Our Friend the Major
Our Major had rendered himself so popular on board
the Ramchunder that when he and Mr. Sedley descended
into the welcome shore-boat which was to take them
from the ship, the whole crew, men and officers, the
great Captain Bragg himself leading off, gave three cheers
for Major Dobbin, who blushed very much and ducked
his head in token of thanks. Jos, who very likely thought
the cheers were for himself, took off his gold-laced cap
and waved it majestically to his friends, and they were
pulled to shore and landed with great dignity at the pier,
whence they proceeded to the Royal George Hotel.
Although the sight of that magnificent round of beef,
and the silver tankard suggestive of real British home-
brewed ale and porter, which perennially greet the eyes
of the traveller returning from foreign parts who enters
the coffee-room of the George, are so invigorating and
delightful that a man entering such a comfortable snug
homely English inn might well like to stop some days
there, yet Dobbin began to talk about a post-chaise
instantly, and was no sooner at Southampton than he
wished to be on the road to London. Jos, however, would
not hear of moving that evening. Why was he to pass a
night in a post-chaise instead of a great large undulating
downy feather-bed which was there ready to replace
the horrid little narrow crib in which the portly Bengal
gentleman had been confined during the voyage? He
could not think of moving till his baggage was cleared,
or of travelling until he could do so with his chillum. So
the Major was forced to wait over that night, and
dispatched a letter to his family announcing his arrival,
entreating from Jos a promise to write to his own
friends. Jos promised, but didn't keep his promise. The
Captain, the surgeon, and one or two passengers came
and dined with our two gentlemen at the inn, Jos exerting
himself in a sumptuous way in ordering the dinner
and promising to go to town the next day with the Major.
The landlord said it did his eyes good to see Mr. Sedley
take off his first pint of porter. If I had time and dared
to enter into digressions, I would write a chapter about
that first pint of porter drunk upon English ground. Ah,
how good it is! It is worth-while to leave home for a
year, just to enjoy that one draught.
Major Dobbin made his appearance the next morning
very neatly shaved and dressed, according to his wont.
Indeed, it was so early in the morning that nobody was
up in the house except that wonderful Boots of an inn
who never seems to want sleep; and the Major could
hear the snores of the various inmates of the house roaring
through the corridors as he creaked about in those
dim passages. Then the sleepless Boots went shirking
round from door to door, gathering up at each the
Bluchers, Wellingtons, Oxonians, which stood outside. Then
Jos's native servant arose and began to get ready his
master's ponderous dressing apparatus and prepare his
hookah; then the maidservants got up, and meeting the
dark man in the passages, shrieked, and mistook him for
the devil. He and Dobbin stumbled over their pails in
the passages as they were scouring the decks of the
Royal George. When the first unshorn waiter appeared
and unbarred the door of the inn, the Major thought that
the time for departure was arrived, and ordered a post-
chaise to be fetched instantly, that they might set off.
He then directed his steps to Mr. Sedley's room and
opened the curtains of the great large family bed wherein
Mr. Jos was snoring. "Come, up! Sedley," the Major
said, "it's time to be off; the chaise will be at the door in
half an hour."
Jos growled from under the counterpane to know
what the time was; but when he at last extorted from the
blushing Major (who never told fibs, however they might
be to his advantage) what was the real hour of the
morning, he broke out into a volley of bad language, which
we will not repeat here, but by which he gave Dobbin to
understand that he would jeopardy his soul if he got up
at that moment, that the Major might go and be hanged,
that he would not travel with Dobbin, and that it was
most unkind and ungentlemanlike to disturb a man out
of his sleep in that way; on which the discomfited Major
was obliged to retreat, leaving Jos to resume his
interrupted slumbers.
The chaise came up presently, and the Major would
wait no longer.
If he had been an English nobleman travelling on a
pleasure tour, or a newspaper courier bearing dispatches
(government messages are generally carried much more
quietly), he could not have travelled more quickly. The
post-boys wondered at the fees he flung amongst them.
How happy and green the country looked as the chaise
whirled rapidly from mile-stone to mile-stone, through
neat country towns where landlords came out to
welcome him with smiles and bows; by pretty roadside inns,
where the signs hung on the elms, and horses and
waggoners were drinking under the chequered shadow of the
trees; by old halls and parks; rustic hamlets clustered
round ancient grey churches--and through the charming
friendly English landscape. Is there any in the world
like it? To a traveller returning home it looks so kind--
it seems to shake hands with you as you pass through it.
Well, Major Dobbin passed through all this from
Southampton to London, and without noting much beyond the
milestones along the road. You see he was so eager to
see his parents at Camberwell.
He grudged the time lost between Piccadilly and his
old haunt at the Slaughters', whither he drove faithfully.
Long years had passed since he saw it last, since he and
George, as young men, had enjoyed many a feast, and
held many a revel there. He had now passed into the
stage of old-fellow-hood. His hair was grizzled, and many
a passion and feeling of his youth had grown grey in that
interval. There, however, stood the old waiter at the
door, in the same greasy black suit, with the same
double chin and flaccid face, with the same huge bunch of
seals at his fob, rattling his money in his pockets as
before, and receiving the Major as if he had gone away
only a week ago. "Put the Major's things in twenty-three,
that's his room," John said, exhibiting not the least
surprise. "Roast fowl for your dinner, I suppose. You ain't
got married? They said you was married--the Scotch
surgeon of yours was here. No, it was Captain Humby of
the thirty-third, as was quartered with the --th in Injee.
Like any warm water? ~What do you come in a chay for--
ain't the coach good enough?" And with this, the faithful
waiter, who knew and remembered every officer who
used the house, and with whom ten years were but as
yesterday, led the way up to Dobbin's old room, where
stood the great moreen bed, and the shabby carpet, a
thought more dingy, and all the old black furniture
covered with faded chintz, just as the Major recollected
them in his youth.
He remembered George pacing up and down the room,
and biting his nails, and swearing that the Governor must
come round, and that if he didn't, he didn't care a straw,
on the day before he was married. He could fancy him
walking in, banging the door of Dobbin's room, and his
own hard by--
"You ain't got young," John said, calmly surveying his
friend of former days.
Dobbin laughed. "Ten years and a fever don't make a
man young, John," he said. "It is you that are always
young--no, you are always old."
"What became of Captain Osborne's widow?" John
said. "Fine young fellow that. Lord, how he used to
spend his money. He never came back after that day he
was marched from here. He owes me three pound at this
minute. Look here, I have it in my book. 'April 10,
1815, Captain Osborne: '3pounds.' I wonder whether his
father would pay me," and so saying, John of the Slaughters'
pulled out the very morocco pocket-book in which
he had noted his loan to the Captain, upon a greasy
faded page still extant, with many other scrawled
memoranda regarding the bygone frequenters of the house.
Having inducted his customer into the room, John
retired with perfect calmness; and Major Dobbin, not
without a blush and a grin at his own absurdity, chose out of
his kit the very smartest and most becoming civil
costume he possessed, and laughed at his own tanned face
and grey hair, as he surveyed them in the dreary little
toilet-glass on the dressing-table.
"I'm glad old John didn't forget me," he thought.
"She'll know me, too, I hope." And he sallied out of the
inn, bending his steps once more in the direction of
Brompton.
Every minute incident of his last meeting with Amelia
was present to the constant man's mind as he walked
towards her house. The arch and the Achilles statue were
up since he had last been in Piccadilly; a hundred
changes had occurred which his eye and mind vaguely
noted. He began to tremble as he walked up the lane
from Brompton, that well-remembered lane leading to
the street where she lived. Was she going to be married
or not? If he were to meet her with the little boy--Good
God, what should he do? He saw a woman coming to him
with a child of five years old--was that she? He began
to shake at the mere possibility. When he came up to
the row of houses, at last, where she lived, and to the
gate, he caught hold of it and paused. He might have
heard the thumping of his own heart. "May God Almighty
bless her, whatever has happened," he thought to
himself. "Psha! she may be gone from here," he said
and went in through the gate.
The window of the parlour which she used to occupy
was open, and there were no inmates in the room. The
Major thought he recognized the piano, though, with the
picture over it, as it used to be in former days, and his
perturbations were renewed. Mr. Clapp's brass plate was
still on the door, at the knocker of which Dobbin
performed a summons.
A buxom-looking lass of sixteen, with bright eyes and
purple cheeks, came to answer the knock and looked
hard at the Major as he leant back against the little
porch.
He was as pale as a ghost and could hardly falter out
the words--"Does Mrs. Osborne live here?"
She looked him hard in the face for a moment--and
then turning white too--said, "Lord bless me--it's
Major Dobbin." She held out both her hands shaking--
"Don't you remember me?" she said. "I used to call you
Major Sugarplums." On which, and I believe it was for
the first time that he ever so conducted himself in his
life, the Major took the girl in his arms and kissed her.
She began to laugh and cry hysterically, and calling out
"Ma, Pa!" with all her voice, brought up those worthy
people, who had already been surveying the Major from
the casement of the ornamental kitchen, and were
astonished to find their daughter in the little passage in
the embrace of a great tall man in a blue frock-coat and
white duck trousers.
"I'm an old friend," he said--not without blushing
though. "Don't you remember me, Mrs. Clapp, and those
good cakes you used to make for tea? Don't you recollect
me, Clapp? I'm George's godfather, and just come
back from India." A great shaking of hands ensued--
Mrs. Clapp was greatly affected and delighted; she called
upon heaven to interpose a vast many times in that
passage.
The landlord and landlady of the house led the worthy
Major into the Sedleys' room (whereof he remembered
every single article of furniture, from the old brass
ornamented piano, once a natty little instrument, Stothard
maker, to the screens and the alabaster miniature tombstone,
in the midst of which ticked Mr. Sedley's gold
watch), and there, as he sat down in the lodger's vacant
arm-chair, the father, the mother, and the daughter,
with a thousand ejaculatory breaks in the narrative,
informed Major Dobbin of what we know already, but of
particulars in Amelia's history of which he was not aware
--namely of Mrs. Sedley's death, of George's reconcilement
with his grandfather Osborne, of the way in which
the widow took on at leaving him, and of other particulars
of her life. Twice or thrice he was going to ask
about the marriage question, but his heart failed him.
He did not care to lay it bare to these people. Finally,
he was informed that Mrs. O. was gone to walk with her
pa in Kensington Gardens, whither she always went with
the old gentleman (who was very weak and peevish now,
and led her a sad life, though she behaved to him like an
angel, to be sure), of a fine afternoon, after dinner.
"I'm very much pressed for time," the Major said,
"and have business to-night of importance. I should like
to see Mrs. Osborne tho'. Suppose Miss Polly would
come with me and show me the way?"
Miss Polly was charmed and astonished at this
proposal. She knew the way. She would show Major
Dobbin. She had often been with Mr. Sedley when Mrs. O.
was gone--was gone Russell Square way--and knew the
bench where he liked to sit. She bounced away to her
apartment and appeared presently in her best bonnet
and her mamma's yellow shawl and large pebble brooch,
of which she assumed the loan in order to make herself
a worthy companion for the Major.
That officer, then, in his blue frock-coat and buckskin
gloves, gave the young lady his arm, and they walked
away very gaily. He was glad to have a friend at hand
for the scene which he dreaded somehow. He asked a
thousand more questions from his companion about
Amelia: his kind heart grieved to think that she should
have had to part with her son. How did she bear it? Did
she see him often? Was Mr. Sedley pretty comfortable
now in a worldly point of view? Polly answered all these
questions of Major Sugarplums to the very best of her
power.
And in the midst of their walk an incident occurred
which, though very simple in its nature, was productive
of the greatest delight to Major Dobbin. A pale young
man with feeble whiskers and a stiff white neckcloth came
walking down the lane, en sandwich--having a lady, that
is, on each arm. One was a tall and commanding middle-
aged female, with features and a complexion similar to
those of the clergyman of the Church of England by
whose side she marched, and the other a stunted little
woman with a dark face, ornamented by a fine new bonnet
and white ribbons, and in a smart pelisse, with a rich
gold watch in the midst of her person. The gentleman,
pinioned as he was by these two ladies, carried further a
parasol, shawl, and basket, so that his arms were entirely
engaged, and of course he was unable to touch his hat in
acknowledgement of the curtsey with which Miss Mary
Clapp greeted him.
He merely bowed his head in reply to her salutation,
which the two ladies returned with a patronizing air, and
at the same time looking severely at the individual in the
blue coat and bamboo cane who accompanied Miss Polly.
"Who's that?" asked the Major, amused by the group,
and after he had made way for the three to pass up the
lane. Mary looked at him rather roguishly.
"That is our curate, the Reverend Mr. Binny (a twitch
from Major Dobbin), and his sister Miss B. Lord bless us,
how she did use to worret us at Sunday-school; and the
other lady, the little one with a cast in her eye and the
handsome watch, is Mrs. Binny--Miss Grits that was;
her pa was a grocer, and kept the Little Original Gold
Tea Pot in Kensington Gravel Pits. They were married last
month, and are just come back from Margate. She's five
thousand pound to her fortune; but her and Miss B., who
made the match, have quarrelled already."
If the Major had twitched before, he started now, and
slapped the bamboo on the ground with an emphasis
which made Miss Clapp cry, "Law," and laugh too. He
stood for a moment, silent, with open mouth, looking
after the retreating young couple, while Miss Mary told
their history; but he did not hear beyond the announcement
of the reverend gentleman's marriage; his head was
swimming with felicity. After this rencontre he began to
walk double quick towards the place of his destination
--and yet they were too soon (for he was in a great
tremor at the idea of a meeting for which he had been
longing any time these ten years)--through the Brompton
lanes, and entering at the little old portal in Kensington
Garden wall.
"There they are," said Miss Polly, and she felt him
again start back on her arm. She was a confidante at once
of the whole business. She knew the story as well as if
she had read it in one of her favourite novel-books--
Fatherless Fanny, or the Scottish Chiefs.
"Suppose you were to run on and tell her," the Major
said. Polly ran forward, her yellow shawl streaming in the
breeze.
Old Sedley was seated on a bench, his handkerchief
placed over his knees, prattling away, according to his
wont, with some old story about old times to which
Amelia had listened and awarded a patient smile many
a time before. She could of late think of her own affairs,
and smile or make other marks of recognition of her
father's stories, scarcely hearing a word of the old man's
tales. As Mary came bouncing along, and Amelia caught
sight of her, she started up from her bench. Her first
thought was that something had happened to Georgy,
but the sight of the messenger's eager and happy face
dissipated that fear in the timorous mother's bosom.
"News! News!" cried the emissary of Major Dobbin.
"He's come! He's come!"
"Who is come?" said Emmy, still thinking of her son.
"Look there," answered Miss Clapp, turning round and
pointing; in which direction Amelia looking, saw
Dobbin's lean figure and long shadow stalking across the
grass. Amelia started in her turn, blushed up, and, of
course, began to cry. At all this simple little creature's
fetes, the grandes eaux were accustomed to play.
He looked at her--oh, how fondly--as she came
running towards him, her hands before her, ready to give
them to him. She wasn't changed. She was a little pale,
a little stouter in figure. Her eyes were the same, the
kind trustful eyes. There were scarce three lines of silver
in her soft brown hair. She gave him both her hands as
she looked up flushing and smiling through her tears into
his honest homely face. He took the two little hands
between his two and held them there. He was speechless
for a moment. Why did he not take her in his arms and
swear that he would never leave her? She must have
yielded: she could not but have obeyed him.
"I--I've another arrival to announce," he said after a
pause.
"Mrs. Dobbin?" Amelia said, making a movement
back--why didn't he speak?
"No," he said, letting her hands go: "Who has told
you those lies? I mean, your brother Jos came in the
same ship with me, and is come home to make you all
happy."
"Papa, Papa!" Emmy cried out, "here are news! My
brother is in England. He is come to take care of you.
Here is Major Dobbin."
Mr. Sedley started up, shaking a great deal and gathering
up his thoughts. Then he stepped forward and made an
old-fashioned bow to the Major, whom he called Mr.
Dobbin, and hoped his worthy father, Sir William, was
quite well. He proposed to call upon Sir William, who had
done him the honour of a visit a short time ago. Sir
William had not called upon the old gentleman for eight
years--it was that visit he was thinking of returning.
"He is very much shaken," Emmy whispered as Dobbin
went up and cordially shook hands with the old man.
Although he had such particular business in London
that evening, the Major consented to forego it upon Mr.
Sedley's invitation to him to come home and partake of
tea. Amelia put her arm under that of her young friend
with the yellow shawl and headed the party on their
return homewards, so that Mr. Sedley fell to Dobbin's share.
The old man walked very slowly and told a number of
ancient histories about himself and his poor Bessy, his
former prosperity, and his bankruptcy. His thoughts, as is
usual with failing old men, were quite in former times.
The present, with the exception of the one catastrophe
which he felt, he knew little about. The Major was glad to
let him talk on. His eyes were fixed upon the figure in
front of him--the dear little figure always present to his
imagination and in his prayers, and visiting his dreams
wakeful or slumbering.
Amelia was very happy, smiling, and active all that
evening, performing her duties as hostess of the little
entertainment with the utmost grace and propriety, as
Dobbin thought. His eyes followed her about as they sat
in the twilight. How many a time had he longed for that
moment and thought of her far away under hot winds
and in weary marches, gentle and happy, kindly ministering
to the wants of old age, and decorating poverty with
sweet submission--as he saw her now. I do not say that
his taste was the highest, or that it is the duty of great
intellects to be content with a bread-and-butter paradise,
such as sufficed our simple old friend; but his desires
were of this sort, whether for good or bad, and, with
Amelia to help him, he was as ready to drink as many
cups of tea as Doctor Johnson.
Amelia seeing this propensity, laughingly encouraged
it and looked exceedingly roguish as she administered to
him cup after cup. It is true she did not know that the
Major had had no dinner and that the cloth was laid for
him at the Slaughters', and a plate laid thereon to mark
that the table was retained, in that very box in which
the Major and George had sat many a time carousing,
when she was a child just come home from Miss
Pinkerton's school.
The first thing Mrs. Osborne showed the Major was
Georgy's miniature, for which she ran upstairs on her
arrival at home. It was not half handsome enough of
course for the boy, but wasn't it noble of him to think of
bringing it to his mother? Whilst her papa was awake she
did not talk much about Georgy. To hear about Mr.
Osborne and Russell Square was not agreeable to the
old man, who very likely was unconscious that he had
been living for some months past mainly on the bounty
of his richer rival, and lost his temper if allusion was
made to the other.
Dobbin told him all, and a little more perhaps than
all, that had happened on board the Ramchunder, and
exaggerated Jos's benevolent dispositions towards his
father and resolution to make him comfortable in his
old days. The truth is that during the voyage the Major
had impressed this duty most strongly upon his fellow-
passenger and extorted promises from him that he would
take charge of his sister and her child. He soothed Jos's
irritation with regard to the bills which the old gentleman
had drawn upon him, gave a laughing account of his
own sufferings on the same score and of the famous
consignment of wine with which the old man had favoured
him, and brought Mr. Jos, who was by no means an ill-
natured person when well-pleased and moderately
flattered, to a very good state of feeling regarding his
relatives in Europe.
And in fine I am ashamed to say that the Major
stretched the truth so far as to tell old Mr. Sedley that it
was mainly a desire to see his parent which brought Jos
once more to Europe.
At his accustomed hour Mr. Sedley began to doze in
his chair, and then it was Amelia's opportunity to
commence her conversation, which she did with great
eagerness--it related exclusively to Georgy. She did not talk
at all about her own sufferings at breaking from him, for
indeed, this worthy woman, though she was half-killed
by the separation from the child, yet thought it was very
wicked in her to repine at losing him; but everything
concerning him, his virtues, talents, and prospects, she
poured out. She described his angelic beauty; narrated
a hundred instances of his generosity and greatness of
mind whilst living with her; how a Royal Duchess had
stopped and admired him in Kensington Gardens; how
splendidly he was cared for now, and how he had a
groom and a pony; what quickness and cleverness he