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had, and what a prodigiously well-read and delightful
person the Reverend Lawrence Veal was, George's
master. "He knows EVERYTHING," Amelia said. "He has the
most delightful parties. You who are so learned yourself,
and have read so much, and are so clever and
accomplished--don't shake your head and say no--HE
always used to say you were--you will be charmed with
Mr. Veal's parties. The last Tuesday in every month. He
says there is no place in the bar or the senate that
Georgy may not aspire to. Look here," and she went to
the piano-drawer and drew out a theme of Georgy's
composition. This great effort of genius, which is still
in the possession of George's mother, is as follows:
On Selfishness--Of all the vices which degrade the
human character, Selfishness is the most odious and
contemptible. An undue love of Self leads to the most
monstrous crimes and occasions the greatest misfortunes both
in States and Families. As a selfish man will impoverish
his family and often bring them to ruin, so a selfish
king brings ruin on his people and often plunges them
into war.
Example: The selfishness of Achilles, as remarked by
the poet Homer, occasioned a thousand woes to the
Greeks--muri Achaiois alge etheke--(Hom. Il. A. 2).
The selfishness of the late Napoleon Bonaparte
occasioned innumerable wars in Europe and caused him to
perish, himself, in a miserable island--that of Saint Helena in
the Atlantic Ocean.
We see by these examples that we are not to consult
our own interest and ambition, but that we are to
consider the interests of others as well as our own.
George S. Osborne
Athene House, 24 April, 1827
"Think of him writing such a hand, and quoting Greek
too, at his age," the delighted mother said. "Oh, William,"
she added, holding out her hand to the Major, "what a
treasure Heaven has given me in that boy! He is the
comfort of my life--and he is the image of--of him that's
gone!"
"Ought I to be angry with her for being faithful to
him?" William thought. "Ought I to be jealous of my
friend in the grave, or hurt that such a heart as Amelia's
can love only once and for ever? Oh, George, George,
how little you knew the prize you had, though." This
sentiment passed rapidly through William's mind as he
was holding Amelia's hand, whilst the handkerchief was
veiling her eyes.
"Dear friend," she said, pressing the hand which held
hers, "how good, how kind you always have been to me!
See! Papa is stirring. You will go and see Georgy
tomorrow, won't you?"
"Not to-morrow," said poor old Dobbin. "I have
business." He did not like to own that he had not as yet
been to his parents' and his dear sister Anne--a
remissness for which I am sure every well-regulated
person will blame the Major. And presently he took his
leave, leaving his address behind him for Jos, against the
latter's arrival. And so the first day was over, and he
had seen her.
When he got back to the Slaughters', the roast fowl
was of course cold, in which condition he ate it for
supper. And knowing what early hours his family kept, and
that it would be needless to disturb their slumbers at so
late an hour, it is on record, that Major Dobbin treated
himself to half-price at the Haymarket Theatre that
evening, where let us hope he enjoyed himself.
CHAPTER LIX
The Old Piano
The Major's visit left old John Sedley in a great state of
agitation and excitement. His daughter could not induce
him to settle down to his customary occupations or
amusements that night. He passed the evening fumbling
amongst his boxes and desks, untying his papers with
trembling hands, and sorting and arranging them against
Jos's arrival. He had them in the greatest order--his
tapes and his files, his receipts, and his letters with
lawyers and correspondents; the documents relative to
the wine project (which failed from a most unaccountable
accident, after commencing with the most splendid
prospects), the coal project (which only a want of capital
prevented from becoming the most successful scheme
ever put before the public), the patent saw-mills and
sawdust consolidation project, &c., &c. All night, until a
very late hour, he passed in the preparation of these
documents, trembling about from one room to another,
with a quivering candle and shaky hands. Here's the wine
papers, here's the sawdust, here's the coals; here's my
letters to Calcutta and Madras, and replies from Major
Dobbin, C.B., and Mr. Joseph Sedley to the same. "He
shall find no irregularity about ME, Emmy," the old
gentleman said.
Emmy smiled. "I don't think Jos will care about seeing
those papers, Papa," she said.
"You don't know anything about business, my dear,"
answered the sire, shaking his head with an important
air. And it must be confessed that on this point Emmy
was very ignorant, and that is a pity some people are so
knowing. All these twopenny documents arranged on a
side table, old Sedley covered them carefully over with
a clean bandanna handkerchief (one out of Major
Dobbin's lot) and enjoined the maid and landlady of the
house, in the most solemn way, not to disturb those
papers, which were arranged for the arrival of Mr. Joseph
Sedley the next morning, "Mr. Joseph Sedley of the
Honourable East India Company's Bengal Civil Service."
Amelia found him up very early the next morning,
more eager, more hectic, and more shaky than ever. "I
didn't sleep much, Emmy, my dear," he said. "I was
thinking of my poor Bessy. I wish she was alive, to ride
in Jos's carriage once again. She kept her own and
became it very well." And his eyes filled with tears, which
trickled down his furrowed old face. Amelia wiped them
away, and smilingly kissed him, and tied the old man's
neckcloth in a smart bow, and put his brooch into his
best shirt frill, in which, in his Sunday suit of mourning,
he sat from six o'clock in the morning awaiting the
arrival of his son.
However, when the postman made his appearance, the
little party were put out of suspense by the receipt of a
letter from Jos to his sister, who announced that he felt
a little fatigued after his voyage, and should not be able
to move on that day, but that he would leave Southampton
early the next morning and be with his father and
mother at evening. Amelia, as she read out the letter to
her father, paused over the latter word; her brother, it
was clear, did not know what had happened in the family.
Nor could he, for the fact is that, though the Major
rightly suspected that his travelling companion never
would be got into motion in so short a space as twenty-
four hours, and would find some excuse for delaying, yet
Dobbin had not written to Jos to inform him of the
calamity which had befallen the Sedley family, being
occupied in talking with Amelia until long after post-hour.
There are some splendid tailors' shops in the High
Street of Southampton, in the fine plate-glass windows
of which hang gorgeous waistcoats of all sorts, of silk
and velvet, and gold and crimson, and pictures of the
last new fashions, in which those wonderful gentlemen
with quizzing glasses, and holding on to little boys with
the exceeding large eyes and curly hair, ogle ladies in
riding habits prancing by the Statue of Achilles at Apsley
House. Jos, although provided with some of the most
splendid vests that Calcutta could furnish, thought he
could not go to town until he was supplied with one or
two of these garments, and selected a crimson satin,
embroidered with gold butterflies, and a black and red
velvet tartan with white stripes and a rolling collar, with
which, and a rich blue satin stock and a gold pin,
consisting of a five-barred gate with a horseman in pink
enamel jumping over it, he thought he might make his
entry into London with some dignity. For Jos's former
shyness and blundering blushing timidity had given way
to a more candid and courageous self-assertion of his
worth. "I don't care about owning it," Waterloo Sedley
would say to his friends, "I am a dressy man"; and
though rather uneasy if the ladies looked at him at the
Government House balls, and though he blushed and
turned away alarmed under their glances, it was chiefly
from a dread lest they should make love to him that he
avoided them, being averse to marriage altogether. But
there was no such swell in Calcutta as Waterloo Sedley,
I have heard say, and he had the handsomest turn-out,
gave the best bachelor dinners, and had the finest plate
in the whole place.
To make these waistcoats for a man of his size and
dignity took at least a day, part of which he employed in
hiring a servant to wait upon him and his native and in
instructing the agent who cleared his baggage, his boxes,
his books, which he never read, his chests of mangoes,
chutney, and curry-powders, his shawls for presents to
people whom he didn't know as yet, and the rest of his
Persicos apparatus.
At length, he drove leisurely to London on the third
day and in the new waistcoat, the native, with chattering
teeth, shuddering in a shawl on the box by the side of the
new European servant; Jos puffing his pipe at intervals
within and looking so majestic that the little boys cried
Hooray, and many people thought he must be a
Governor-General. HE, I promise, did not decline the
obsequious invitation of the landlords to alight and refresh
himself in the neat country towns. Having partaken of a
copious breakfast, with fish, and rice, and hard eggs, at
Southampton, he had so far rallied at Winchester as to
think a glass of sherry necessary. At Alton he stepped
out of the carriage at his servant's request and imbibed
some of the ale for which the place is famous. At Farnham
he stopped to view the Bishop's Castle and to partake
of a light dinner of stewed eels, veal cutlets, and
French beans, with a bottle of claret. He was cold over
Bagshot Heath, where the native chattered more and
more, and Jos Sahib took some brandy-and-water; in
fact, when he drove into town he was as full of wine,
beer, meat, pickles, cherry-brandy, and tobacco as the
steward's cabin of a steam-packet. It was evening when
his carriage thundered up to the little door in Brompton,
whither the affectionate fellow drove first, and before
hieing to the apartments secured for him by Mr. Dobbin
at the Slaughters'.
All the faces in the street were in the windows; the
little maidservant flew to the wicket-gate; the Mesdames
Clapp looked out from the casement of the ornamented
kitchen; Emmy, in a great flutter, was in the passage
among the hats and coats; and old Sedley in the parlour
inside, shaking all over. Jos descended from the post-
chaise and down the creaking swaying steps in awful
state, supported by the new valet from Southampton and
the shuddering native, whose brown face was now livid
with cold and of the colour of a turkey's gizzard. He
created an immense sensation in the passage presently,
where Mrs. and Miss Clapp, coming perhaps to listen
at the parlour door, found Loll Jewab shaking upon the
hall-bench under the coats, moaning in a strange piteous
way, and showing his yellow eyeballs and white teeth.
For, you see, we have adroitly shut the door upon the
meeting between Jos and the old father and the poor little
gentle sister inside. The old man was very much affected;
so, of course, was his daughter; nor was Jos without
feeling. In that long absence of ten years, the most selfish
will think about home and early ties. Distance sanctifies
both. Long brooding over those lost pleasures exaggerates
their charm and sweetness. Jos was unaffectedly glad to
see and shake the hand of his father, between whom
and himself there had been a coolness--glad to see his
little sister, whom he remembered so pretty and smiling,
and pained at the alteration which time, grief, and
misfortune had made in the shattered old man. Emmy had
come out to the door in her black clothes and whispered
to him of her mother's death, and not to speak of it to
their father. There was no need of this caution, for the
elder Sedley himself began immediately to speak of the
event, and prattled about it, and wept over it plenteously.
It shocked the Indian not a little and made him think of
himself less than the poor fellow was accustomed to do.
The result of the interview must have been very
satisfactory, for when Jos had reascended his post-chaise
and had driven away to his hotel, Emmy embraced her father
tenderly, appealing to him with an air of triumph, and
asking the old man whether she did not always say that
her brother had a good heart?
Indeed, Joseph Sedley, affected by the humble position
in which he found his relations, and in the expansiveness
and overflowing of heart occasioned by the first meeting,
declared that they should never suffer want or
discomfort any more, that he was at home for some time
at any rate, during which his house and everything he
had should be theirs: and that Amelia would look very
pretty at the head of his table--until she would accept
one of her own.
She shook her head sadly and had, as usual, recourse
to the waterworks. She knew what he meant. She and
her young confidante, Miss Mary, had talked over the
matter most fully, the very night of the Major's visit,
beyond which time the impetuous Polly could not refrain
from talking of the discovery which she had made, and
describing the start and tremor of joy by which Major
Dobbin betrayed himself when Mr. Binny passed with his
bride and the Major learned that he had no longer a
rival to fear. "Didn't you see how he shook all over
when you asked if he was married and he said, 'Who told
you those lies?' Oh, M'am," Polly said, "he never kept his
eyes off you, and I'm sure he's grown grey athinking of
you."
But Amelia, looking up at her bed, over which hung
the portraits of her husband and son, told her young
protegee never, never, to speak on that subject again;
that Major Dobbin had been her husband's dearest friend
and her own and George's most kind and affectionate
guardian; that she loved him as a brother--but that a
woman who had been married to such an angel as that,
and she pointed to the wall, could never think of any
other union. Poor Polly sighed: she thought what she
should do if young Mr. Tomkins, at the surgery, who
always looked at her so at church, and who, by those
mere aggressive glances had put her timorous little heart
into such a flutter that she was ready to surrender at
once,--what she should do if he were to die? She knew
he was consumptive, his cheeks were so red and he was
so uncommon thin in the waist.
Not that Emmy, being made aware of the honest
Major's passion, rebuffed him in any way, or felt
displeased with him. Such an attachment from so true and
loyal a gentleman could make no woman angry.
Desdemona was not angry with Cassio, though there is
very little doubt she saw the Lieutenant's partiality for
her (and I for my part believe that many more things
took place in that sad affair than the worthy Moorish
officer ever knew of); why, Miranda was even very kind
to Caliban, and we may be pretty sure for the same
reason. Not that she would encourage him in the least--
the poor uncouth monster--of course not. No more
would Emmy by any means encourage her admirer, the
Major. She would give him that friendly regard, which
so much excellence and fidelity merited; she would treat
him with perfect cordiality and frankness until he made
his proposals, and THEN it would be time enough for her
to speak and to put an end to hopes which never could be
realized.
She slept, therefore, very soundly that evening, after
the conversation with Miss Polly, and was more than
ordinarily happy, in spite of Jos's delaying. "I am glad
he is not going to marry that Miss O'Dowd," she thought.
"Colonel O'Dowd never could have a sister fit for such
an accomplished man as Major William." Who was there
amongst her little circle who would make him a good
wife? Not Miss Binny, she was too old and ill-tempered;
Miss Osborne? too old too. Little Polly was too young.
Mrs. Osborne could not find anybody to suit the Major
before she went to sleep.
The same morning brought Major Dobbin a letter to the
Slaughters' Coffee-house from his friend at Southampton,
begging dear Dob to excuse Jos for being in a rage when
awakened the day before (he had a confounded headache,
and was just in his first sleep), and entreating Dob to
engage comfortable rooms at the Slaughters' for Mr. Sedley
and his servants. The Major had become necessary to
Jos during the voyage. He was attached to him, and hung
upon him. The other passengers were away to London.
Young Ricketts and little Chaffers went away on the
coach that day--Ricketts on the box, and taking the
reins from Botley; the Doctor was off to his family at
Portsea; Bragg gone to town to his co-partners; and the
first mate busy in the unloading of the Ramchunder. Mr.
Joe was very lonely at Southampton, and got the landlord
of the George to take a glass of wine with him that
day, at the very hour at which Major Dobbin was
seated at the table of his father, Sir William, where his
sister found out (for it was impossible for the Major to
tell fibs) that he had been to see Mrs. George Osborne.
Jos was so comfortably situated in St. Martin's Lane, he
could enjoy his hookah there with such perfect ease, and
could swagger down to the theatres, when minded, so
agreeably, that, perhaps, he would have remained
altogether at the Slaughters' had not his friend, the Major,
been at his elbow. That gentleman would not let the
Bengalee rest until he had executed his promise of having
a home for Amelia and his father. Jos was a soft fellow
in anybody's hands, Dobbin most active in anybody's
concerns but his own; the civilian was, therefore, an easy
victim to the guileless arts of this good-natured diplomatist
and was ready to do, to purchase, hire, or relinquish
whatever his friend thought fit. Loll Jewab, of whom the
boys about St. Martin's Lane used to make cruel fun
whenever he showed his dusky countenance in the street, was
sent back to Calcutta in the Lady Kicklebury East
Indiaman, in which Sir William Dobbin had a share, having
previously taught Jos's European the art of preparing
curries, pilaus, and pipes. It was a matter of great delight
and occupation to Jos to superintend the building of a
smart chariot which he and the Major ordered in the
neighbouring Long Acre: and a pair of handsome horses
were jobbed, with which Jos drove about in state in the
park, or to call upon his Indian friends. Amelia was not
seldom by his side on these excursions, when also Major
Dobbin would be seen in the back seat of the carriage.
At other times old Sedley and his daughter took
advantage of it, and Miss Clapp, who frequently
accompanied her friend, had great pleasure in being recognized
as she sat in the carriage, dressed in the famous yellow
shawl, by the young gentleman at the surgery, whose face
might commonly be seen over the window-blinds as she
passed.
Shortly after Jos's first appearance at Brompton, a
dismal scene, indeed, took place at that humble cottage at
which the Sedleys had passed the last ten years of their
life. Jos's carriage (the temporary one, not the chariot
under construction) arrived one day and carried off old
Sedley and his daughter--to return no more. The tears
that were shed by the landlady and the landlady's
daughter at that event were as genuine tears of sorrow as any
that have been outpoured in the course of this history.
In their long acquaintanceship and intimacy they could
not recall a harsh word that had been uttered by Amelia
She had been all sweetness and kindness, always
thankful, always gentle, even when Mrs. Clapp lost her own
temper and pressed for the rent. When the kind creature
was going away for good and all, the landlady reproached
herself bitterly for ever having used a rough expression to
her--how she wept, as they stuck up with wafers on the
window, a paper notifying that the little rooms so long
occupied were to let! They never would have such lodgers
again, that was quite clear. After-life proved the truth of
this melancholy prophecy, and Mrs. Clapp revenged
herself for the deterioration of mankind by levying the most
savage contributions upon the tea-caddies and legs of
mutton of her locataires. Most of them scolded and
grumbled; some of them did not pay; none of them stayed.
The landlady might well regret those old, old friends, who
had left her.
As for Miss Mary, her sorrow at Amelia's departure
was such as I shall not attempt to depict. From childhood
upwards she had been with her daily and had attached
herself so passionately to that dear good lady that when
the grand barouche came to carry her off into splendour,
she fainted in the arms of her friend, who was indeed
scarcely less affected than the good-natured girl. Amelia
loved her like a daughter. During eleven years the girl had
been her constant friend and associate. The separation was
a very painful one indeed to her. But it was of course
arranged that Mary was to come and stay often at the
grand new house whither Mrs. Osborne was going, and
where Mary was sure she would never be so happy as
she had been in their humble cot, as Miss Clapp called it,
in the language of the novels which she loved.
Let us hope she was wrong in her judgement. Poor
Emmy's days of happiness had been very few in that
humble cot. A gloomy Fate had oppressed her there. She
never liked to come back to the house after she had left
it, or to face the landlady who had tyrannized over her
when ill-humoured and unpaid, or when pleased had
treated her with a coarse familiarity scarcely less odious.
Her servility and fulsome compliments when Emmy was
in prosperity were not more to that lady's liking. She
cast about notes of admiration all over the new house,
extolling every article of furniture or ornament; she
fingered Mrs. Osborne's dresses and calculated their price.
Nothing could be too good for that sweet lady, she
vowed and protested. But in the vulgar sycophant who
now paid court to her, Emmy always remembered the
coarse tyrant who had made her miserable many a time,
to whom she had been forced to put up petitions for
time, when the rent was overdue; who cried out at her
extravagance if she bought delicacies for her ailing mother
or father; who had seen her humble and trampled upon
her.
Nobody ever heard of these griefs, which had been
part of our poor little woman's lot in life. She kept them
secret from her father, whose improvidence was the cause
of much of her misery. She had to bear all the blame of
his misdoings, and indeed was so utterly gentle and
humble as to be made by nature for a victim.
I hope she is not to suffer much more of that hard
usage. And, as in all griefs there is said to be some
consolation, I may mention that poor Mary, when left at her
friend's departure in a hysterical condition, was placed
under the medical treatment of the young fellow from
the surgery, under whose care she rallied after a short
period. Emmy, when she went away from Brompton,
endowed Mary with every article of furniture that the house
contained, only taking away her pictures (the two
pictures over the bed) and her piano--that little old piano
which had now passed into a plaintive jingling old age,
but which she loved for reasons of her own. She was a
child when first she played on it, and her parents gave it
her. It had been given to her again since, as the reader
may remember, when her father's house was gone to ruin
and the instrument was recovered out of the wreck.
Major Dobbin was exceedingly pleased when, as he
was superintending the arrangements of Jos's new house
--which the Major insisted should be very handsome and
comfortable--the cart arrived from Brompton, bringing
the trunks and bandboxes of the emigrants from that
village, and with them the old piano. Amelia would have it
up in her sitting-room, a neat little apartment on the
second floor, adjoining her father's chamber, and where
the old gentleman sat commonly of evenings.
When the men appeared then bearing this old music-
box, and Amelia gave orders that it should be placed
in the chamber aforesaid, Dobbin was quite elated. "I'm
glad you've kept it," he said in a very sentimental
manner. "I was afraid you didn't care about it."
"I value it more than anything I have in the world,"
said Amelia.
"Do you, Amelia?" cried the Major. The fact was,
as he had bought it himself, though he never said
anything about it, it never entered into his head to suppose
that Emmy should think anybody else was the purchaser,
and as a matter of course he fancied that she knew the
gift came from him. "Do you, Amelia?" he said; and
the question, the great question of all, was trembling
on his lips, when Emmy replied--
"Can I do otherwise?--did not he give it me?"
"I did not know," said poor old Dob, and his
countenance fell.
Emmy did not note the circumstance at the time, nor
take immediate heed of the very dismal expression which
honest Dobbin's countenance assumed, but she thought
of it afterwards. And then it struck her, with inexpressible
pain and mortification too, that it was William who
was the giver of the piano, and not George, as she had
fancied. It was not George's gift; the only one which she
had received from her lover, as she thought--the thing
she had cherished beyond all others--her dearest relic
and prize. She had spoken to it about George; played
his favourite airs upon it; sat for long evening hours,
touching, to the best of her simple art, melancholy
harmonies on the keys, and weeping over them in silence.
It was not George's relic. It was valueless now. The next
time that old Sedley asked her to play, she said it was
shockingly out of tune, that she had a headache, that
she couldn't play.
Then, according to her custom, she rebuked herself
for her pettishness and ingratitude and determined to
make a reparation to honest William for the slight she
had not expressed to him, but had felt for his piano.
A few days afterwards, as they were seated in the
drawing-room, where Jos had fallen asleep with great comfort
after dinner, Amelia said with rather a faltering voice
to Major Dobbin--
"I have to beg your pardon for something."
"About what?" said he.
"About--about that little square piano. I never thanked
you for it when you gave it me, many, many years ago,
before I was married. I thought somebody else had given
it. Thank you, William." She held out her hand, but the
poor little woman's heart was bleeding; and as for her
eyes, of course they were at their work.
But William could hold no more. "Amelia, Amelia,"
he said, "I did buy it for you. I loved you then as I
do now. I must tell you. I think I loved you from the
first minute that I saw you, when George brought me to
your house, to show me the Amelia whom he was
engaged to. You were but a girl, in white, with large
ringlets; you came down singing--do you remember?--
and we went to Vauxhall. Since then I have thought of
but one woman in the world, and that was you. I
think there is no hour in the day has passed for twelve
years that I haven't thought of you. I came to tell you
this before I went to India, but you did not care, and
I hadn't the heart to speak. You did not care whether
I stayed or went."
"I was very ungrateful," Amelia said.
"No, only indifferent," Dobbin continued desperately.
"I have nothing to make a woman to be otherwise. I
know what you are feeling now. You are hurt in your
heart at the discovery about the piano, and that it came
from me and not from George. I forgot, or I should
never have spoken of it so. It is for me to ask your
pardon for being a fool for a moment, and thinking
that years of constancy and devotion might have pleaded
with you."
"It is you who are cruel now," Amelia said with some
spirit. "George is my husband, here and in heaven. How
could I love any other but him? I am his now as when
you first saw me, dear William. It was he who told me
how good and generous you were, and who taught me
to love you as a brother. Have you not been everything
to me and my boy? Our dearest, truest, kindest friend
and protector? Had you come a few months sooner
perhaps you might have spared me that--that dreadful
parting. Oh, it nearly killed me, William--but you didn't
come, though I wished and prayed for you to come,
and they took him too away from me. Isn't he a noble
boy, William? Be his friend still and mine"--and here her
voice broke, and she hid her face on his shoulder.
The Major folded his arms round her, holding her to
him as if she was a child, and kissed her head. "I will
not change, dear Amelia," he said. "I ask for no more
than your love. I think I would not have it otherwise.
Only let me stay near you and see you often."
"Yes, often," Amelia said. And so William was at
liberty to look and long--as the poor boy at school
who has no money may sigh after the contents of the
tart-woman's tray.
CHAPTER LX
Returns to the Genteel World
Good fortune now begins to smile upon Amelia. We are
glad to get her out of that low sphere in which she has
been creeping hitherto and introduce her into a polite
circle--not so grand and refined as that in which our
other female friend, Mrs. Becky, has appeared, but still
having no small pretensions to gentility and fashion. Jos's
friends were all from the three presidencies, and his new
house was in the comfortable Anglo-Indian district of
which Moira Place is the centre. Minto Square, Great
Clive Street, Warren Street, Hastings Street, Ochterlony
Place, Plassy Square, Assaye Terrace ("gardens" was
a felicitous word not applied to stucco houses with
asphalt terraces in front, so early as 1827)--who does not
know these respectable abodes of the retired Indian
aristocracy, and the quarter which Mr. Wenham calls the
Black Hole, in a word? Jos's position in life was not grand
enough to entitle him to a house in Moira Place, where
none can live but retired Members of Council, and
partners of Indian firms (who break, after having settled a
hundred thousand pounds on their wives, and retire into
comparative penury to a country place and four thousand
a year); he engaged a comfortable house of a
second- or third-rate order in Gillespie Street, purchasing the
carpets, costly mirrors, and handsome and appropriate
planned furniture by Seddons from the assignees of Mr.
Scape, lately admitted partner into the great Calcutta
House of Fogle, Fake, and Cracksman, in which poor
Scape had embarked seventy thousand pounds, the
earnings of a long and honourable life, taking Fake's place,
who retired to a princely park in Sussex (the Fogles have
been long out of the firm, and Sir Horace Fogle is about
to be raised to the peerage as Baron Bandanna)--admitted,
I say, partner into the great agency house of Fogle
and Fake two years before it failed for a million and
plunged half the Indian public into misery and ruin.
Scape, ruined, honest, and broken-hearted at sixty-five
years of age, went out to Calcutta to wind up the affairs
of the house. Walter Scape was withdrawn from Eton
and put into a merchant's house. Florence Scape, Fanny
Scape, and their mother faded away to Boulogne, and
will be heard of no more. To be brief, Jos stepped in and
bought their carpets and sideboards and admired
himself in the mirrors which had reflected their kind
handsome faces. The Scape tradesmen, all honourably paid,
left their cards, and were eager to supply the new
household. The large men in white waistcoats who waited at
Scape's dinners, greengrocers, bank-porters, and
milkmen in their private capacity, left their addresses and
ingratiated themselves with the butler. Mr. Chummy, the
chimney-purifier, who had swept the last three families,
tried to coax the butler and the boy under him, whose
duty it was to go out covered with buttons and with
stripes down his trousers, for the protection of Mrs.
Amelia whenever she chose to walk abroad.
It was a modest establishment. The butler was Jos's
valet also, and never was more drunk than a butler in a
small family should be who has a proper regard for his
master's wine. Emmy was supplied with a maid, grown on
Sir William Dobbin's suburban estate; a good girl, whose
kindness and humility disarmed Mrs. Osborne, who was
at first terrified at the idea of having a servant to wait
upon herself, who did not in the least know how to use
one, and who always spoke to domestics with the most
reverential politeness. But this maid was very useful in
the family, in dexterously tending old Mr. Sedley, who
kept almost entirely to his own quarter of the house
and never mixed in any of the gay doings which took
place there.
Numbers of people came to see Mrs. Osborne. Lady
Dobbin and daughters were delighted at her change of
fortune, and waited upon her. Miss Osborne from Russell
Square came in her grand chariot with the flaming
hammer-cloth emblazoned with the Leeds arms. Jos was
reported to be immensely rich. Old Osborne had no
objection that Georgy should inherit his uncle's property as
well as his own. "Damn it, we will make a man of the
feller," he said; "and I'll see him in Parliament before I
die. You may go and see his mother, Miss O., though I'll
never set eyes on her": and Miss Osborne came. Emmy,
you may be sure, was very glad to see her, and so be
brought nearer to George. That young fellow was
allowed to come much more frequently than before to visit
his mother. He dined once or twice a week in Gillespie
Street and bullied the servants and his relations there, just
as he did in Russell Square.
He was always respectful to Major Dobbin, however,
and more modest in his demeanour when that gentleman
was present. He was a clever lad and afraid of the
Major. George could not help admiring his friend's
simplicity, his good humour, his various learning quietly
imparted, his general love of truth and justice. He had met
no such man as yet in the course of his experience, and
he had an instinctive liking for a gentleman. He hung
fondly by his godfather's side, and it was his delight to
walk in the parks and hear Dobbin talk. William told
George about his father, about India and Waterloo, about
everything but himself. When George was more than
usually pert and conceited, the Major made jokes at him,
which Mrs. Osborne thought very cruel. One day, taking
him to the play, and the boy declining to go into the pit
because it was vulgar, the Major took him to the boxes,
left him there, and went down himself to the pit. He
had not been seated there very long before he felt an arm
thrust under his and a dandy little hand in a kid glove
squeezing his arm. George had seen the absurdity of his
ways and come down from the upper region. A tender
laugh of benevolence lighted up old Dobbin's face and
eyes as he looked at the repentant little prodigal. He
loved the boy, as he did everything that belonged to
Amelia. How charmed she was when she heard of this
instance of George's goodness! Her eyes looked more
kindly on Dobbin than they ever had done. She blushed,
he thought, after looking at him so.
Georgy never tired of his praises of the Major to his
mother. "I like him, Mamma, because he knows such lots
of things; and he ain't like old Veal, who is always
bragging and using such long words, don't you know? The
chaps call him 'Longtail' at school. I gave him the name;
ain't it capital? But Dob reads Latin like English, and
French and that; and when we go out together he tells me
stories about my Papa, and never about himself; though I
heard Colonel Buckler, at Grandpapa's, say that he was
one of the bravest officers in the army, and had
distinguished himself ever so much. Grandpapa was quite
surprised, and said, 'THAT feller! Why, I didn't think he could
say Bo to a goose'--but l know he could, couldn't he,
Mamma?"
Emmy laughed: she thought it was very likely the
Major could do thus much.
If there was a sincere liking between George and the
Major, it must be confessed that between the boy and his
uncle no great love existed. George had got a way of
blowing out his cheeks, and putting his hands in his
waistcoat pockets, and saying, "God bless my soul, you don't
say so," so exactly after the fashion of old Jos that it was
impossible to refrain from laughter. The servants would
explode at dinner if the lad, asking for something which
wasn't at table, put on that countenance and used that
favourite phrase. Even Dobbin would shoot out a sudden
peal at the boy's mimicry. If George did not mimic his
uncle to his face, it was only by Dobbin's rebukes and
Amelia's terrified entreaties that the little scapegrace was
induced to desist. And the worthy civilian being haunted
by a dim consciousness that the lad thought him an ass,
and was inclined to turn him into ridicule, used to be
extremely timorous and, of course, doubly pompous and
dignified in the presence of Master Georgy. When it was
announced that the young gentleman was expected in
Gillespie Street to dine with his mother, Mr. Jos
commonly found that he had an engagement at the Club.
Perhaps nobody was much grieved at his absence. On
those days Mr. Sedley would commonly be induced to
come out from his place of refuge in the upper stories,
and there would be a small family party, whereof Major
Dobbin pretty generally formed one. He was the ami de
la maison--old Sedley's friend, Emmy's friend, Georgy's
friend, Jos's counsel and adviser. "He might almost as
well be at Madras for anything WE see of him," Miss
Ann Dobbin remarked at Camberwell. Ah! Miss Ann, did
it not strike you that it was not YOU whom the Major
wanted to marry?
Joseph Sedley then led a life of dignified otiosity such
as became a person of his eminence. His very first point,
of course, was to become a member of the Oriental Club,
where he spent his mornings in the company of his
brother Indians, where he dined, or whence he brought
home men to dine.
Amelia had to receive and entertain these gentlemen
and their ladies. From these she heard how soon Smith
would be in Council; how many lacs Jones had brought
home with him, how Thomson's House in London had
refused the bills drawn by Thomson, Kibobjee, and Co.,
the Bombay House, and how it was thought the Calcutta
House must go too; how very imprudent, to say the
least of it, Mrs. Brown's conduct (wife of Brown of the
Ahmednuggur Irregulars) had been with young Swankey
of the Body Guard, sitting up with him on deck until all
hours, and losing themselves as they were riding out at
the Cape; how Mrs. Hardyman had had out her thirteen
sisters, daughters of a country curate, the Rev: Felix
Rabbits, and married eleven of them, seven high up in
the service; how Hornby was wild because his wife
would stay in Europe, and Trotter was appointed
Collector at Ummerapoora. This and similar talk took place
at the grand dinners all round. They had the same
conversation; the same silver dishes; the same saddles of
mutton, boiled turkeys, and entrees. Politics set in a
short time after dessert, when the ladies retired upstairs
and talked about their complaints and their children.
Mutato nomine, it is all the same. Don't the barristers'
wives talk about Circuit? Don't the soldiers' ladies
gossip about the Regiment? Don't the clergymen's ladies
discourse about Sunday-schools and who takes whose duty?
Don't the very greatest ladies of all talk about that small
clique of persons to whom they belong? And why should
our Indian friends not have their own conversation?--
only I admit it is slow for the laymen whose fate it
sometimes is to sit by and listen.
Before long Emmy had a visiting-book, and was driving
about regularly in a carriage, calling upon Lady Bludyer
(wife of Major-General Sir Roger Bludyer, K.C.B., Bengal
Army); Lady Huff, wife of Sir G. Huff, Bombay ditto;
Mrs. Pice, the Lady of Pice the Director, &c. We are not
long in using ourselves to changes in life. That carriage
came round to Gillespie Street every day; that buttony
boy sprang up and down from the box with Emmy's and
Jos's visiting-cards; at stated hours Emmy and the
carriage went for Jos to the Club and took him an airing;
or, putting old Sedley into the vehicle, she drove the old
man round the Regent's Park. The lady's maid and the
chariot, the visiting-book and the buttony page, became
soon as familiar to Amelia as the humble routine of
Brompton. She accommodated herself to one as to the
other. If Fate had ordained that she should be a Duchess,
she would even have done that duty too. She was voted, in
Jos's female society, rather a pleasing young person--
not much in her, but pleasing, and that sort of thing.
The men, as usual, liked her artless kindness and
simple refined demeanour. The gallant young Indian dandies
at home on furlough--immense dandies these--chained
and moustached--driving in tearing cabs, the pillars of
the theatres, living at West End hotels--nevertheless
admired Mrs. Osborne, liked to bow to her carriage in the
park, and to be admitted to have the honour of paying
her a morning visit. Swankey of the Body Guard
himself, that dangerous youth, and the greatest buck of all
the Indian army now on leave, was one day discovered
by Major Dobbin tete-a-tete with Amelia, and
describing the sport of pig-sticking to her with great humour and
eloquence; and he spoke afterwards of a d--d king's
officer that's always hanging about the house--a long,
thin, queer-looking, oldish fellow--a dry fellow though,
that took the shine out of a man in the talking line.
Had the Major possessed a little more personal vanity
he would have been jealous of so dangerous a young
buck as that fascinating Bengal Captain. But Dobbin was
of too simple and generous a nature to have any doubts
about Amelia. He was glad that the young men should
pay her respect, and that others should admire her. Ever
since her womanhood almost, had she not been
persecuted and undervalued? It pleased him to see how
kindness bought out her good qualities and how her spirits
gently rose with her prosperity. Any person who
appreciated her paid a compliment to the Major's good
judgement--that is, if a man may be said to have good
judgement who is under the influence of Love's delusion.
After Jos went to Court, which we may be sure he
did as a loyal subject of his Sovereign (showing himself
in his full court suit at the Club, whither Dobbin came
to fetch him in a very shabby old uniform) he who had
always been a staunch Loyalist and admirer of George
IV, became such a tremendous Tory and pillar of the
State that he was for having Amelia to go to a
Drawing-room, too. He somehow had worked himself up
to believe that he was implicated in the maintenance of the
public welfare and that the Sovereign would not be happy
unless Jos Sedley and his family appeared to rally round
him at St. James's.
Emmy laughed. "Shall I wear the family diamonds,
Jos?" she said.
"I wish you would let me buy you some," thought the
Major. "I should like to see any that were too good for
you."
CHAPTER LXI
In Which Two Lights are Put Out
There came a day when the round of decorous pleasures
and solemn gaieties in which Mr. Jos Sedley's family
indulged was interrupted by an event which happens in
most houses. As you ascend the staircase of your house
from the drawing towards the bedroom floors, you may
have remarked a little arch in the wall right before you,
which at once gives light to the stair which leads from
the second story to the third (where the nursery and
servants' chambers commonly are) and serves for
another purpose of utility, of which the undertaker's men
can give you a notion. They rest the coffins upon that
arch, or pass them through it so as not to disturb in any
unseemly manner the cold tenant slumbering within the
black ark.
That second-floor arch in a London house, looking up
and down the well of the staircase and commanding the
main thoroughfare by which the inhabitants are passing;
by which cook lurks down before daylight to scour her
pots and pans in the kitchen; by which young master
stealthily ascends, having left his boots in the hall, and
let himself in after dawn from a jolly night at the Club;
down which miss comes rustling in fresh ribbons and
spreading muslins, brilliant and beautiful, and prepared
for conquest and the ball; or Master Tommy slides,
preferring the banisters for a mode of conveyance, and
disdaining danger and the stair; down which the mother is
fondly carried smiling in her strong husband's arms, as
he steps steadily step by step, and followed by the monthly
nurse, on the day when the medical man has pronounced
that the charming patient may go downstairs;
up which John lurks to bed, yawning, with a sputtering
tallow candle, and to gather up before sunrise the boots
which are awaiting him in the passages--that stair, up or
down which babies are carried, old people are helped,
guests are marshalled to the ball, the parson walks to the
christening, the doctor to the sick-room, and the
undertaker's men to the upper floor--what a memento of Life,
Death, and Vanity it is--that arch and stair--if you
choose to consider it, and sit on the landing, looking up
and down the well! The doctor will come up to us too
for the last time there, my friend in motley. The nurse
will look in at the curtains, and you take no notice--and
then she will fling open the windows for a little and let in
the air. Then they will pull down all the front blinds of the
house and live in the back rooms--then they will send
for the lawyer and other men in black, &c. Your comedy
and mine will have been played then, and we shall be
removed, oh, how far, from the trumpets, and the shouting,
and the posture-making. If we are gentlefolks they
will put hatchments over our late domicile, with gilt
cherubim, and mottoes stating that there is "Quiet in
Heaven." Your son will new furnish the house, or
perhaps let it, and go into a more modern quarter; your
name will be among the "Members Deceased" in the
person the Reverend Lawrence Veal was, George's
master. "He knows EVERYTHING," Amelia said. "He has the
most delightful parties. You who are so learned yourself,
and have read so much, and are so clever and
accomplished--don't shake your head and say no--HE
always used to say you were--you will be charmed with
Mr. Veal's parties. The last Tuesday in every month. He
says there is no place in the bar or the senate that
Georgy may not aspire to. Look here," and she went to
the piano-drawer and drew out a theme of Georgy's
composition. This great effort of genius, which is still
in the possession of George's mother, is as follows:
On Selfishness--Of all the vices which degrade the
human character, Selfishness is the most odious and
contemptible. An undue love of Self leads to the most
monstrous crimes and occasions the greatest misfortunes both
in States and Families. As a selfish man will impoverish
his family and often bring them to ruin, so a selfish
king brings ruin on his people and often plunges them
into war.
Example: The selfishness of Achilles, as remarked by
the poet Homer, occasioned a thousand woes to the
Greeks--muri Achaiois alge etheke--(Hom. Il. A. 2).
The selfishness of the late Napoleon Bonaparte
occasioned innumerable wars in Europe and caused him to
perish, himself, in a miserable island--that of Saint Helena in
the Atlantic Ocean.
We see by these examples that we are not to consult
our own interest and ambition, but that we are to
consider the interests of others as well as our own.
George S. Osborne
Athene House, 24 April, 1827
"Think of him writing such a hand, and quoting Greek
too, at his age," the delighted mother said. "Oh, William,"
she added, holding out her hand to the Major, "what a
treasure Heaven has given me in that boy! He is the
comfort of my life--and he is the image of--of him that's
gone!"
"Ought I to be angry with her for being faithful to
him?" William thought. "Ought I to be jealous of my
friend in the grave, or hurt that such a heart as Amelia's
can love only once and for ever? Oh, George, George,
how little you knew the prize you had, though." This
sentiment passed rapidly through William's mind as he
was holding Amelia's hand, whilst the handkerchief was
veiling her eyes.
"Dear friend," she said, pressing the hand which held
hers, "how good, how kind you always have been to me!
See! Papa is stirring. You will go and see Georgy
tomorrow, won't you?"
"Not to-morrow," said poor old Dobbin. "I have
business." He did not like to own that he had not as yet
been to his parents' and his dear sister Anne--a
remissness for which I am sure every well-regulated
person will blame the Major. And presently he took his
leave, leaving his address behind him for Jos, against the
latter's arrival. And so the first day was over, and he
had seen her.
When he got back to the Slaughters', the roast fowl
was of course cold, in which condition he ate it for
supper. And knowing what early hours his family kept, and
that it would be needless to disturb their slumbers at so
late an hour, it is on record, that Major Dobbin treated
himself to half-price at the Haymarket Theatre that
evening, where let us hope he enjoyed himself.
CHAPTER LIX
The Old Piano
The Major's visit left old John Sedley in a great state of
agitation and excitement. His daughter could not induce
him to settle down to his customary occupations or
amusements that night. He passed the evening fumbling
amongst his boxes and desks, untying his papers with
trembling hands, and sorting and arranging them against
Jos's arrival. He had them in the greatest order--his
tapes and his files, his receipts, and his letters with
lawyers and correspondents; the documents relative to
the wine project (which failed from a most unaccountable
accident, after commencing with the most splendid
prospects), the coal project (which only a want of capital
prevented from becoming the most successful scheme
ever put before the public), the patent saw-mills and
sawdust consolidation project, &c., &c. All night, until a
very late hour, he passed in the preparation of these
documents, trembling about from one room to another,
with a quivering candle and shaky hands. Here's the wine
papers, here's the sawdust, here's the coals; here's my
letters to Calcutta and Madras, and replies from Major
Dobbin, C.B., and Mr. Joseph Sedley to the same. "He
shall find no irregularity about ME, Emmy," the old
gentleman said.
Emmy smiled. "I don't think Jos will care about seeing
those papers, Papa," she said.
"You don't know anything about business, my dear,"
answered the sire, shaking his head with an important
air. And it must be confessed that on this point Emmy
was very ignorant, and that is a pity some people are so
knowing. All these twopenny documents arranged on a
side table, old Sedley covered them carefully over with
a clean bandanna handkerchief (one out of Major
Dobbin's lot) and enjoined the maid and landlady of the
house, in the most solemn way, not to disturb those
papers, which were arranged for the arrival of Mr. Joseph
Sedley the next morning, "Mr. Joseph Sedley of the
Honourable East India Company's Bengal Civil Service."
Amelia found him up very early the next morning,
more eager, more hectic, and more shaky than ever. "I
didn't sleep much, Emmy, my dear," he said. "I was
thinking of my poor Bessy. I wish she was alive, to ride
in Jos's carriage once again. She kept her own and
became it very well." And his eyes filled with tears, which
trickled down his furrowed old face. Amelia wiped them
away, and smilingly kissed him, and tied the old man's
neckcloth in a smart bow, and put his brooch into his
best shirt frill, in which, in his Sunday suit of mourning,
he sat from six o'clock in the morning awaiting the
arrival of his son.
However, when the postman made his appearance, the
little party were put out of suspense by the receipt of a
letter from Jos to his sister, who announced that he felt
a little fatigued after his voyage, and should not be able
to move on that day, but that he would leave Southampton
early the next morning and be with his father and
mother at evening. Amelia, as she read out the letter to
her father, paused over the latter word; her brother, it
was clear, did not know what had happened in the family.
Nor could he, for the fact is that, though the Major
rightly suspected that his travelling companion never
would be got into motion in so short a space as twenty-
four hours, and would find some excuse for delaying, yet
Dobbin had not written to Jos to inform him of the
calamity which had befallen the Sedley family, being
occupied in talking with Amelia until long after post-hour.
There are some splendid tailors' shops in the High
Street of Southampton, in the fine plate-glass windows
of which hang gorgeous waistcoats of all sorts, of silk
and velvet, and gold and crimson, and pictures of the
last new fashions, in which those wonderful gentlemen
with quizzing glasses, and holding on to little boys with
the exceeding large eyes and curly hair, ogle ladies in
riding habits prancing by the Statue of Achilles at Apsley
House. Jos, although provided with some of the most
splendid vests that Calcutta could furnish, thought he
could not go to town until he was supplied with one or
two of these garments, and selected a crimson satin,
embroidered with gold butterflies, and a black and red
velvet tartan with white stripes and a rolling collar, with
which, and a rich blue satin stock and a gold pin,
consisting of a five-barred gate with a horseman in pink
enamel jumping over it, he thought he might make his
entry into London with some dignity. For Jos's former
shyness and blundering blushing timidity had given way
to a more candid and courageous self-assertion of his
worth. "I don't care about owning it," Waterloo Sedley
would say to his friends, "I am a dressy man"; and
though rather uneasy if the ladies looked at him at the
Government House balls, and though he blushed and
turned away alarmed under their glances, it was chiefly
from a dread lest they should make love to him that he
avoided them, being averse to marriage altogether. But
there was no such swell in Calcutta as Waterloo Sedley,
I have heard say, and he had the handsomest turn-out,
gave the best bachelor dinners, and had the finest plate
in the whole place.
To make these waistcoats for a man of his size and
dignity took at least a day, part of which he employed in
hiring a servant to wait upon him and his native and in
instructing the agent who cleared his baggage, his boxes,
his books, which he never read, his chests of mangoes,
chutney, and curry-powders, his shawls for presents to
people whom he didn't know as yet, and the rest of his
Persicos apparatus.
At length, he drove leisurely to London on the third
day and in the new waistcoat, the native, with chattering
teeth, shuddering in a shawl on the box by the side of the
new European servant; Jos puffing his pipe at intervals
within and looking so majestic that the little boys cried
Hooray, and many people thought he must be a
Governor-General. HE, I promise, did not decline the
obsequious invitation of the landlords to alight and refresh
himself in the neat country towns. Having partaken of a
copious breakfast, with fish, and rice, and hard eggs, at
Southampton, he had so far rallied at Winchester as to
think a glass of sherry necessary. At Alton he stepped
out of the carriage at his servant's request and imbibed
some of the ale for which the place is famous. At Farnham
he stopped to view the Bishop's Castle and to partake
of a light dinner of stewed eels, veal cutlets, and
French beans, with a bottle of claret. He was cold over
Bagshot Heath, where the native chattered more and
more, and Jos Sahib took some brandy-and-water; in
fact, when he drove into town he was as full of wine,
beer, meat, pickles, cherry-brandy, and tobacco as the
steward's cabin of a steam-packet. It was evening when
his carriage thundered up to the little door in Brompton,
whither the affectionate fellow drove first, and before
hieing to the apartments secured for him by Mr. Dobbin
at the Slaughters'.
All the faces in the street were in the windows; the
little maidservant flew to the wicket-gate; the Mesdames
Clapp looked out from the casement of the ornamented
kitchen; Emmy, in a great flutter, was in the passage
among the hats and coats; and old Sedley in the parlour
inside, shaking all over. Jos descended from the post-
chaise and down the creaking swaying steps in awful
state, supported by the new valet from Southampton and
the shuddering native, whose brown face was now livid
with cold and of the colour of a turkey's gizzard. He
created an immense sensation in the passage presently,
where Mrs. and Miss Clapp, coming perhaps to listen
at the parlour door, found Loll Jewab shaking upon the
hall-bench under the coats, moaning in a strange piteous
way, and showing his yellow eyeballs and white teeth.
For, you see, we have adroitly shut the door upon the
meeting between Jos and the old father and the poor little
gentle sister inside. The old man was very much affected;
so, of course, was his daughter; nor was Jos without
feeling. In that long absence of ten years, the most selfish
will think about home and early ties. Distance sanctifies
both. Long brooding over those lost pleasures exaggerates
their charm and sweetness. Jos was unaffectedly glad to
see and shake the hand of his father, between whom
and himself there had been a coolness--glad to see his
little sister, whom he remembered so pretty and smiling,
and pained at the alteration which time, grief, and
misfortune had made in the shattered old man. Emmy had
come out to the door in her black clothes and whispered
to him of her mother's death, and not to speak of it to
their father. There was no need of this caution, for the
elder Sedley himself began immediately to speak of the
event, and prattled about it, and wept over it plenteously.
It shocked the Indian not a little and made him think of
himself less than the poor fellow was accustomed to do.
The result of the interview must have been very
satisfactory, for when Jos had reascended his post-chaise
and had driven away to his hotel, Emmy embraced her father
tenderly, appealing to him with an air of triumph, and
asking the old man whether she did not always say that
her brother had a good heart?
Indeed, Joseph Sedley, affected by the humble position
in which he found his relations, and in the expansiveness
and overflowing of heart occasioned by the first meeting,
declared that they should never suffer want or
discomfort any more, that he was at home for some time
at any rate, during which his house and everything he
had should be theirs: and that Amelia would look very
pretty at the head of his table--until she would accept
one of her own.
She shook her head sadly and had, as usual, recourse
to the waterworks. She knew what he meant. She and
her young confidante, Miss Mary, had talked over the
matter most fully, the very night of the Major's visit,
beyond which time the impetuous Polly could not refrain
from talking of the discovery which she had made, and
describing the start and tremor of joy by which Major
Dobbin betrayed himself when Mr. Binny passed with his
bride and the Major learned that he had no longer a
rival to fear. "Didn't you see how he shook all over
when you asked if he was married and he said, 'Who told
you those lies?' Oh, M'am," Polly said, "he never kept his
eyes off you, and I'm sure he's grown grey athinking of
you."
But Amelia, looking up at her bed, over which hung
the portraits of her husband and son, told her young
protegee never, never, to speak on that subject again;
that Major Dobbin had been her husband's dearest friend
and her own and George's most kind and affectionate
guardian; that she loved him as a brother--but that a
woman who had been married to such an angel as that,
and she pointed to the wall, could never think of any
other union. Poor Polly sighed: she thought what she
should do if young Mr. Tomkins, at the surgery, who
always looked at her so at church, and who, by those
mere aggressive glances had put her timorous little heart
into such a flutter that she was ready to surrender at
once,--what she should do if he were to die? She knew
he was consumptive, his cheeks were so red and he was
so uncommon thin in the waist.
Not that Emmy, being made aware of the honest
Major's passion, rebuffed him in any way, or felt
displeased with him. Such an attachment from so true and
loyal a gentleman could make no woman angry.
Desdemona was not angry with Cassio, though there is
very little doubt she saw the Lieutenant's partiality for
her (and I for my part believe that many more things
took place in that sad affair than the worthy Moorish
officer ever knew of); why, Miranda was even very kind
to Caliban, and we may be pretty sure for the same
reason. Not that she would encourage him in the least--
the poor uncouth monster--of course not. No more
would Emmy by any means encourage her admirer, the
Major. She would give him that friendly regard, which
so much excellence and fidelity merited; she would treat
him with perfect cordiality and frankness until he made
his proposals, and THEN it would be time enough for her
to speak and to put an end to hopes which never could be
realized.
She slept, therefore, very soundly that evening, after
the conversation with Miss Polly, and was more than
ordinarily happy, in spite of Jos's delaying. "I am glad
he is not going to marry that Miss O'Dowd," she thought.
"Colonel O'Dowd never could have a sister fit for such
an accomplished man as Major William." Who was there
amongst her little circle who would make him a good
wife? Not Miss Binny, she was too old and ill-tempered;
Miss Osborne? too old too. Little Polly was too young.
Mrs. Osborne could not find anybody to suit the Major
before she went to sleep.
The same morning brought Major Dobbin a letter to the
Slaughters' Coffee-house from his friend at Southampton,
begging dear Dob to excuse Jos for being in a rage when
awakened the day before (he had a confounded headache,
and was just in his first sleep), and entreating Dob to
engage comfortable rooms at the Slaughters' for Mr. Sedley
and his servants. The Major had become necessary to
Jos during the voyage. He was attached to him, and hung
upon him. The other passengers were away to London.
Young Ricketts and little Chaffers went away on the
coach that day--Ricketts on the box, and taking the
reins from Botley; the Doctor was off to his family at
Portsea; Bragg gone to town to his co-partners; and the
first mate busy in the unloading of the Ramchunder. Mr.
Joe was very lonely at Southampton, and got the landlord
of the George to take a glass of wine with him that
day, at the very hour at which Major Dobbin was
seated at the table of his father, Sir William, where his
sister found out (for it was impossible for the Major to
tell fibs) that he had been to see Mrs. George Osborne.
Jos was so comfortably situated in St. Martin's Lane, he
could enjoy his hookah there with such perfect ease, and
could swagger down to the theatres, when minded, so
agreeably, that, perhaps, he would have remained
altogether at the Slaughters' had not his friend, the Major,
been at his elbow. That gentleman would not let the
Bengalee rest until he had executed his promise of having
a home for Amelia and his father. Jos was a soft fellow
in anybody's hands, Dobbin most active in anybody's
concerns but his own; the civilian was, therefore, an easy
victim to the guileless arts of this good-natured diplomatist
and was ready to do, to purchase, hire, or relinquish
whatever his friend thought fit. Loll Jewab, of whom the
boys about St. Martin's Lane used to make cruel fun
whenever he showed his dusky countenance in the street, was
sent back to Calcutta in the Lady Kicklebury East
Indiaman, in which Sir William Dobbin had a share, having
previously taught Jos's European the art of preparing
curries, pilaus, and pipes. It was a matter of great delight
and occupation to Jos to superintend the building of a
smart chariot which he and the Major ordered in the
neighbouring Long Acre: and a pair of handsome horses
were jobbed, with which Jos drove about in state in the
park, or to call upon his Indian friends. Amelia was not
seldom by his side on these excursions, when also Major
Dobbin would be seen in the back seat of the carriage.
At other times old Sedley and his daughter took
advantage of it, and Miss Clapp, who frequently
accompanied her friend, had great pleasure in being recognized
as she sat in the carriage, dressed in the famous yellow
shawl, by the young gentleman at the surgery, whose face
might commonly be seen over the window-blinds as she
passed.
Shortly after Jos's first appearance at Brompton, a
dismal scene, indeed, took place at that humble cottage at
which the Sedleys had passed the last ten years of their
life. Jos's carriage (the temporary one, not the chariot
under construction) arrived one day and carried off old
Sedley and his daughter--to return no more. The tears
that were shed by the landlady and the landlady's
daughter at that event were as genuine tears of sorrow as any
that have been outpoured in the course of this history.
In their long acquaintanceship and intimacy they could
not recall a harsh word that had been uttered by Amelia
She had been all sweetness and kindness, always
thankful, always gentle, even when Mrs. Clapp lost her own
temper and pressed for the rent. When the kind creature
was going away for good and all, the landlady reproached
herself bitterly for ever having used a rough expression to
her--how she wept, as they stuck up with wafers on the
window, a paper notifying that the little rooms so long
occupied were to let! They never would have such lodgers
again, that was quite clear. After-life proved the truth of
this melancholy prophecy, and Mrs. Clapp revenged
herself for the deterioration of mankind by levying the most
savage contributions upon the tea-caddies and legs of
mutton of her locataires. Most of them scolded and
grumbled; some of them did not pay; none of them stayed.
The landlady might well regret those old, old friends, who
had left her.
As for Miss Mary, her sorrow at Amelia's departure
was such as I shall not attempt to depict. From childhood
upwards she had been with her daily and had attached
herself so passionately to that dear good lady that when
the grand barouche came to carry her off into splendour,
she fainted in the arms of her friend, who was indeed
scarcely less affected than the good-natured girl. Amelia
loved her like a daughter. During eleven years the girl had
been her constant friend and associate. The separation was
a very painful one indeed to her. But it was of course
arranged that Mary was to come and stay often at the
grand new house whither Mrs. Osborne was going, and
where Mary was sure she would never be so happy as
she had been in their humble cot, as Miss Clapp called it,
in the language of the novels which she loved.
Let us hope she was wrong in her judgement. Poor
Emmy's days of happiness had been very few in that
humble cot. A gloomy Fate had oppressed her there. She
never liked to come back to the house after she had left
it, or to face the landlady who had tyrannized over her
when ill-humoured and unpaid, or when pleased had
treated her with a coarse familiarity scarcely less odious.
Her servility and fulsome compliments when Emmy was
in prosperity were not more to that lady's liking. She
cast about notes of admiration all over the new house,
extolling every article of furniture or ornament; she
fingered Mrs. Osborne's dresses and calculated their price.
Nothing could be too good for that sweet lady, she
vowed and protested. But in the vulgar sycophant who
now paid court to her, Emmy always remembered the
coarse tyrant who had made her miserable many a time,
to whom she had been forced to put up petitions for
time, when the rent was overdue; who cried out at her
extravagance if she bought delicacies for her ailing mother
or father; who had seen her humble and trampled upon
her.
Nobody ever heard of these griefs, which had been
part of our poor little woman's lot in life. She kept them
secret from her father, whose improvidence was the cause
of much of her misery. She had to bear all the blame of
his misdoings, and indeed was so utterly gentle and
humble as to be made by nature for a victim.
I hope she is not to suffer much more of that hard
usage. And, as in all griefs there is said to be some
consolation, I may mention that poor Mary, when left at her
friend's departure in a hysterical condition, was placed
under the medical treatment of the young fellow from
the surgery, under whose care she rallied after a short
period. Emmy, when she went away from Brompton,
endowed Mary with every article of furniture that the house
contained, only taking away her pictures (the two
pictures over the bed) and her piano--that little old piano
which had now passed into a plaintive jingling old age,
but which she loved for reasons of her own. She was a
child when first she played on it, and her parents gave it
her. It had been given to her again since, as the reader
may remember, when her father's house was gone to ruin
and the instrument was recovered out of the wreck.
Major Dobbin was exceedingly pleased when, as he
was superintending the arrangements of Jos's new house
--which the Major insisted should be very handsome and
comfortable--the cart arrived from Brompton, bringing
the trunks and bandboxes of the emigrants from that
village, and with them the old piano. Amelia would have it
up in her sitting-room, a neat little apartment on the
second floor, adjoining her father's chamber, and where
the old gentleman sat commonly of evenings.
When the men appeared then bearing this old music-
box, and Amelia gave orders that it should be placed
in the chamber aforesaid, Dobbin was quite elated. "I'm
glad you've kept it," he said in a very sentimental
manner. "I was afraid you didn't care about it."
"I value it more than anything I have in the world,"
said Amelia.
"Do you, Amelia?" cried the Major. The fact was,
as he had bought it himself, though he never said
anything about it, it never entered into his head to suppose
that Emmy should think anybody else was the purchaser,
and as a matter of course he fancied that she knew the
gift came from him. "Do you, Amelia?" he said; and
the question, the great question of all, was trembling
on his lips, when Emmy replied--
"Can I do otherwise?--did not he give it me?"
"I did not know," said poor old Dob, and his
countenance fell.
Emmy did not note the circumstance at the time, nor
take immediate heed of the very dismal expression which
honest Dobbin's countenance assumed, but she thought
of it afterwards. And then it struck her, with inexpressible
pain and mortification too, that it was William who
was the giver of the piano, and not George, as she had
fancied. It was not George's gift; the only one which she
had received from her lover, as she thought--the thing
she had cherished beyond all others--her dearest relic
and prize. She had spoken to it about George; played
his favourite airs upon it; sat for long evening hours,
touching, to the best of her simple art, melancholy
harmonies on the keys, and weeping over them in silence.
It was not George's relic. It was valueless now. The next
time that old Sedley asked her to play, she said it was
shockingly out of tune, that she had a headache, that
she couldn't play.
Then, according to her custom, she rebuked herself
for her pettishness and ingratitude and determined to
make a reparation to honest William for the slight she
had not expressed to him, but had felt for his piano.
A few days afterwards, as they were seated in the
drawing-room, where Jos had fallen asleep with great comfort
after dinner, Amelia said with rather a faltering voice
to Major Dobbin--
"I have to beg your pardon for something."
"About what?" said he.
"About--about that little square piano. I never thanked
you for it when you gave it me, many, many years ago,
before I was married. I thought somebody else had given
it. Thank you, William." She held out her hand, but the
poor little woman's heart was bleeding; and as for her
eyes, of course they were at their work.
But William could hold no more. "Amelia, Amelia,"
he said, "I did buy it for you. I loved you then as I
do now. I must tell you. I think I loved you from the
first minute that I saw you, when George brought me to
your house, to show me the Amelia whom he was
engaged to. You were but a girl, in white, with large
ringlets; you came down singing--do you remember?--
and we went to Vauxhall. Since then I have thought of
but one woman in the world, and that was you. I
think there is no hour in the day has passed for twelve
years that I haven't thought of you. I came to tell you
this before I went to India, but you did not care, and
I hadn't the heart to speak. You did not care whether
I stayed or went."
"I was very ungrateful," Amelia said.
"No, only indifferent," Dobbin continued desperately.
"I have nothing to make a woman to be otherwise. I
know what you are feeling now. You are hurt in your
heart at the discovery about the piano, and that it came
from me and not from George. I forgot, or I should
never have spoken of it so. It is for me to ask your
pardon for being a fool for a moment, and thinking
that years of constancy and devotion might have pleaded
with you."
"It is you who are cruel now," Amelia said with some
spirit. "George is my husband, here and in heaven. How
could I love any other but him? I am his now as when
you first saw me, dear William. It was he who told me
how good and generous you were, and who taught me
to love you as a brother. Have you not been everything
to me and my boy? Our dearest, truest, kindest friend
and protector? Had you come a few months sooner
perhaps you might have spared me that--that dreadful
parting. Oh, it nearly killed me, William--but you didn't
come, though I wished and prayed for you to come,
and they took him too away from me. Isn't he a noble
boy, William? Be his friend still and mine"--and here her
voice broke, and she hid her face on his shoulder.
The Major folded his arms round her, holding her to
him as if she was a child, and kissed her head. "I will
not change, dear Amelia," he said. "I ask for no more
than your love. I think I would not have it otherwise.
Only let me stay near you and see you often."
"Yes, often," Amelia said. And so William was at
liberty to look and long--as the poor boy at school
who has no money may sigh after the contents of the
tart-woman's tray.
CHAPTER LX
Returns to the Genteel World
Good fortune now begins to smile upon Amelia. We are
glad to get her out of that low sphere in which she has
been creeping hitherto and introduce her into a polite
circle--not so grand and refined as that in which our
other female friend, Mrs. Becky, has appeared, but still
having no small pretensions to gentility and fashion. Jos's
friends were all from the three presidencies, and his new
house was in the comfortable Anglo-Indian district of
which Moira Place is the centre. Minto Square, Great
Clive Street, Warren Street, Hastings Street, Ochterlony
Place, Plassy Square, Assaye Terrace ("gardens" was
a felicitous word not applied to stucco houses with
asphalt terraces in front, so early as 1827)--who does not
know these respectable abodes of the retired Indian
aristocracy, and the quarter which Mr. Wenham calls the
Black Hole, in a word? Jos's position in life was not grand
enough to entitle him to a house in Moira Place, where
none can live but retired Members of Council, and
partners of Indian firms (who break, after having settled a
hundred thousand pounds on their wives, and retire into
comparative penury to a country place and four thousand
a year); he engaged a comfortable house of a
second- or third-rate order in Gillespie Street, purchasing the
carpets, costly mirrors, and handsome and appropriate
planned furniture by Seddons from the assignees of Mr.
Scape, lately admitted partner into the great Calcutta
House of Fogle, Fake, and Cracksman, in which poor
Scape had embarked seventy thousand pounds, the
earnings of a long and honourable life, taking Fake's place,
who retired to a princely park in Sussex (the Fogles have
been long out of the firm, and Sir Horace Fogle is about
to be raised to the peerage as Baron Bandanna)--admitted,
I say, partner into the great agency house of Fogle
and Fake two years before it failed for a million and
plunged half the Indian public into misery and ruin.
Scape, ruined, honest, and broken-hearted at sixty-five
years of age, went out to Calcutta to wind up the affairs
of the house. Walter Scape was withdrawn from Eton
and put into a merchant's house. Florence Scape, Fanny
Scape, and their mother faded away to Boulogne, and
will be heard of no more. To be brief, Jos stepped in and
bought their carpets and sideboards and admired
himself in the mirrors which had reflected their kind
handsome faces. The Scape tradesmen, all honourably paid,
left their cards, and were eager to supply the new
household. The large men in white waistcoats who waited at
Scape's dinners, greengrocers, bank-porters, and
milkmen in their private capacity, left their addresses and
ingratiated themselves with the butler. Mr. Chummy, the
chimney-purifier, who had swept the last three families,
tried to coax the butler and the boy under him, whose
duty it was to go out covered with buttons and with
stripes down his trousers, for the protection of Mrs.
Amelia whenever she chose to walk abroad.
It was a modest establishment. The butler was Jos's
valet also, and never was more drunk than a butler in a
small family should be who has a proper regard for his
master's wine. Emmy was supplied with a maid, grown on
Sir William Dobbin's suburban estate; a good girl, whose
kindness and humility disarmed Mrs. Osborne, who was
at first terrified at the idea of having a servant to wait
upon herself, who did not in the least know how to use
one, and who always spoke to domestics with the most
reverential politeness. But this maid was very useful in
the family, in dexterously tending old Mr. Sedley, who
kept almost entirely to his own quarter of the house
and never mixed in any of the gay doings which took
place there.
Numbers of people came to see Mrs. Osborne. Lady
Dobbin and daughters were delighted at her change of
fortune, and waited upon her. Miss Osborne from Russell
Square came in her grand chariot with the flaming
hammer-cloth emblazoned with the Leeds arms. Jos was
reported to be immensely rich. Old Osborne had no
objection that Georgy should inherit his uncle's property as
well as his own. "Damn it, we will make a man of the
feller," he said; "and I'll see him in Parliament before I
die. You may go and see his mother, Miss O., though I'll
never set eyes on her": and Miss Osborne came. Emmy,
you may be sure, was very glad to see her, and so be
brought nearer to George. That young fellow was
allowed to come much more frequently than before to visit
his mother. He dined once or twice a week in Gillespie
Street and bullied the servants and his relations there, just
as he did in Russell Square.
He was always respectful to Major Dobbin, however,
and more modest in his demeanour when that gentleman
was present. He was a clever lad and afraid of the
Major. George could not help admiring his friend's
simplicity, his good humour, his various learning quietly
imparted, his general love of truth and justice. He had met
no such man as yet in the course of his experience, and
he had an instinctive liking for a gentleman. He hung
fondly by his godfather's side, and it was his delight to
walk in the parks and hear Dobbin talk. William told
George about his father, about India and Waterloo, about
everything but himself. When George was more than
usually pert and conceited, the Major made jokes at him,
which Mrs. Osborne thought very cruel. One day, taking
him to the play, and the boy declining to go into the pit
because it was vulgar, the Major took him to the boxes,
left him there, and went down himself to the pit. He
had not been seated there very long before he felt an arm
thrust under his and a dandy little hand in a kid glove
squeezing his arm. George had seen the absurdity of his
ways and come down from the upper region. A tender
laugh of benevolence lighted up old Dobbin's face and
eyes as he looked at the repentant little prodigal. He
loved the boy, as he did everything that belonged to
Amelia. How charmed she was when she heard of this
instance of George's goodness! Her eyes looked more
kindly on Dobbin than they ever had done. She blushed,
he thought, after looking at him so.
Georgy never tired of his praises of the Major to his
mother. "I like him, Mamma, because he knows such lots
of things; and he ain't like old Veal, who is always
bragging and using such long words, don't you know? The
chaps call him 'Longtail' at school. I gave him the name;
ain't it capital? But Dob reads Latin like English, and
French and that; and when we go out together he tells me
stories about my Papa, and never about himself; though I
heard Colonel Buckler, at Grandpapa's, say that he was
one of the bravest officers in the army, and had
distinguished himself ever so much. Grandpapa was quite
surprised, and said, 'THAT feller! Why, I didn't think he could
say Bo to a goose'--but l know he could, couldn't he,
Mamma?"
Emmy laughed: she thought it was very likely the
Major could do thus much.
If there was a sincere liking between George and the
Major, it must be confessed that between the boy and his
uncle no great love existed. George had got a way of
blowing out his cheeks, and putting his hands in his
waistcoat pockets, and saying, "God bless my soul, you don't
say so," so exactly after the fashion of old Jos that it was
impossible to refrain from laughter. The servants would
explode at dinner if the lad, asking for something which
wasn't at table, put on that countenance and used that
favourite phrase. Even Dobbin would shoot out a sudden
peal at the boy's mimicry. If George did not mimic his
uncle to his face, it was only by Dobbin's rebukes and
Amelia's terrified entreaties that the little scapegrace was
induced to desist. And the worthy civilian being haunted
by a dim consciousness that the lad thought him an ass,
and was inclined to turn him into ridicule, used to be
extremely timorous and, of course, doubly pompous and
dignified in the presence of Master Georgy. When it was
announced that the young gentleman was expected in
Gillespie Street to dine with his mother, Mr. Jos
commonly found that he had an engagement at the Club.
Perhaps nobody was much grieved at his absence. On
those days Mr. Sedley would commonly be induced to
come out from his place of refuge in the upper stories,
and there would be a small family party, whereof Major
Dobbin pretty generally formed one. He was the ami de
la maison--old Sedley's friend, Emmy's friend, Georgy's
friend, Jos's counsel and adviser. "He might almost as
well be at Madras for anything WE see of him," Miss
Ann Dobbin remarked at Camberwell. Ah! Miss Ann, did
it not strike you that it was not YOU whom the Major
wanted to marry?
Joseph Sedley then led a life of dignified otiosity such
as became a person of his eminence. His very first point,
of course, was to become a member of the Oriental Club,
where he spent his mornings in the company of his
brother Indians, where he dined, or whence he brought
home men to dine.
Amelia had to receive and entertain these gentlemen
and their ladies. From these she heard how soon Smith
would be in Council; how many lacs Jones had brought
home with him, how Thomson's House in London had
refused the bills drawn by Thomson, Kibobjee, and Co.,
the Bombay House, and how it was thought the Calcutta
House must go too; how very imprudent, to say the
least of it, Mrs. Brown's conduct (wife of Brown of the
Ahmednuggur Irregulars) had been with young Swankey
of the Body Guard, sitting up with him on deck until all
hours, and losing themselves as they were riding out at
the Cape; how Mrs. Hardyman had had out her thirteen
sisters, daughters of a country curate, the Rev: Felix
Rabbits, and married eleven of them, seven high up in
the service; how Hornby was wild because his wife
would stay in Europe, and Trotter was appointed
Collector at Ummerapoora. This and similar talk took place
at the grand dinners all round. They had the same
conversation; the same silver dishes; the same saddles of
mutton, boiled turkeys, and entrees. Politics set in a
short time after dessert, when the ladies retired upstairs
and talked about their complaints and their children.
Mutato nomine, it is all the same. Don't the barristers'
wives talk about Circuit? Don't the soldiers' ladies
gossip about the Regiment? Don't the clergymen's ladies
discourse about Sunday-schools and who takes whose duty?
Don't the very greatest ladies of all talk about that small
clique of persons to whom they belong? And why should
our Indian friends not have their own conversation?--
only I admit it is slow for the laymen whose fate it
sometimes is to sit by and listen.
Before long Emmy had a visiting-book, and was driving
about regularly in a carriage, calling upon Lady Bludyer
(wife of Major-General Sir Roger Bludyer, K.C.B., Bengal
Army); Lady Huff, wife of Sir G. Huff, Bombay ditto;
Mrs. Pice, the Lady of Pice the Director, &c. We are not
long in using ourselves to changes in life. That carriage
came round to Gillespie Street every day; that buttony
boy sprang up and down from the box with Emmy's and
Jos's visiting-cards; at stated hours Emmy and the
carriage went for Jos to the Club and took him an airing;
or, putting old Sedley into the vehicle, she drove the old
man round the Regent's Park. The lady's maid and the
chariot, the visiting-book and the buttony page, became
soon as familiar to Amelia as the humble routine of
Brompton. She accommodated herself to one as to the
other. If Fate had ordained that she should be a Duchess,
she would even have done that duty too. She was voted, in
Jos's female society, rather a pleasing young person--
not much in her, but pleasing, and that sort of thing.
The men, as usual, liked her artless kindness and
simple refined demeanour. The gallant young Indian dandies
at home on furlough--immense dandies these--chained
and moustached--driving in tearing cabs, the pillars of
the theatres, living at West End hotels--nevertheless
admired Mrs. Osborne, liked to bow to her carriage in the
park, and to be admitted to have the honour of paying
her a morning visit. Swankey of the Body Guard
himself, that dangerous youth, and the greatest buck of all
the Indian army now on leave, was one day discovered
by Major Dobbin tete-a-tete with Amelia, and
describing the sport of pig-sticking to her with great humour and
eloquence; and he spoke afterwards of a d--d king's
officer that's always hanging about the house--a long,
thin, queer-looking, oldish fellow--a dry fellow though,
that took the shine out of a man in the talking line.
Had the Major possessed a little more personal vanity
he would have been jealous of so dangerous a young
buck as that fascinating Bengal Captain. But Dobbin was
of too simple and generous a nature to have any doubts
about Amelia. He was glad that the young men should
pay her respect, and that others should admire her. Ever
since her womanhood almost, had she not been
persecuted and undervalued? It pleased him to see how
kindness bought out her good qualities and how her spirits
gently rose with her prosperity. Any person who
appreciated her paid a compliment to the Major's good
judgement--that is, if a man may be said to have good
judgement who is under the influence of Love's delusion.
After Jos went to Court, which we may be sure he
did as a loyal subject of his Sovereign (showing himself
in his full court suit at the Club, whither Dobbin came
to fetch him in a very shabby old uniform) he who had
always been a staunch Loyalist and admirer of George
IV, became such a tremendous Tory and pillar of the
State that he was for having Amelia to go to a
Drawing-room, too. He somehow had worked himself up
to believe that he was implicated in the maintenance of the
public welfare and that the Sovereign would not be happy
unless Jos Sedley and his family appeared to rally round
him at St. James's.
Emmy laughed. "Shall I wear the family diamonds,
Jos?" she said.
"I wish you would let me buy you some," thought the
Major. "I should like to see any that were too good for
you."
CHAPTER LXI
In Which Two Lights are Put Out
There came a day when the round of decorous pleasures
and solemn gaieties in which Mr. Jos Sedley's family
indulged was interrupted by an event which happens in
most houses. As you ascend the staircase of your house
from the drawing towards the bedroom floors, you may
have remarked a little arch in the wall right before you,
which at once gives light to the stair which leads from
the second story to the third (where the nursery and
servants' chambers commonly are) and serves for
another purpose of utility, of which the undertaker's men
can give you a notion. They rest the coffins upon that
arch, or pass them through it so as not to disturb in any
unseemly manner the cold tenant slumbering within the
black ark.
That second-floor arch in a London house, looking up
and down the well of the staircase and commanding the
main thoroughfare by which the inhabitants are passing;
by which cook lurks down before daylight to scour her
pots and pans in the kitchen; by which young master
stealthily ascends, having left his boots in the hall, and
let himself in after dawn from a jolly night at the Club;
down which miss comes rustling in fresh ribbons and
spreading muslins, brilliant and beautiful, and prepared
for conquest and the ball; or Master Tommy slides,
preferring the banisters for a mode of conveyance, and
disdaining danger and the stair; down which the mother is
fondly carried smiling in her strong husband's arms, as
he steps steadily step by step, and followed by the monthly
nurse, on the day when the medical man has pronounced
that the charming patient may go downstairs;
up which John lurks to bed, yawning, with a sputtering
tallow candle, and to gather up before sunrise the boots
which are awaiting him in the passages--that stair, up or
down which babies are carried, old people are helped,
guests are marshalled to the ball, the parson walks to the
christening, the doctor to the sick-room, and the
undertaker's men to the upper floor--what a memento of Life,
Death, and Vanity it is--that arch and stair--if you
choose to consider it, and sit on the landing, looking up
and down the well! The doctor will come up to us too
for the last time there, my friend in motley. The nurse
will look in at the curtains, and you take no notice--and
then she will fling open the windows for a little and let in
the air. Then they will pull down all the front blinds of the
house and live in the back rooms--then they will send
for the lawyer and other men in black, &c. Your comedy
and mine will have been played then, and we shall be
removed, oh, how far, from the trumpets, and the shouting,
and the posture-making. If we are gentlefolks they
will put hatchments over our late domicile, with gilt
cherubim, and mottoes stating that there is "Quiet in
Heaven." Your son will new furnish the house, or
perhaps let it, and go into a more modern quarter; your
name will be among the "Members Deceased" in the