Vanity Fair (44 page)

Dobbin walked home to his old quarters and the Slaughters', thinking
very likely that it would be delightful to be in that hackney-coach,
along with Mrs. Osborne. George was evidently of quite a different
taste; for when he had taken wine enough, he went off to half-price
at the play, to see Mr. Kean perform in Shylock. Captain Osborne
was a great lover of the drama, and had himself performed high-
comedy characters with great distinction in several garrison
theatrical entertainments. Jos slept on until long after dark, when
he woke up with a start at the motions of his servant, who was
removing and emptying the decanters on the table; and the hackney-
coach stand was again put into requisition for a carriage to convey
this stout hero to his lodgings and bed.

Mrs. Sedley, you may be sure, clasped her daughter to her heart with
all maternal eagerness and affection, running out of the door as the
carriage drew up before the little garden-gate, to welcome the
weeping, trembling, young bride. Old Mr. Clapp, who was in his
shirt-sleeves, trimming the garden-plot, shrank back alarmed. The
Irish servant-lass rushed up from the kitchen and smiled a "God
bless you." Amelia could hardly walk along the flags and up the
steps into the parlour.

How the floodgates were opened, and mother and daughter wept, when
they were together embracing each other in this sanctuary, may
readily be imagined by every reader who possesses the least
sentimental turn. When don't ladies weep? At what occasion of joy,
sorrow, or other business of life, and, after such an event as a
marriage, mother and daughter were surely at liberty to give way to
a sensibility which is as tender as it is refreshing. About a
question of marriage I have seen women who hate each other kiss and
cry together quite fondly. How much more do they feel when they
love! Good mothers are married over again at their daughters'
weddings: and as for subsequent events, who does not know how ultra-
maternal grandmothers are?—in fact a woman, until she is a
grandmother, does not often really know what to be a mother is. Let
us respect Amelia and her mamma whispering and whimpering and
laughing and crying in the parlour and the twilight. Old Mr. Sedley
did. HE had not divined who was in the carriage when it drove up.
He had not flown out to meet his daughter, though he kissed her very
warmly when she entered the room (where he was occupied, as usual,
with his papers and tapes and statements of accounts), and after
sitting with the mother and daughter for a short time, he very
wisely left the little apartment in their possession.

George's valet was looking on in a very supercilious manner at Mr.
Clapp in his shirt-sleeves, watering his rose-bushes. He took off
his hat, however, with much condescension to Mr. Sedley, who asked
news about his son-in-law, and about Jos's carriage, and whether his
horses had been down to Brighton, and about that infernal traitor
Bonaparty, and the war; until the Irish maid-servant came with a
plate and a bottle of wine, from which the old gentleman insisted
upon helping the valet. He gave him a half-guinea too, which the
servant pocketed with a mixture of wonder and contempt. "To the
health of your master and mistress, Trotter," Mr. Sedley said, "and
here's something to drink your health when you get home, Trotter."

There were but nine days past since Amelia had left that little
cottage and home—and yet how far off the time seemed since she had
bidden it farewell. What a gulf lay between her and that past life.
She could look back to it from her present standing-place, and
contemplate, almost as another being, the young unmarried girl
absorbed in her love, having no eyes but for one special object,
receiving parental affection if not ungratefully, at least
indifferently, and as if it were her due—her whole heart and
thoughts bent on the accomplishment of one desire. The review of
those days, so lately gone yet so far away, touched her with shame;
and the aspect of the kind parents filled her with tender remorse.
Was the prize gained—the heaven of life—and the winner still
doubtful and unsatisfied? As his hero and heroine pass the
matrimonial barrier, the novelist generally drops the curtain, as if
the drama were over then: the doubts and struggles of life ended:
as if, once landed in the marriage country, all were green and
pleasant there: and wife and husband had nothing to do but to link
each other's arms together, and wander gently downwards towards old
age in happy and perfect fruition. But our little Amelia was just
on the bank of her new country, and was already looking anxiously
back towards the sad friendly figures waving farewell to her across
the stream, from the other distant shore.

In honour of the young bride's arrival, her mother thought it
necessary to prepare I don't know what festive entertainment, and
after the first ebullition of talk, took leave of Mrs. George
Osborne for a while, and dived down to the lower regions of the
house to a sort of kitchen-parlour (occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Clapp,
and in the evening, when her dishes were washed and her curl-papers
removed, by Miss Flannigan, the Irish servant), there to take
measures for the preparing of a magnificent ornamented tea. All
people have their ways of expressing kindness, and it seemed to Mrs.
Sedley that a muffin and a quantity of orange marmalade spread out
in a little cut-glass saucer would be peculiarly agreeable
refreshments to Amelia in her most interesting situation.

While these delicacies were being transacted below, Amelia, leaving
the drawing-room, walked upstairs and found herself, she scarce knew
how, in the little room which she had occupied before her marriage,
and in that very chair in which she had passed so many bitter hours.
She sank back in its arms as if it were an old friend; and fell to
thinking over the past week, and the life beyond it. Already to be
looking sadly and vaguely back: always to be pining for something
which, when obtained, brought doubt and sadness rather than
pleasure; here was the lot of our poor little creature and harmless
lost wanderer in the great struggling crowds of Vanity Fair.

Here she sate, and recalled to herself fondly that image of George
to which she had knelt before marriage. Did she own to herself how
different the real man was from that superb young hero whom she had
worshipped? It requires many, many years—and a man must be very
bad indeed—before a woman's pride and vanity will let her own to
such a confession. Then Rebecca's twinkling green eyes and baleful
smile lighted upon her, and filled her with dismay. And so she sate
for awhile indulging in her usual mood of selfish brooding, in that
very listless melancholy attitude in which the honest maid-servant
had found her, on the day when she brought up the letter in which
George renewed his offer of marriage.

She looked at the little white bed, which had been hers a few days
before, and thought she would like to sleep in it that night, and
wake, as formerly, with her mother smiling over her in the morning:
Then she thought with terror of the great funereal damask pavilion
in the vast and dingy state bedroom, which was awaiting her at the
grand hotel in Cavendish Square. Dear little white bed! how many a
long night had she wept on its pillow! How she had despaired and
hoped to die there; and now were not all her wishes accomplished,
and the lover of whom she had despaired her own for ever? Kind
mother! how patiently and tenderly she had watched round that bed!
She went and knelt down by the bedside; and there this wounded and
timorous, but gentle and loving soul, sought for consolation, where
as yet, it must be owned, our little girl had but seldom looked for
it. Love had been her faith hitherto; and the sad, bleeding
disappointed heart began to feel the want of another consoler.

Have we a right to repeat or to overhear her prayers? These,
brother, are secrets, and out of the domain of Vanity Fair, in which
our story lies.

But this may be said, that when the tea was finally announced, our
young lady came downstairs a great deal more cheerful; that she did
not despond, or deplore her fate, or think about George's coldness,
or Rebecca's eyes, as she had been wont to do of late. She went
downstairs, and kissed her father and mother, and talked to the old
gentleman, and made him more merry than he had been for many a day.
She sate down at the piano which Dobbin had bought for her, and sang
over all her father's favourite old songs. She pronounced the tea
to be excellent, and praised the exquisite taste in which the
marmalade was arranged in the saucers. And in determining to make
everybody else happy, she found herself so; and was sound asleep in
the great funereal pavilion, and only woke up with a smile when
George arrived from the theatre.

For the next day, George had more important "business" to transact
than that which took him to see Mr. Kean in Shylock. Immediately on
his arrival in London he had written off to his father's solicitors,
signifying his royal pleasure that an interview should take place
between them on the morrow. His hotel bill, losses at billiards and
cards to Captain Crawley had almost drained the young man's purse,
which wanted replenishing before he set out on his travels, and he
had no resource but to infringe upon the two thousand pounds which
the attorneys were commissioned to pay over to him. He had a
perfect belief in his own mind that his father would relent before
very long. How could any parent be obdurate for a length of time
against such a paragon as he was? If his mere past and personal
merits did not succeed in mollifying his father, George determined
that he would distinguish himself so prodigiously in the ensuing
campaign that the old gentleman must give in to him. And if not?
Bah! the world was before him. His luck might change at cards, and
there was a deal of spending in two thousand pounds.

So he sent off Amelia once more in a carriage to her mamma, with
strict orders and carte blanche to the two ladies to purchase
everything requisite for a lady of Mrs. George Osborne's fashion,
who was going on a foreign tour. They had but one day to complete
the outfit, and it may be imagined that their business therefore
occupied them pretty fully. In a carriage once more, bustling about
from milliner to linen-draper, escorted back to the carriage by
obsequious shopmen or polite owners, Mrs. Sedley was herself again
almost, and sincerely happy for the first time since their
misfortunes. Nor was Mrs. Amelia at all above the pleasure of
shopping, and bargaining, and seeing and buying pretty things.
(Would any man, the most philosophic, give twopence for a woman who
was?) She gave herself a little treat, obedient to her husband's
orders, and purchased a quantity of lady's gear, showing a great
deal of taste and elegant discernment, as all the shopfolks said.

And about the war that was ensuing, Mrs. Osborne was not much
alarmed; Bonaparty was to be crushed almost without a struggle.
Margate packets were sailing every day, filled with men of fashion
and ladies of note, on their way to Brussels and Ghent. People were
going not so much to a war as to a fashionable tour. The newspapers
laughed the wretched upstart and swindler to scorn. Such a Corsican
wretch as that withstand the armies of Europe and the genius of the
immortal Wellington! Amelia held him in utter contempt; for it
needs not to be said that this soft and gentle creature took her
opinions from those people who surrounded her, such fidelity being
much too humble-minded to think for itself. Well, in a word, she and
her mother performed a great day's shopping, and she acquitted
herself with considerable liveliness and credit on this her first
appearance in the genteel world of London.

George meanwhile, with his hat on one side, his elbows squared, and
his swaggering martial air, made for Bedford Row, and stalked into
the attorney's offices as if he was lord of every pale-faced clerk
who was scribbling there. He ordered somebody to inform Mr. Higgs
that Captain Osborne was waiting, in a fierce and patronizing way,
as if the pekin of an attorney, who had thrice his brains, fifty
times his money, and a thousand times his experience, was a wretched
underling who should instantly leave all his business in life to
attend on the Captain's pleasure. He did not see the sneer of
contempt which passed all round the room, from the first clerk to
the articled gents, from the articled gents to the ragged writers
and white-faced runners, in clothes too tight for them, as he sate
there tapping his boot with his cane, and thinking what a parcel of
miserable poor devils these were. The miserable poor devils knew
all about his affairs. They talked about them over their pints of
beer at their public-house clubs to other clerks of a night. Ye
gods, what do not attorneys and attorneys' clerks know in London!
Nothing is hidden from their inquisition, and their families mutely
rule our city.

Perhaps George expected, when he entered Mr. Higgs's apartment, to
find that gentleman commissioned to give him some message of
compromise or conciliation from his father; perhaps his haughty and
cold demeanour was adopted as a sign of his spirit and resolution:
but if so, his fierceness was met by a chilling coolness and
indifference on the attorney's part, that rendered swaggering
absurd. He pretended to be writing at a paper, when the Captain
entered. "Pray, sit down, sir," said he, "and I will attend to your
little affair in a moment. Mr. Poe, get the release papers, if you
please"; and then he fell to writing again.

Poe having produced those papers, his chief calculated the amount of
two thousand pounds stock at the rate of the day; and asked Captain
Osborne whether he would take the sum in a cheque upon the bankers,
or whether he should direct the latter to purchase stock to that
amount. "One of the late Mrs. Osborne's trustees is out of town,"
he said indifferently, "but my client wishes to meet your wishes,
and have done with the business as quick as possible."