Vanity Fair (46 page)

But all the men, like good fellows as they were, rallied round their
comrade's pretty wife, and paid her their court with soldierly
gallantry. She had a little triumph, which flushed her spirits and
made her eyes sparkle. George was proud of her popularity, and
pleased with the manner (which was very gay and graceful, though
naive and a little timid) with which she received the gentlemen's
attentions, and answered their compliments. And he in his uniform—
how much handsomer he was than any man in the room! She felt that
he was affectionately watching her, and glowed with pleasure at his
kindness. "I will make all his friends welcome," she resolved in
her heart. "I will love all as I love him. I will always try and
be gay and good-humoured and make his home happy."

The regiment indeed adopted her with acclamation. The Captains
approved, the Lieutenants applauded, the Ensigns admired. Old
Cutler, the Doctor, made one or two jokes, which, being
professional, need not be repeated; and Cackle, the Assistant M.D.
of Edinburgh, condescended to examine her upon leeterature, and
tried her with his three best French quotations. Young Stubble went
about from man to man whispering, "Jove, isn't she a pretty gal?"
and never took his eyes off her except when the negus came in.

As for Captain Dobbin, he never so much as spoke to her during the
whole evening. But he and Captain Porter of the 150th took home Jos
to the hotel, who was in a very maudlin state, and had told his
tiger-hunt story with great effect, both at the mess-table and at
the soiree, to Mrs. O'Dowd in her turban and bird of paradise.
Having put the Collector into the hands of his servant, Dobbin
loitered about, smoking his cigar before the inn door. George had
meanwhile very carefully shawled his wife, and brought her away from
Mrs. O'Dowd's after a general handshaking from the young officers,
who accompanied her to the fly, and cheered that vehicle as it drove
off. So Amelia gave Dobbin her little hand as she got out of the
carriage, and rebuked him smilingly for not having taken any notice
of her all night.

The Captain continued that deleterious amusement of smoking, long
after the inn and the street were gone to bed. He watched the
lights vanish from George's sitting-room windows, and shine out in
the bedroom close at hand. It was almost morning when he returned
to his own quarters. He could hear the cheering from the ships in
the river, where the transports were already taking in their cargoes
preparatory to dropping down the Thames.

In Which Amelia Invades the Low Countries

The regiment with its officers was to be transported in ships
provided by His Majesty's government for the occasion: and in two
days after the festive assembly at Mrs. O'Dowd's apartments, in the
midst of cheering from all the East India ships in the river, and
the military on shore, the band playing "God Save the King," the
officers waving their hats, and the crews hurrahing gallantly, the
transports went down the river and proceeded under convoy to Ostend.
Meanwhile the gallant Jos had agreed to escort his sister and the
Major's wife, the bulk of whose goods and chattels, including the
famous bird of paradise and turban, were with the regimental
baggage: so that our two heroines drove pretty much unencumbered to
Ramsgate, where there were plenty of packets plying, in one of which
they had a speedy passage to Ostend.

That period of Jos's life which now ensued was so full of incident,
that it served him for conversation for many years after, and even
the tiger-hunt story was put aside for more stirring narratives
which he had to tell about the great campaign of Waterloo. As soon
as he had agreed to escort his sister abroad, it was remarked that
he ceased shaving his upper lip. At Chatham he followed the parades
and drills with great assiduity. He listened with the utmost
attention to the conversation of his brother officers (as he called
them in after days sometimes), and learned as many military names as
he could. In these studies the excellent Mrs. O'Dowd was of great
assistance to him; and on the day finally when they embarked on
board the Lovely Rose, which was to carry them to their destination,
he made his appearance in a braided frock-coat and duck trousers,
with a foraging cap ornamented with a smart gold band. Having his
carriage with him, and informing everybody on board confidentially
that he was going to join the Duke of Wellington's army, folks
mistook him for a great personage, a commissary-general, or a
government courier at the very least.

He suffered hugely on the voyage, during which the ladies were
likewise prostrate; but Amelia was brought to life again as the
packet made Ostend, by the sight of the transports conveying her
regiment, which entered the harbour almost at the same time with the
Lovely Rose. Jos went in a collapsed state to an inn, while Captain
Dobbin escorted the ladies, and then busied himself in freeing Jos's
carriage and luggage from the ship and the custom-house, for Mr. Jos
was at present without a servant, Osborne's man and his own pampered
menial having conspired together at Chatham, and refused point-blank
to cross the water. This revolt, which came very suddenly, and on
the last day, so alarmed Mr. Sedley, junior, that he was on the
point of giving up the expedition, but Captain Dobbin (who made
himself immensely officious in the business, Jos said), rated him
and laughed at him soundly: the mustachios were grown in advance,
and Jos finally was persuaded to embark. In place of the well-bred
and well-fed London domestics, who could only speak English, Dobbin
procured for Jos's party a swarthy little Belgian servant who could
speak no language at all; but who, by his bustling behaviour, and by
invariably addressing Mr. Sedley as "My lord," speedily acquired
that gentleman's favour. Times are altered at Ostend now; of the
Britons who go thither, very few look like lords, or act like those
members of our hereditary aristocracy. They seem for the most part
shabby in attire, dingy of linen, lovers of billiards and brandy,
and cigars and greasy ordinaries.

But it may be said as a rule, that every Englishman in the Duke of
Wellington's army paid his way. The remembrance of such a fact
surely becomes a nation of shopkeepers. It was a blessing for a
commerce-loving country to be overrun by such an army of customers:
and to have such creditable warriors to feed. And the country which
they came to protect is not military. For a long period of history
they have let other people fight there. When the present writer
went to survey with eagle glance the field of Waterloo, we asked the
conductor of the diligence, a portly warlike-looking veteran,
whether he had been at the battle. "Pas si bete"—such an answer
and sentiment as no Frenchman would own to—was his reply. But, on
the other hand, the postilion who drove us was a Viscount, a son of
some bankrupt Imperial General, who accepted a pennyworth of beer on
the road. The moral is surely a good one.

This flat, flourishing, easy country never could have looked more
rich and prosperous than in that opening summer of 1815, when its
green fields and quiet cities were enlivened by multiplied red-
coats: when its wide chaussees swarmed with brilliant English
equipages: when its great canal-boats, gliding by rich pastures and
pleasant quaint old villages, by old chateaux lying amongst old
trees, were all crowded with well-to-do English travellers: when the
soldier who drank at the village inn, not only drank, but paid his
score; and Donald, the Highlander, billeted in the Flemish farm-
house, rocked the baby's cradle, while Jean and Jeannette were out
getting in the hay. As our painters are bent on military subjects
just now, I throw out this as a good subject for the pencil, to
illustrate the principle of an honest English war. All looked as
brilliant and harmless as a Hyde Park review. Meanwhile, Napoleon
screened behind his curtain of frontier-fortresses, was preparing
for the outbreak which was to drive all these orderly people into
fury and blood; and lay so many of them low.

Everybody had such a perfect feeling of confidence in the leader
(for the resolute faith which the Duke of Wellington had inspired in
the whole English nation was as intense as that more frantic
enthusiasm with which at one time the French regarded Napoleon), the
country seemed in so perfect a state of orderly defence, and the
help at hand in case of need so near and overwhelming, that alarm
was unknown, and our travellers, among whom two were naturally of a
very timid sort, were, like all the other multiplied English
tourists, entirely at ease. The famous regiment, with so many of
whose officers we have made acquaintance, was drafted in canal boats
to Bruges and Ghent, thence to march to Brussels. Jos accompanied
the ladies in the public boats; the which all old travellers in
Flanders must remember for the luxury and accommodation they
afforded. So prodigiously good was the eating and drinking on board
these sluggish but most comfortable vessels, that there are legends
extant of an English traveller, who, coming to Belgium for a week,
and travelling in one of these boats, was so delighted with the fare
there that he went backwards and forwards from Ghent to Bruges
perpetually until the railroads were invented, when he drowned
himself on the last trip of the passage-boat. Jos's death was not
to be of this sort, but his comfort was exceeding, and Mrs. O'Dowd
insisted that he only wanted her sister Glorvina to make his
happiness complete. He sate on the roof of the cabin all day
drinking Flemish beer, shouting for Isidor, his servant, and talking
gallantly to the ladies.

His courage was prodigious. "Boney attack us!" he cried. "My dear
creature, my poor Emmy, don't be frightened. There's no danger.
The allies will be in Paris in two months, I tell you; when I'll
take you to dine in the Palais Royal, by Jove! There are three
hundred thousand Rooshians, I tell you, now entering France by
Mayence and the Rhine—three hundred thousand under Wittgenstein and
Barclay de Tolly, my poor love. You don't know military affairs, my
dear. I do, and I tell you there's no infantry in France can stand
against Rooshian infantry, and no general of Boney's that's fit to
hold a candle to Wittgenstein. Then there are the Austrians, they
are five hundred thousand if a man, and they are within ten marches
of the frontier by this time, under Schwartzenberg and Prince
Charles. Then there are the Prooshians under the gallant Prince
Marshal. Show me a cavalry chief like him now that Murat is gone.
Hey, Mrs. O'Dowd? Do you think our little girl here need be afraid?
Is there any cause for fear, Isidor? Hey, sir? Get some more
beer."

Mrs. O'Dowd said that her "Glorvina was not afraid of any man alive,
let alone a Frenchman," and tossed off a glass of beer with a wink
which expressed her liking for the beverage.

Having frequently been in presence of the enemy, or, in other words,
faced the ladies at Cheltenham and Bath, our friend, the Collector,
had lost a great deal of his pristine timidity, and was now,
especially when fortified with liquor, as talkative as might be. He
was rather a favourite with the regiment, treating the young
officers with sumptuosity, and amusing them by his military airs.
And as there is one well-known regiment of the army which travels
with a goat heading the column, whilst another is led by a deer,
George said with respect to his brother-in-law, that his regiment
marched with an elephant.

Since Amelia's introduction to the regiment, George began to be
rather ashamed of some of the company to which he had been forced to
present her; and determined, as he told Dobbin (with what
satisfaction to the latter it need not be said), to exchange into
some better regiment soon, and to get his wife away from those
damned vulgar women. But this vulgarity of being ashamed of one's
society is much more common among men than women (except very great
ladies of fashion, who, to be sure, indulge in it); and Mrs. Amelia,
a natural and unaffected person, had none of that artificial
shamefacedness which her husband mistook for delicacy on his own
part. Thus Mrs. O'Dowd had a cock's plume in her hat, and a very
large "repayther" on her stomach, which she used to ring on all
occasions, narrating how it had been presented to her by her
fawther, as she stipt into the car'ge after her mar'ge; and these
ornaments, with other outward peculiarities of the Major's wife,
gave excruciating agonies to Captain Osborne, when his wife and the
Major's came in contact; whereas Amelia was only amused by the
honest lady's eccentricities, and not in the least ashamed of her
company.

As they made that well-known journey, which almost every Englishman
of middle rank has travelled since, there might have been more
instructive, but few more entertaining, companions than Mrs. Major
O'Dowd. "Talk about kenal boats; my dear! Ye should see the kenal
boats between Dublin and Ballinasloe. It's there the rapid
travelling is; and the beautiful cattle. Sure me fawther got a
goold medal (and his Excellency himself eat a slice of it, and said
never was finer mate in his loif) for a four-year-old heifer, the
like of which ye never saw in this country any day." And Jos owned
with a sigh, "that for good streaky beef, really mingled with fat
and lean, there was no country like England."

"Except Ireland, where all your best mate comes from," said the
Major's lady; proceeding, as is not unusual with patriots of her
nation, to make comparisons greatly in favour of her own country.
The idea of comparing the market at Bruges with those of Dublin,
although she had suggested it herself, caused immense scorn and
derision on her part. "I'll thank ye tell me what they mean by that
old gazabo on the top of the market-place," said she, in a burst of
ridicule fit to have brought the old tower down. The place was full
of English soldiery as they passed. English bugles woke them in the
morning; at nightfall they went to bed to the note of the British
fife and drum: all the country and Europe was in arms, and the
greatest event of history pending: and honest Peggy O'Dowd, whom it
concerned as well as another, went on prattling about Ballinafad,
and the horses in the stables at Glenmalony, and the clar't drunk
there; and Jos Sedley interposed about curry and rice at Dumdum; and
Amelia thought about her husband, and how best she should show her
love for him; as if these were the great topics of the world.