Vanity Fair (50 page)

"I'd like ye wake me about half an hour before the assembly beats,"
the Major said to his lady. "Call me at half-past one, Peggy dear,
and see me things is ready. May be I'll not come back to breakfast,
Mrs. O'D." With which words, which signified his opinion that the
regiment would march the next morning, the Major ceased talking, and
fell asleep.

Mrs. O'Dowd, the good housewife, arrayed in curl papers and a
camisole, felt that her duty was to act, and not to sleep, at this
juncture. "Time enough for that," she said, "when Mick's gone"; and
so she packed his travelling valise ready for the march, brushed his
cloak, his cap, and other warlike habiliments, set them out in order
for him; and stowed away in the cloak pockets a light package of
portable refreshments, and a wicker-covered flask or pocket-pistol,
containing near a pint of a remarkably sound Cognac brandy, of which
she and the Major approved very much; and as soon as the hands of
the "repayther" pointed to half-past one, and its interior
arrangements (it had a tone quite equal to a cathaydral, its fair
owner considered) knelled forth that fatal hour, Mrs. O'Dowd woke up
her Major, and had as comfortable a cup of coffee prepared for him
as any made that morning in Brussels. And who is there will deny
that this worthy lady's preparations betokened affection as much as
the fits of tears and hysterics by which more sensitive females
exhibited their love, and that their partaking of this coffee, which
they drank together while the bugles were sounding the turn-out and
the drums beating in the various quarters of the town, was not more
useful and to the purpose than the outpouring of any mere sentiment
could be? The consequence was, that the Major appeared on parade
quite trim, fresh, and alert, his well-shaved rosy countenance, as
he sate on horseback, giving cheerfulness and confidence to the
whole corps. All the officers saluted her when the regiment marched
by the balcony on which this brave woman stood, and waved them a
cheer as they passed; and I daresay it was not from want of courage,
but from a sense of female delicacy and propriety, that she
refrained from leading the gallant—th personally into action.

On Sundays, and at periods of a solemn nature, Mrs. O'Dowd used to
read with great gravity out of a large volume of her uncle the
Dean's sermons. It had been of great comfort to her on board the
transport as they were coming home, and were very nearly wrecked, on
their return from the West Indies. After the regiment's departure
she betook herself to this volume for meditation; perhaps she did
not understand much of what she was reading, and her thoughts were
elsewhere: but the sleep project, with poor Mick's nightcap there
on the pillow, was quite a vain one. So it is in the world. Jack
or Donald marches away to glory with his knapsack on his shoulder,
stepping out briskly to the tune of "The Girl I Left Behind Me." It
is she who remains and suffers—and has the leisure to think, and
brood, and remember.

Knowing how useless regrets are, and how the indulgence of sentiment
only serves to make people more miserable, Mrs. Rebecca wisely
determined to give way to no vain feelings of sorrow, and bore the
parting from her husband with quite a Spartan equanimity. Indeed
Captain Rawdon himself was much more affected at the leave-taking
than the resolute little woman to whom he bade farewell. She had
mastered this rude coarse nature; and he loved and worshipped her
with all his faculties of regard and admiration. In all his life he
had never been so happy, as, during the past few months, his wife
had made him. All former delights of turf, mess, hunting-field, and
gambling-table; all previous loves and courtships of milliners,
opera-dancers, and the like easy triumphs of the clumsy military
Adonis, were quite insipid when compared to the lawful matrimonial
pleasures which of late he had enjoyed. She had known perpetually
how to divert him; and he had found his house and her society a
thousand times more pleasant than any place or company which he had
ever frequented from his childhood until now. And he cursed his
past follies and extravagances, and bemoaned his vast outlying debts
above all, which must remain for ever as obstacles to prevent his
wife's advancement in the world. He had often groaned over these in
midnight conversations with Rebecca, although as a bachelor they had
never given him any disquiet. He himself was struck with this
phenomenon. "Hang it," he would say (or perhaps use a still
stronger expression out of his simple vocabulary), "before I was
married I didn't care what bills I put my name to, and so long as
Moses would wait or Levy would renew for three months, I kept on
never minding. But since I'm married, except renewing, of course, I
give you my honour I've not touched a bit of stamped paper."

Rebecca always knew how to conjure away these moods of melancholy.
"Why, my stupid love," she would say, "we have not done with your
aunt yet. If she fails us, isn't there what you call the Gazette?
or, stop, when your uncle Bute's life drops, I have another scheme.
The living has always belonged to the younger brother, and why
shouldn't you sell out and go into the Church?" The idea of this
conversion set Rawdon into roars of laughter: you might have heard
the explosion through the hotel at midnight, and the haw-haws of the
great dragoon's voice. General Tufto heard him from his quarters on
the first floor above them; and Rebecca acted the scene with great
spirit, and preached Rawdon's first sermon, to the immense delight
of the General at breakfast.

But these were mere by-gone days and talk. When the final news
arrived that the campaign was opened, and the troops were to march,
Rawdon's gravity became such that Becky rallied him about it in a
manner which rather hurt the feelings of the Guardsman. "You don't
suppose I'm afraid, Becky, I should think," he said, with a tremor
in his voice. "But I'm a pretty good mark for a shot, and you see
if it brings me down, why I leave one and perhaps two behind me whom
I should wish to provide for, as I brought 'em into the scrape. It
is no laughing matter that, Mrs. C., anyways."

Rebecca by a hundred caresses and kind words tried to soothe the
feelings of the wounded lover. It was only when her vivacity and
sense of humour got the better of this sprightly creature (as they
would do under most circumstances of life indeed) that she would
break out with her satire, but she could soon put on a demure face.
"Dearest love," she said, "do you suppose I feel nothing?" and
hastily dashing something from her eyes, she looked up in her
husband's face with a smile.

"Look here," said he. "If I drop, let us see what there is for you.
I have had a pretty good run of luck here, and here's two hundred
and thirty pounds. I have got ten Napoleons in my pocket. That is
as much as I shall want; for the General pays everything like a
prince; and if I'm hit, why you know I cost nothing. Don't cry,
little woman; I may live to vex you yet. Well, I shan't take either
of my horses, but shall ride the General's grey charger: it's
cheaper, and I told him mine was lame. If I'm done, those two ought
to fetch you something. Grigg offered ninety for the mare
yesterday, before this confounded news came, and like a fool I
wouldn't let her go under the two o's. Bullfinch will fetch his
price any day, only you'd better sell him in this country, because
the dealers have so many bills of mine, and so I'd rather he
shouldn't go back to England. Your little mare the General gave you
will fetch something, and there's no d—d livery stable bills here
as there are in London," Rawdon added, with a laugh. "There's that
dressing-case cost me two hundred—that is, I owe two for it; and
the gold tops and bottles must be worth thirty or forty. Please to
put THAT up the spout, ma'am, with my pins, and rings, and watch and
chain, and things. They cost a precious lot of money. Miss
Crawley, I know, paid a hundred down for the chain and ticker. Gold
tops and bottles, indeed! dammy, I'm sorry I didn't take more now.
Edwards pressed on me a silver-gilt boot-jack, and I might have had
a dressing-case fitted up with a silver warming-pan, and a service
of plate. But we must make the best of what we've got, Becky, you
know."

And so, making his last dispositions, Captain Crawley, who had
seldom thought about anything but himself, until the last few months
of his life, when Love had obtained the mastery over the dragoon,
went through the various items of his little catalogue of effects,
striving to see how they might be turned into money for his wife's
benefit, in case any accident should befall him. He pleased himself
by noting down with a pencil, in his big schoolboy handwriting, the
various items of his portable property which might be sold for his
widow's advantage as, for example, "My double-barril by Manton, say
40 guineas; my driving cloak, lined with sable fur, 50 pounds; my
duelling pistols in rosewood case (same which I shot Captain
Marker), 20 pounds; my regulation saddle-holsters and housings; my
Laurie ditto," and so forth, over all of which articles he made
Rebecca the mistress.

Faithful to his plan of economy, the Captain dressed himself in his
oldest and shabbiest uniform and epaulets, leaving the newest
behind, under his wife's (or it might be his widow's) guardianship.
And this famous dandy of Windsor and Hyde Park went off on his
campaign with a kit as modest as that of a sergeant, and with
something like a prayer on his lips for the woman he was leaving. He
took her up from the ground, and held her in his arms for a minute,
tight pressed against his strong-beating heart. His face was purple
and his eyes dim, as he put her down and left her. He rode by his
General's side, and smoked his cigar in silence as they hastened
after the troops of the General's brigade, which preceded them; and
it was not until they were some miles on their way that he left off
twirling his moustache and broke silence.

And Rebecca, as we have said, wisely determined not to give way to
unavailing sentimentality on her husband's departure. She waved him
an adieu from the window, and stood there for a moment looking out
after he was gone. The cathedral towers and the full gables of the
quaint old houses were just beginning to blush in the sunrise.
There had been no rest for her that night. She was still in her
pretty ball-dress, her fair hair hanging somewhat out of curl on her
neck, and the circles round her eyes dark with watching. "What a
fright I seem," she said, examining herself in the glass, "and how
pale this pink makes one look!" So she divested herself of this
pink raiment; in doing which a note fell out from her corsage, which
she picked up with a smile, and locked into her dressing-box. And
then she put her bouquet of the ball into a glass of water, and went
to bed, and slept very comfortably.

The town was quite quiet when she woke up at ten o'clock, and
partook of coffee, very requisite and comforting after the
exhaustion and grief of the morning's occurrences.

This meal over, she resumed honest Rawdon's calculations of the
night previous, and surveyed her position. Should the worst befall,
all things considered, she was pretty well to do. There were her
own trinkets and trousseau, in addition to those which her husband
had left behind. Rawdon's generosity, when they were first married,
has already been described and lauded. Besides these, and the
little mare, the General, her slave and worshipper, had made her
many very handsome presents, in the shape of cashmere shawls bought
at the auction of a bankrupt French general's lady, and numerous
tributes from the jewellers' shops, all of which betokened her
admirer's taste and wealth. As for "tickers," as poor Rawdon called
watches, her apartments were alive with their clicking. For,
happening to mention one night that hers, which Rawdon had given to
her, was of English workmanship, and went ill, on the very next
morning there came to her a little bijou marked Leroy, with a chain
and cover charmingly set with turquoises, and another signed
Brequet, which was covered with pearls, and yet scarcely bigger than
a half-crown. General Tufto had bought one, and Captain Osborne had
gallantly presented the other. Mrs. Osborne had no watch, though,
to do George justice, she might have had one for the asking, and the
Honourable Mrs. Tufto in England had an old instrument of her
mother's that might have served for the plate-warming pan which
Rawdon talked about. If Messrs. Howell and James were to publish a
list of the purchasers of all the trinkets which they sell, how
surprised would some families be: and if all these ornaments went to
gentlemen's lawful wives and daughters, what a profusion of
jewellery there would be exhibited in the genteelest homes of Vanity
Fair!

Every calculation made of these valuables Mrs. Rebecca found, not
without a pungent feeling of triumph and self-satisfaction, that
should circumstances occur, she might reckon on six or seven hundred
pounds at the very least, to begin the world with; and she passed
the morning disposing, ordering, looking out, and locking up her
properties in the most agreeable manner. Among the notes in
Rawdon's pocket-book was a draft for twenty pounds on Osborne's
banker. This made her think about Mrs. Osborne. "I will go and get
the draft cashed," she said, "and pay a visit afterwards to poor
little Emmy." If this is a novel without a hero, at least let us lay
claim to a heroine. No man in the British army which has marched
away, not the great Duke himself, could be more cool or collected in
the presence of doubts and difficulties, than the indomitable little
aide-de-camp's wife.

And there was another of our acquaintances who was also to be left
behind, a non-combatant, and whose emotions and behaviour we have
therefore a right to know. This was our friend the ex-collector of
Boggley Wollah, whose rest was broken, like other people's, by the
sounding of the bugles in the early morning. Being a great sleeper,
and fond of his bed, it is possible he would have snoozed on until
his usual hour of rising in the forenoon, in spite of all the drums,
bugles, and bagpipes in the British army, but for an interruption,
which did not come from George Osborne, who shared Jos's quarters
with him, and was as usual occupied too much with his own affairs or
with grief at parting with his wife, to think of taking leave of his
slumbering brother-in-law—it was not George, we say, who interposed
between Jos Sedley and sleep, but Captain Dobbin, who came and
roused him up, insisting on shaking hands with him before his
departure.