Vanity Fair (106 page)

When old Osborne first heard from his friend Colonel Buckler (as
little Georgy had already informed us) how distinguished an officer
Major Dobbin was, he exhibited a great deal of scornful incredulity
and expressed his surprise how ever such a feller as that should
possess either brains or reputation. But he heard of the Major's
fame from various members of his society. Sir William Dobbin had a
great opinion of his son and narrated many stories illustrative of
the Major's learning, valour, and estimation in the world's opinion.
Finally, his name appeared in the lists of one or two great parties
of the nobility, and this circumstance had a prodigious effect upon
the old aristocrat of Russell Square.

The Major's position, as guardian to Georgy, whose possession had
been ceded to his grandfather, rendered some meetings between the
two gentlemen inevitable; and it was in one of these that old
Osborne, a keen man of business, looking into the Major's accounts
with his ward and the boy's mother, got a hint, which staggered him
very much, and at once pained and pleased him, that it was out of
William Dobbin's own pocket that a part of the fund had been
supplied upon which the poor widow and the child had subsisted.

When pressed upon the point, Dobbin, who could not tell lies,
blushed and stammered a good deal and finally confessed. "The
marriage," he said (at which his interlocutor's face grew dark) "was
very much my doing. I thought my poor friend had gone so far that
retreat from his engagement would have been dishonour to him and
death to Mrs. Osborne, and I could do no less, when she was left
without resources, than give what money I could spare to maintain
her."

"Major D.," Mr. Osborne said, looking hard at him and turning very
red too—"you did me a great injury; but give me leave to tell you,
sir, you are an honest feller. There's my hand, sir, though I little
thought that my flesh and blood was living on you—" and the pair
shook hands, with great confusion on Major Dobbin's part, thus found
out in his act of charitable hypocrisy.

He strove to soften the old man and reconcile him towards his son's
memory. "He was such a noble fellow," he said, "that all of us
loved him, and would have done anything for him. I, as a young man
in those days, was flattered beyond measure by his preference for
me, and was more pleased to be seen in his company than in that of
the Commander-in-Chief. I never saw his equal for pluck and daring
and all the qualities of a soldier"; and Dobbin told the old father
as many stories as he could remember regarding the gallantry and
achievements of his son. "And Georgy is so like him," the Major
added.

"He's so like him that he makes me tremble sometimes," the
grandfather said.

On one or two evenings the Major came to dine with Mr. Osborne (it
was during the time of the sickness of Mr. Sedley), and as the two
sat together in the evening after dinner, all their talk was about
the departed hero. The father boasted about him according to his
wont, glorifying himself in recounting his son's feats and
gallantry, but his mood was at any rate better and more charitable
than that in which he had been disposed until now to regard the poor
fellow; and the Christian heart of the kind Major was pleased at
these symptoms of returning peace and good-will. On the second
evening old Osborne called Dobbin William, just as he used to do at
the time when Dobbin and George were boys together, and the honest
gentleman was pleased by that mark of reconciliation.

On the next day at breakfast, when Miss Osborne, with the asperity
of her age and character, ventured to make some remark reflecting
slightingly upon the Major's appearance or behaviour—the master of
the house interrupted her. "You'd have been glad enough to git him
for yourself, Miss O. But them grapes are sour. Ha! ha! Major
William is a fine feller."

"That he is, Grandpapa," said Georgy approvingly; and going up close
to the old gentleman, he took a hold of his large grey whiskers, and
laughed in his face good-humouredly, and kissed him. And he told
the story at night to his mother, who fully agreed with the boy.
"Indeed he is," she said. "Your dear father always said so. He is
one of the best and most upright of men." Dobbin happened to drop in
very soon after this conversation, which made Amelia blush perhaps,
and the young scapegrace increased the confusion by telling Dobbin
the other part of the story. "I say, Dob," he said, "there's such
an uncommon nice girl wants to marry you. She's plenty of tin; she
wears a front; and she scolds the servants from morning till night."
"Who is it?" asked Dobbin. "It's Aunt O.," the boy answered.
"Grandpapa said so. And I say, Dob, how prime it would be to have
you for my uncle." Old Sedley's quavering voice from the next room
at this moment weakly called for Amelia, and the laughing ended.

That old Osborne's mind was changing was pretty clear. He asked
George about his uncle sometimes, and laughed at the boy's imitation
of the way in which Jos said "God-bless-my-soul" and gobbled his
soup. Then he said, "It's not respectful, sir, of you younkers to
be imitating of your relations. Miss O., when you go out adriving
to-day, leave my card upon Mr. Sedley, do you hear? There's no
quarrel betwigst me and him anyhow."

The card was returned, and Jos and the Major were asked to dinner—
to a dinner the most splendid and stupid that perhaps ever Mr.
Osborne gave; every inch of the family plate was exhibited, and the
best company was asked. Mr. Sedley took down Miss O. to dinner,
and she was very gracious to him; whereas she hardly spoke to the
Major, who sat apart from her, and by the side of Mr. Osborne, very
timid. Jos said, with great solemnity, it was the best turtle soup
he had ever tasted in his life, and asked Mr. Osborne where he got
his Madeira.

"It is some of Sedley's wine," whispered the butler to his master.
"I've had it a long time, and paid a good figure for it, too," Mr.
Osborne said aloud to his guest, and then whispered to his right-
hand neighbour how he had got it "at the old chap's sale."

More than once he asked the Major about—about Mrs. George Osborne—
a theme on which the Major could be very eloquent when he chose. He
told Mr. Osborne of her sufferings—of her passionate attachment to
her husband, whose memory she worshipped still—of the tender and
dutiful manner in which she had supported her parents, and given up
her boy, when it seemed to her her duty to do so. "You don't know
what she endured, sir," said honest Dobbin with a tremor in his
voice, "and I hope and trust you will be reconciled to her. If she
took your son away from you, she gave hers to you; and however much
you loved your George, depend on it, she loved hers ten times more."

"By God, you are a good feller, sir," was all Mr. Osborne said. It
had never struck him that the widow would feel any pain at parting
from the boy, or that his having a fine fortune could grieve her. A
reconciliation was announced as speedy and inevitable, and Amelia's
heart already began to beat at the notion of the awful meeting with
George's father.

It was never, however, destined to take place. Old Sedley's
lingering illness and death supervened, after which a meeting was
for some time impossible. That catastrophe and other events may
have worked upon Mr. Osborne. He was much shaken of late, and aged,
and his mind was working inwardly. He had sent for his lawyers, and
probably changed something in his will. The medical man who looked
in pronounced him shaky, agitated, and talked of a little blood and
the seaside; but he took neither of these remedies.

One day when he should have come down to breakfast, his servant
missing him, went into his dressing-room and found him lying at the
foot of the dressing-table in a fit. Miss Osborne was apprised; the
doctors were sent for; Georgy stopped away from school; the bleeders
and cuppers came. Osborne partially regained cognizance, but never
could speak again, though he tried dreadfully once or twice, and in
four days he died. The doctors went down, and the undertaker's men
went up the stairs, and all the shutters were shut towards the
garden in Russell Square. Bullock rushed from the City in a hurry.
"How much money had he left to that boy? Not half, surely? Surely
share and share alike between the three?" It was an agitating
moment.

What was it that poor old man tried once or twice in vain to say? I
hope it was that he wanted to see Amelia and be reconciled before he
left the world to one dear and faithful wife of his son: it was
most likely that, for his will showed that the hatred which he had
so long cherished had gone out of his heart.

They found in the pocket of his dressing-gown the letter with the
great red seal which George had written him from Waterloo. He had
looked at the other papers too, relative to his son, for the key of
the box in which he kept them was also in his pocket, and it was
found the seals and envelopes had been broken—very likely on the
night before the seizure—when the butler had taken him tea into his
study, and found him reading in the great red family Bible.

When the will was opened, it was found that half the property was
left to George, and the remainder between the two sisters. Mr.
Bullock to continue, for their joint benefit, the affairs of the
commercial house, or to go out, as he thought fit. An annuity of
five hundred pounds, chargeable on George's property, was left to
his mother, "the widow of my beloved son, George Osborne," who was
to resume the guardianship of the boy.

"Major William Dobbin, my beloved son's friend," was appointed
executor; "and as out of his kindness and bounty, and with his own
private funds, he maintained my grandson and my son's widow, when
they were otherwise without means of support" (the testator went on
to say) "I hereby thank him heartily for his love and regard for
them, and beseech him to accept such a sum as may be sufficient to
purchase his commission as a Lieutenant-Colonel, or to be disposed
of in any way he may think fit."

When Amelia heard that her father-in-law was reconciled to her, her
heart melted, and she was grateful for the fortune left to her. But
when she heard how Georgy was restored to her, and knew how and by
whom, and how it was William's bounty that supported her in poverty,
how it was William who gave her her husband and her son—oh, then
she sank on her knees, and prayed for blessings on that constant and
kind heart; she bowed down and humbled herself, and kissed the feet,
as it were, of that beautiful and generous affection.

And gratitude was all that she had to pay back for such admirable
devotion and benefits—only gratitude! If she thought of any other
return, the image of George stood up out of the grave and said, "You
are mine, and mine only, now and forever."

William knew her feelings: had he not passed his whole life in
divining them?

When the nature of Mr. Osborne's will became known to the world, it
was edifying to remark how Mrs. George Osborne rose in the
estimation of the people forming her circle of acquaintance. The
servants of Jos's establishment, who used to question her humble
orders and say they would "ask Master" whether or not they could
obey, never thought now of that sort of appeal. The cook forgot to
sneer at her shabby old gowns (which, indeed, were quite eclipsed by
that lady's finery when she was dressed to go to church of a Sunday
evening), the others no longer grumbled at the sound of her bell, or
delayed to answer that summons. The coachman, who grumbled that his
'osses should be brought out and his carriage made into an hospital
for that old feller and Mrs. O., drove her with the utmost alacrity
now, and trembling lest he should be superseded by Mr. Osborne's
coachman, asked "what them there Russell Square coachmen knew about
town, and whether they was fit to sit on a box before a lady?" Jos's
friends, male and female, suddenly became interested about Emmy, and
cards of condolence multiplied on her hall table. Jos himself, who
had looked on her as a good-natured harmless pauper, to whom it was
his duty to give victuals and shelter, paid her and the rich little
boy, his nephew, the greatest respect—was anxious that she should
have change and amusement after her troubles and trials, "poor dear
girl"—and began to appear at the breakfast-table, and most
particularly to ask how she would like to dispose of the day.

In her capacity of guardian to Georgy, she, with the consent of the
Major, her fellow-trustee, begged Miss Osborne to live in the
Russell Square house as long as ever she chose to dwell there; but
that lady, with thanks, declared that she never could think of
remaining alone in that melancholy mansion, and departed in deep
mourning to Cheltenham, with a couple of her old domestics. The rest
were liberally paid and dismissed, the faithful old butler, whom
Mrs. Osborne proposed to retain, resigning and preferring to invest
his savings in a public-house, where, let us hope, he was not
unprosperous. Miss Osborne not choosing to live in Russell Square,
Mrs. Osborne also, after consultation, declined to occupy the gloomy
old mansion there. The house was dismantled; the rich furniture and
effects, the awful chandeliers and dreary blank mirrors packed away
and hidden, the rich rosewood drawing-room suite was muffled in
straw, the carpets were rolled up and corded, the small select
library of well-bound books was stowed into two wine-chests, and the
whole paraphernalia rolled away in several enormous vans to the
Pantechnicon, where they were to lie until Georgy's majority. And
the great heavy dark plate-chests went off to Messrs. Stumpy and
Rowdy, to lie in the cellars of those eminent bankers until the same
period should arrive.

One day Emmy, with George in her hand and clad in deep sables, went
to visit the deserted mansion which she had not entered since she
was a girl. The place in front was littered with straw where the
vans had been laden and rolled off. They went into the great blank
rooms, the walls of which bore the marks where the pictures and
mirrors had hung. Then they went up the great blank stone
staircases into the upper rooms, into that where grandpapa died, as
George said in a whisper, and then higher still into George's own
room. The boy was still clinging by her side, but she thought of
another besides him. She knew that it had been his father's room as
well as his own.