Vanity Fair (41 page)

"There's no denying that the position is a hard one," Dobbin
replied, after reading over the letter with a blank countenance;
"and as you say, it is partly of my making. There are some men who
wouldn't mind changing with you," he added, with a bitter smile.
"How many captains in the regiment have two thousand pounds to the
fore, think you? You must live on your pay till your father
relents, and if you die, you leave your wife a hundred a year."

"Do you suppose a man of my habits call live on his pay and a
hundred a year?" George cried out in great anger. "You must be a
fool to talk so, Dobbin. How the deuce am I to keep up my position
in the world upon such a pitiful pittance? I can't change my
habits. I must have my comforts. I wasn't brought up on porridge,
like MacWhirter, or on potatoes, like old O'Dowd. Do you expect my
wife to take in soldiers' washing, or ride after the regiment in a
baggage waggon?"

"Well, well," said Dobbin, still good-naturedly, "we'll get her a
better conveyance. But try and remember that you are only a
dethroned prince now, George, my boy; and be quiet whilst the
tempest lasts. It won't be for long. Let your name be mentioned in
the Gazette, and I'll engage the old father relents towards you:"

"Mentioned in the Gazette!" George answered. "And in what part of
it? Among the killed and wounded returns, and at the top of the
list, very likely."

"Psha! It will be time enough to cry out when we are hurt," Dobbin
said. "And if anything happens, you know, George, I have got a
little, and I am not a marrying man, and I shall not forget my
godson in my will," he added, with a smile. Whereupon the dispute
ended—as many scores of such conversations between Osborne and his
friend had concluded previously—by the former declaring there was
no possibility of being angry with Dobbin long, and forgiving him
very generously after abusing him without cause.

"I say, Becky," cried Rawdon Crawley out of his dressing-room, to
his lady, who was attiring herself for dinner in her own chamber.

"What?" said Becky's shrill voice. She was looking over her
shoulder in the glass. She had put on the neatest and freshest
white frock imaginable, and with bare shoulders and a little
necklace, and a light blue sash, she looked the image of youthful
innocence and girlish happiness.

"I say, what'll Mrs. O. do, when O. goes out with the regiment?"
Crawley said coming into the room, performing a duet on his head
with two huge hair-brushes, and looking out from under his hair with
admiration on his pretty little wife.

"I suppose she'll cry her eyes out," Becky answered. "She has been
whimpering half a dozen times, at the very notion of it, already to
me."

"YOU don't care, I suppose?" Rawdon said, half angry at his wife's
want of feeling.

"You wretch! don't you know that I intend to go with you," Becky
replied. "Besides, you're different. You go as General Tufto's
aide-de-camp. We don't belong to the line," Mrs. Crawley said,
throwing up her head with an air that so enchanted her husband that
he stooped down and kissed it.

"Rawdon dear—don't you think—you'd better get that—money from
Cupid, before he goes?" Becky continued, fixing on a killing bow.
She called George Osborne, Cupid. She had flattered him about his
good looks a score of times already. She watched over him kindly at
ecarte of a night when he would drop in to Rawdon's quarters for a
half-hour before bed-time.

She had often called him a horrid dissipated wretch, and threatened
to tell Emmy of his wicked ways and naughty extravagant habits. She
brought his cigar and lighted it for him; she knew the effect of
that manoeuvre, having practised it in former days upon Rawdon
Crawley. He thought her gay, brisk, arch, distinguee, delightful. In
their little drives and dinners, Becky, of course, quite outshone
poor Emmy, who remained very mute and timid while Mrs. Crawley and
her husband rattled away together, and Captain Crawley (and Jos
after he joined the young married people) gobbled in silence.

Emmy's mind somehow misgave her about her friend. Rebecca's wit,
spirits, and accomplishments troubled her with a rueful disquiet.
They were only a week married, and here was George already suffering
ennui, and eager for others' society! She trembled for the future.
How shall I be a companion for him, she thought—so clever and so
brilliant, and I such a humble foolish creature? How noble it was of
him to marry me—to give up everything and stoop down to me! I
ought to have refused him, only I had not the heart. I ought to
have stopped at home and taken care of poor Papa. And her neglect
of her parents (and indeed there was some foundation for this charge
which the poor child's uneasy conscience brought against her) was
now remembered for the first time, and caused her to blush with
humiliation. Oh! thought she, I have been very wicked and selfish—
selfish in forgetting them in their sorrows—selfish in forcing
George to marry me. I know I'm not worthy of him—I know he would
have been happy without me—and yet—I tried, I tried to give him
up.

It is hard when, before seven days of marriage are over, such
thoughts and confessions as these force themselves on a little
bride's mind. But so it was, and the night before Dobbin came to
join these young people—on a fine brilliant moonlight night of May-
-so warm and balmy that the windows were flung open to the balcony,
from which George and Mrs. Crawley were gazing upon the calm ocean
spread shining before them, while Rawdon and Jos were engaged at
backgammon within—Amelia couched in a great chair quite neglected,
and watching both these parties, felt a despair and remorse such as
were bitter companions for that tender lonely soul. Scarce a week
was past, and it was come to this! The future, had she regarded it,
offered a dismal prospect; but Emmy was too shy, so to speak, to
look to that, and embark alone on that wide sea, and unfit to
navigate it without a guide and protector. I know Miss Smith has a
mean opinion of her. But how many, my dear Madam, are endowed with
your prodigious strength of mind?

"Gad, what a fine night, and how bright the moon is!" George said,
with a puff of his cigar, which went soaring up skywards.

"How delicious they smell in the open air! I adore them. Who'd
think the moon was two hundred and thirty-six thousand eight hundred
and forty-seven miles off?" Becky added, gazing at that orb with a
smile. "Isn't it clever of me to remember that? Pooh! we learned
it all at Miss Pinkerton's! How calm the sea is, and how clear
everything. I declare I can almost see the coast of France!" and
her bright green eyes streamed out, and shot into the night as if
they could see through it.

"Do you know what I intend to do one morning?" she said; "I find I
can swim beautifully, and some day, when my Aunt Crawley's
companion—old Briggs, you know—you remember her—that hook-nosed
woman, with the long wisps of hair—when Briggs goes out to bathe, I
intend to dive under her awning, and insist on a reconciliation in
the water. Isn't that a stratagem?"

George burst out laughing at the idea of this aquatic meeting.
"What's the row there, you two?" Rawdon shouted out, rattling the
box. Amelia was making a fool of herself in an absurd hysterical
manner, and retired to her own room to whimper in private.

Our history is destined in this chapter to go backwards and forwards
in a very irresolute manner seemingly, and having conducted our
story to to-morrow presently, we shall immediately again have
occasion to step back to yesterday, so that the whole of the tale
may get a hearing. As you behold at her Majesty's drawing-room, the
ambassadors' and high dignitaries' carriages whisk off from a
private door, while Captain Jones's ladies are waiting for their
fly: as you see in the Secretary of the Treasury's antechamber, a
half-dozen of petitioners waiting patiently for their audience, and
called out one by one, when suddenly an Irish member or some eminent
personage enters the apartment, and instantly walks into Mr. Under-
Secretary over the heads of all the people present: so in the
conduct of a tale, the romancer is obliged to exercise this most
partial sort of justice. Although all the little incidents must be
heard, yet they must be put off when the great events make their
appearance; and surely such a circumstance as that which brought
Dobbin to Brighton, viz., the ordering out of the Guards and the
line to Belgium, and the mustering of the allied armies in that
country under the command of his Grace the Duke of Wellington—such
a dignified circumstance as that, I say, was entitled to the pas
over all minor occurrences whereof this history is composed mainly,
and hence a little trifling disarrangement and disorder was
excusable and becoming. We have only now advanced in time so far
beyond Chapter XXII as to have got our various characters up into
their dressing-rooms before the dinner, which took place as usual on
the day of Dobbin's arrival.

George was too humane or too much occupied with the tie of his
neckcloth to convey at once all the news to Amelia which his comrade
had brought with him from London. He came into her room, however,
holding the attorney's letter in his hand, and with so solemn and
important an air that his wife, always ingeniously on the watch for
calamity, thought the worst was about to befall, and running up to
her husband, besought her dearest George to tell her everything—he
was ordered abroad; there would be a battle next week—she knew
there would.

Dearest George parried the question about foreign service, and with
a melancholy shake of the head said, "No, Emmy; it isn't that: it's
not myself I care about: it's you. I have had bad news from my
father. He refuses any communication with me; he has flung us off;
and leaves us to poverty. I can rough it well enough; but you, my
dear, how will you bear it? read here." And he handed her over the
letter.

Amelia, with a look of tender alarm in her eyes, listened to her
noble hero as he uttered the above generous sentiments, and sitting
down on the bed, read the letter which George gave her with such a
pompous martyr-like air. Her face cleared up as she read the
document, however. The idea of sharing poverty and privation in
company with the beloved object is, as we have before said, far from
being disagreeable to a warm-hearted woman. The notion was actually
pleasant to little Amelia. Then, as usual, she was ashamed of
herself for feeling happy at such an indecorous moment, and checked
her pleasure, saying demurely, "O, George, how your poor heart must
bleed at the idea of being separated from your papa!"

"It does," said George, with an agonised countenance.

"But he can't be angry with you long," she continued. "Nobody could,
I'm sure. He must forgive you, my dearest, kindest husband. O, I
shall never forgive myself if he does not."

"What vexes me, my poor Emmy, is not my misfortune, but yours,"
George said. "I don't care for a little poverty; and I think,
without vanity, I've talents enough to make my own way."

"That you have," interposed his wife, who thought that war should
cease, and her husband should be made a general instantly.

"Yes, I shall make my way as well as another," Osborne went on; "but
you, my dear girl, how can I bear your being deprived of the
comforts and station in society which my wife had a right to expect?
My dearest girl in barracks; the wife of a soldier in a marching
regiment; subject to all sorts of annoyance and privation! It makes
me miserable."

Emmy, quite at ease, as this was her husband's only cause of
disquiet, took his hand, and with a radiant face and smile began to
warble that stanza from the favourite song of "Wapping Old Stairs,"
in which the heroine, after rebuking her Tom for inattention,
promises "his trousers to mend, and his grog too to make," if he
will be constant and kind, and not forsake her. "Besides," she
said, after a pause, during which she looked as pretty and happy as
any young woman need, "isn't two thousand pounds an immense deal of
money, George?"

George laughed at her naivete; and finally they went down to dinner,
Amelia clinging to George's arm, still warbling the tune of "Wapping
Old Stairs," and more pleased and light of mind than she had been
for some days past.

Thus the repast, which at length came off, instead of being dismal,
was an exceedingly brisk and merry one. The excitement of the
campaign counteracted in George's mind the depression occasioned by
the disinheriting letter. Dobbin still kept up his character of
rattle. He amused the company with accounts of the army in Belgium;
where nothing but fetes and gaiety and fashion were going on. Then,
having a particular end in view, this dexterous captain proceeded to
describe Mrs. Major O'Dowd packing her own and her Major's wardrobe,
and how his best epaulets had been stowed into a tea canister,
whilst her own famous yellow turban, with the bird of paradise
wrapped in brown paper, was locked up in the Major's tin cocked-hat
case, and wondered what effect it would have at the French king's
court at Ghent, or the great military balls at Brussels.

"Ghent! Brussels!" cried out Amelia with a sudden shock and start.
"Is the regiment ordered away, George—is it ordered away?" A look
of terror came over the sweet smiling face, and she clung to George
as by an instinct.

"Don't be afraid, dear," he said good-naturedly; "it is but a twelve
hours' passage. It won't hurt you. You shall go, too, Emmy."

"I intend to go," said Becky. "I'm on the staff. General Tufto is
a great flirt of mine. Isn't he, Rawdon?" Rawdon laughed out with
his usual roar. William Dobbin flushed up quite red. "She can't
go," he said; "think of the—of the danger," he was going to add;
but had not all his conversation during dinner-time tended to prove
there was none? He became very confused and silent.