Vanity Fair (75 page)

Among other points, she had made up her mind that Glorvina should
marry our old friend Dobbin. Mrs. O'Dowd knew the Major's
expectations and appreciated his good qualities and the high
character which he enjoyed in his profession. Glorvina, a very
handsome, fresh-coloured, black-haired, blue-eyed young lady, who
could ride a horse, or play a sonata with any girl out of the County
Cork, seemed to be the very person destined to insure Dobbin's
happiness—much more than that poor good little weak-spur'ted
Amelia, about whom he used to take on so.—"Look at Glorvina enter a
room," Mrs. O'Dowd would say, "and compare her with that poor Mrs.
Osborne, who couldn't say boo to a goose. She'd be worthy of you,
Major—you're a quiet man yourself, and want some one to talk for
ye. And though she does not come of such good blood as the Malonys
or Molloys, let me tell ye, she's of an ancient family that any
nobleman might be proud to marry into."

But before she had come to such a resolution and determined to
subjugate Major Dobbin by her endearments, it must be owned that
Glorvina had practised them a good deal elsewhere. She had had a
season in Dublin, and who knows how many in Cork, Killarney, and
Mallow? She had flirted with all the marriageable officers whom the
depots of her country afforded, and all the bachelor squires who
seemed eligible. She had been engaged to be married a half-score
times in Ireland, besides the clergyman at Bath who used her so ill.
She had flirted all the way to Madras with the Captain and chief
mate of the Ramchunder East Indiaman, and had a season at the
Presidency with her brother and Mrs. O'Dowd, who was staying there,
while the Major of the regiment was in command at the station.
Everybody admired her there; everybody danced with her; but no one
proposed who was worth the marrying—one or two exceedingly young
subalterns sighed after her, and a beardless civilian or two, but
she rejected these as beneath her pretensions—and other and younger
virgins than Glorvina were married before her. There are women, and
handsome women too, who have this fortune in life. They fall in
love with the utmost generosity; they ride and walk with half the
Army-list, though they draw near to forty, and yet the Misses
O'Grady are the Misses O'Grady still: Glorvina persisted that but
for Lady O'Dowd's unlucky quarrel with the Judge's lady, she would
have made a good match at Madras, where old Mr. Chutney, who was at
the head of the civil service (and who afterwards married Miss
Dolby, a young lady only thirteen years of age who had just arrived
from school in Europe), was just at the point of proposing to her.

Well, although Lady O'Dowd and Glorvina quarrelled a great number of
times every day, and upon almost every conceivable subject—indeed,
if Mick O'Dowd had not possessed the temper of an angel two such
women constantly about his ears would have driven him out of his
senses—yet they agreed between themselves on this point, that
Glorvina should marry Major Dobbin, and were determined that the
Major should have no rest until the arrangement was brought about.
Undismayed by forty or fifty previous defeats, Glorvina laid siege
to him. She sang Irish melodies at him unceasingly. She asked him
so frequently and pathetically, Will ye come to the bower? that it
is a wonder how any man of feeling could have resisted the
invitation. She was never tired of inquiring, if Sorrow had his
young days faded, and was ready to listen and weep like Desdemona at
the stories of his dangers and his campaigns. It has been said that
our honest and dear old friend used to perform on the flute in
private; Glorvina insisted upon having duets with him, and Lady
O'Dowd would rise and artlessly quit the room when the young couple
were so engaged. Glorvina forced the Major to ride with her of
mornings. The whole cantonment saw them set out and return. She
was constantly writing notes over to him at his house, borrowing his
books, and scoring with her great pencil-marks such passages of
sentiment or humour as awakened her sympathy. She borrowed his
horses, his servants, his spoons, and palanquin—no wonder that
public rumour assigned her to him, and that the Major's sisters in
England should fancy they were about to have a sister-in-law.

Dobbin, who was thus vigorously besieged, was in the meanwhile in a
state of the most odious tranquillity. He used to laugh when the
young fellows of the regiment joked him about Glorvina's manifest
attentions to him. "Bah!" said he, "she is only keeping her hand in—
she practises upon me as she does upon Mrs. Tozer's piano, because
it's the most handy instrument in the station. I am much too
battered and old for such a fine young lady as Glorvina." And so he
went on riding with her, and copying music and verses into her
albums, and playing at chess with her very submissively; for it is
with these simple amusements that some officers in India are
accustomed to while away their leisure moments, while others of a
less domestic turn hunt hogs, and shoot snipes, or gamble and smoke
cheroots, and betake themselves to brandy-and-water. As for Sir
Michael O'Dowd, though his lady and her sister both urged him to
call upon the Major to explain himself and not keep on torturing a
poor innocent girl in that shameful way, the old soldier refused
point-blank to have anything to do with the conspiracy. "Faith, the
Major's big enough to choose for himself," Sir Michael said; "he'll
ask ye when he wants ye"; or else he would turn the matter off
jocularly, declaring that "Dobbin was too young to keep house, and
had written home to ask lave of his mamma." Nay, he went farther,
and in private communications with his Major would caution and rally
him, crying, "Mind your oi, Dob, my boy, them girls is bent on
mischief—me Lady has just got a box of gowns from Europe, and
there's a pink satin for Glorvina, which will finish ye, Dob, if
it's in the power of woman or satin to move ye."

But the truth is, neither beauty nor fashion could conquer him. Our
honest friend had but one idea of a woman in his head, and that one
did not in the least resemble Miss Glorvina O'Dowd in pink satin. A
gentle little woman in black, with large eyes and brown hair, seldom
speaking, save when spoken to, and then in a voice not the least
resembling Miss Glorvina's—a soft young mother tending an infant
and beckoning the Major up with a smile to look at him—a rosy-
cheeked lass coming singing into the room in Russell Square or
hanging on George Osborne's arm, happy and loving—there was but
this image that filled our honest Major's mind, by day and by night,
and reigned over it always. Very likely Amelia was not like the
portrait the Major had formed of her: there was a figure in a book
of fashions which his sisters had in England, and with which William
had made away privately, pasting it into the lid of his desk, and
fancying he saw some resemblance to Mrs. Osborne in the print,
whereas I have seen it, and can vouch that it is but the picture of
a high-waisted gown with an impossible doll's face simpering over
it—and, perhaps, Mr. Dobbin's sentimental Amelia was no more like
the real one than this absurd little print which he cherished. But
what man in love, of us, is better informed?—or is he much happier
when he sees and owns his delusion? Dobbin was under this spell. He
did not bother his friends and the public much about his feelings,
or indeed lose his natural rest or appetite on account of them. His
head has grizzled since we saw him last, and a line or two of silver
may be seen in the soft brown hair likewise. But his feelings are
not in the least changed or oldened, and his love remains as fresh
as a man's recollections of boyhood are.

We have said how the two Misses Dobbin and Amelia, the Major's
correspondents in Europe, wrote him letters from England, Mrs.
Osborne congratulating him with great candour and cordiality upon
his approaching nuptials with Miss O'Dowd. "Your sister has just
kindly visited me," Amelia wrote in her letter, "and informed me of
an INTERESTING EVENT, upon which I beg to offer my MOST SINCERE
CONGRATULATIONS. I hope the young lady to whom I hear you are to be
UNITED will in every respect prove worthy of one who is himself all
kindness and goodness. The poor widow has only her prayers to offer
and her cordial cordial wishes for YOUR PROSPERITY! Georgy sends
his love to HIS DEAR GODPAPA and hopes that you will not forget him.
I tell him that you are about to form OTHER TIES, with one who I am
sure merits ALL YOUR AFFECTION, but that, although such ties must of
course be the strongest and most sacred, and supersede ALL OTHERS,
yet that I am sure the widow and the child whom you have ever
protected and loved will always HAVE A CORNER IN YOUR HEART" The
letter, which has been before alluded to, went on in this strain,
protesting throughout as to the extreme satisfaction of the writer.

This letter, .which arrived by the very same ship which brought out
Lady O'Dowd's box of millinery from London (and which you may be
sure Dobbin opened before any one of the other packets which the
mail brought him), put the receiver into such a state of mind that
Glorvina, and her pink satin, and everything belonging to her became
perfectly odious to him. The Major cursed the talk of women, and
the sex in general. Everything annoyed him that day—the parade was
insufferably hot and wearisome. Good heavens! was a man of
intellect to waste his life, day after day, inspecting cross-belts
and putting fools through their manoeuvres? The senseless chatter of
the young men at mess was more than ever jarring. What cared he, a
man on the high road to forty, to know how many snipes Lieutenant
Smith had shot, or what were the performances of Ensign Brown's
mare? The jokes about the table filled him with shame. He was too
old to listen to the banter of the assistant surgeon and the slang
of the youngsters, at which old O'Dowd, with his bald head and red
face, laughed quite easily. The old man had listened to those jokes
any time these thirty years—Dobbin himself had been fifteen years
hearing them. And after the boisterous dulness of the mess-table,
the quarrels and scandal of the ladies of the regiment! It was
unbearable, shameful. "O Amelia, Amelia," he thought, "you to whom
I have been so faithful—you reproach me! It is because you cannot
feel for me that I drag on this wearisome life. And you reward me
after years of devotion by giving me your blessing upon my marriage,
forsooth, with this flaunting Irish girl!" Sick and sorry felt poor
William; more than ever wretched and lonely. He would like to have
done with life and its vanity altogether—so bootless and
unsatisfactory the struggle, so cheerless and dreary the prospect
seemed to him. He lay all that night sleepless, and yearning to go
home. Amelia's letter had fallen as a blank upon him. No fidelity,
no constant truth and passion, could move her into warmth. She
would not see that he loved her. Tossing in his bed, he spoke out
to her. "Good God, Amelia!" he said, "don't you know that I only
love you in the world—you, who are a stone to me—you, whom I
tended through months and months of illness and grief, and who bade
me farewell with a smile on your face, and forgot me before the door
shut between us!" The native servants lying outside his verandas
beheld with wonder the Major, so cold and quiet ordinarily, at
present so passionately moved and cast down. Would she have pitied
him had she seen him? He read over and over all the letters which he
ever had from her—letters of business relative to the little
property which he had made her believe her husband had left to her—
brief notes of invitation—every scrap of writing that she had ever
sent to him—how cold, how kind, how hopeless, how selfish they
were!

Had there been some kind gentle soul near at hand who could read and
appreciate this silent generous heart, who knows but that the reign
of Amelia might have been over, and that friend William's love might
have flowed into a kinder channel? But there was only Glorvina of
the jetty ringlets with whom his intercourse was familiar, and this
dashing young woman was not bent upon loving the Major, but rather
on making the Major admire HER—a most vain and hopeless task, too,
at least considering the means that the poor girl possessed to carry
it out. She curled her hair and showed her shoulders at him, as
much as to say, did ye ever see such jet ringlets and such a
complexion? She grinned at him so that he might see that every tooth
in her head was sound—and he never heeded all these charms. Very
soon after the arrival of the box of millinery, and perhaps indeed
in honour of it, Lady O'Dowd and the ladies of the King's Regiment
gave a ball to the Company's Regiments and the civilians at the
station. Glorvina sported the killing pink frock, and the Major,
who attended the party and walked very ruefully up and down the
rooms, never so much as perceived the pink garment. Glorvina danced
past him in a fury with all the young subalterns of the station, and
the Major was not in the least jealous of her performance, or angry
because Captain Bangles of the Cavalry handed her to supper. It was
not jealousy, or frocks, or shoulders that could move him, and
Glorvina had nothing more.

So these two were each exemplifying the Vanity of this life, and
each longing for what he or she could not get. Glorvina cried with
rage at the failure. She had set her mind on the Major "more than
on any of the others," she owned, sobbing. "He'll break my heart,
he will, Peggy," she would whimper to her sister-in-law when they
were good friends; "sure every one of me frocks must be taken in—
it's such a skeleton I'm growing." Fat or thin, laughing or
melancholy, on horseback or the music-stool, it was all the same to
the Major. And the Colonel, puffing his pipe and listening to these
complaints, would suggest that Glory should have some black frocks
out in the next box from London, and told a mysterious story of a
lady in Ireland who died of grief for the loss of her husband before
she got ere a one.