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Vanity Fair

W >> William Makepeace Thackeray >> Vanity Fair




"I have to beg your pardon for something."

"About what?" said he.

"About--about that little square piano. I never thanked you for it
when you gave it me, many, many years ago, before I was married. I
thought somebody else had given it. Thank you, William." She held
out her hand, but the poor little woman's heart was bleeding; and as
for her eyes, of course they were at their work.

But William could hold no more. "Amelia, Amelia," he said, "I did
buy it for you. I loved you then as I do now. I must tell you. I
think I loved you from the first minute that I saw you, when George
brought me to your house, to show me the Amelia whom he was engaged
to. You were but a girl, in white, with large ringlets; you came
down singing--do you remember?--and we went to Vauxhall. Since then
I have thought of but one woman in the world, and that was you. I
think there is no hour in the day has passed for twelve years that I
haven't thought of you. I came to tell you this before I went to
India, but you did not care, and I hadn't the heart to speak. You
did not care whether I stayed or went."

"I was very ungrateful," Amelia said.

"No, only indifferent," Dobbin continued desperately. "I have
nothing to make a woman to be otherwise. I know what you are
feeling now. You are hurt in your heart at the discovery about the
piano, and that it came from me and not from George. I forgot, or I
should never have spoken of it so. It is for me to ask your pardon
for being a fool for a moment, and thinking that years of constancy
and devotion might have pleaded with you."

"It is you who are cruel now," Amelia said with some spirit.
"George is my husband, here and in heaven. How could I love any
other but him? I am his now as when you first saw me, dear William.
It was he who told me how good and generous you were, and who taught
me to love you as a brother. Have you not been everything to me and
my boy? Our dearest, truest, kindest friend and protector? Had you
come a few months sooner perhaps you might have spared me that--that
dreadful parting. Oh, it nearly killed me, William--but you didn't
come, though I wished and prayed for you to come, and they took him
too away from me. Isn't he a noble boy, William? Be his friend
still and mine"--and here her voice broke, and she hid her face on
his shoulder.

The Major folded his arms round her, holding her to him as if she
was a child, and kissed her head. "I will not change, dear Amelia,"
he said. "I ask for no more than your love. I think I would not
have it otherwise. Only let me stay near you and see you often."

"Yes, often," Amelia said. And so William was at liberty to look
and long--as the poor boy at school who has no money may sigh after
the contents of the tart-woman's tray.



CHAPTER LX

Returns to the Genteel World


Good fortune now begins to smile upon Amelia. We are glad to get
her out of that low sphere in which she has been creeping hitherto
and introduce her into a polite circle--not so grand and refined as
that in which our other female friend, Mrs. Becky, has appeared, but
still having no small pretensions to gentility and fashion. Jos's
friends were all from the three presidencies, and his new house was
in the comfortable Anglo-Indian district of which Moira Place is the
centre. Minto Square, Great Clive Street, Warren Street, Hastings
Street, Ochterlony Place, Plassy Square, Assaye Terrace ("gardens"
was a felicitous word not applied to stucco houses with asphalt
terraces in front, so early as 1827)--who does not know these
respectable abodes of the retired Indian aristocracy, and the
quarter which Mr. Wenham calls the Black Hole, in a word? Jos's
position in life was not grand enough to entitle him to a house in
Moira Place, where none can live but retired Members of Council, and
partners of Indian firms (who break, after having settled a hundred
thousand pounds on their wives, and retire into comparative penury
to a country place and four thousand a year); he engaged a
comfortable house of a second- or third-rate order in Gillespie
Street, purchasing the carpets, costly mirrors, and handsome and
appropriate planned furniture by Seddons from the assignees of Mr.
Scape, lately admitted partner into the great Calcutta House of
Fogle, Fake, and Cracksman, in which poor Scape had embarked seventy
thousand pounds, the earnings of a long and honourable life, taking
Fake's place, who retired to a princely park in Sussex (the Fogles
have been long out of the firm, and Sir Horace Fogle is about to be
raised to the peerage as Baron Bandanna)--admitted, I say, partner
into the great agency house of Fogle and Fake two years before it
failed for a million and plunged half the Indian public into misery
and ruin.

Scape, ruined, honest, and broken-hearted at sixty-five years of
age, went out to Calcutta to wind up the affairs of the house.
Walter Scape was withdrawn from Eton and put into a merchant's
house. Florence Scape, Fanny Scape, and their mother faded away to
Boulogne, and will be heard of no more. To be brief, Jos stepped in
and bought their carpets and sideboards and admired himself in the
mirrors which had reflected their kind handsome faces. The Scape
tradesmen, all honourably paid, left their cards, and were eager to
supply the new household. The large men in white waistcoats who
waited at Scape's dinners, greengrocers, bank-porters, and milkmen
in their private capacity, left their addresses and ingratiated
themselves with the butler. Mr. Chummy, the chimney-purifier, who
had swept the last three families, tried to coax the butler and the
boy under him, whose duty it was to go out covered with buttons and
with stripes down his trousers, for the protection of Mrs. Amelia
whenever she chose to walk abroad.

It was a modest establishment. The butler was Jos's valet also, and
never was more drunk than a butler in a small family should be who
has a proper regard for his master's wine. Emmy was supplied with a
maid, grown on Sir William Dobbin's suburban estate; a good girl,
whose kindness and humility disarmed Mrs. Osborne, who was at first
terrified at the idea of having a servant to wait upon herself, who
did not in the least know how to use one, and who always spoke to
domestics with the most reverential politeness. But this maid was
very useful in the family, in dexterously tending old Mr. Sedley,
who kept almost entirely to his own quarter of the house and never
mixed in any of the gay doings which took place there.

Numbers of people came to see Mrs. Osborne. Lady Dobbin and
daughters were delighted at her change of fortune, and waited upon
her. Miss Osborne from Russell Square came in her grand chariot
with the flaming hammer-cloth emblazoned with the Leeds arms. Jos
was reported to be immensely rich. Old Osborne had no objection
that Georgy should inherit his uncle's property as well as his own.
"Damn it, we will make a man of the feller," he said; "and I'll see
him in Parliament before I die. You may go and see his mother, Miss
O., though I'll never set eyes on her": and Miss Osborne came.
Emmy, you may be sure, was very glad to see her, and so be brought
nearer to George. That young fellow was allowed to come much more
frequently than before to visit his mother. He dined once or twice
a week in Gillespie Street and bullied the servants and his
relations there, just as he did in Russell Square.

He was always respectful to Major Dobbin, however, and more modest
in his demeanour when that gentleman was present. He was a clever
lad and afraid of the Major. George could not help admiring his
friend's simplicity, his good humour, his various learning quietly
imparted, his general love of truth and justice. He had met no such
man as yet in the course of his experience, and he had an
instinctive liking for a gentleman. He hung fondly by his
godfather's side, and it was his delight to walk in the parks and
hear Dobbin talk. William told George about his father, about India
and Waterloo, about everything but himself. When George was more
than usually pert and conceited, the Major made jokes at him, which
Mrs. Osborne thought very cruel. One day, taking him to the play,
and the boy declining to go into the pit because it was vulgar, the
Major took him to the boxes, left him there, and went down himself
to the pit. He had not been seated there very long before he felt
an arm thrust under his and a dandy little hand in a kid glove
squeezing his arm. George had seen the absurdity of his ways and
come down from the upper region. A tender laugh of benevolence
lighted up old Dobbin's face and eyes as he looked at the repentant
little prodigal. He loved the boy, as he did everything that
belonged to Amelia. How charmed she was when she heard of this
instance of George's goodness! Her eyes looked more kindly on
Dobbin than they ever had done. She blushed, he thought, after
looking at him so.

Georgy never tired of his praises of the Major to his mother. "I
like him, Mamma, because he knows such lots of things; and he ain't
like old Veal, who is always bragging and using such long words,
don't you know? The chaps call him 'Longtail' at school. I gave him
the name; ain't it capital? But Dob reads Latin like English, and
French and that; and when we go out together he tells me stories
about my Papa, and never about himself; though I heard Colonel
Buckler, at Grandpapa's, say that he was one of the bravest officers
in the army, and had distinguished himself ever so much. Grandpapa
was quite surprised, and said, 'THAT feller! Why, I didn't think he
could say Bo to a goose'--but I know he could, couldn't he, Mamma?"

Emmy laughed: she thought it was very likely the Major could do
thus much.

If there was a sincere liking between George and the Major, it must
be confessed that between the boy and his uncle no great love
existed. George had got a way of blowing out his cheeks, and
putting his hands in his waistcoat pockets, and saying, "God bless
my soul, you don't say so," so exactly after the fashion of old Jos
that it was impossible to refrain from laughter. The servants would
explode at dinner if the lad, asking for something which wasn't at
table, put on that countenance and used that favourite phrase. Even
Dobbin would shoot out a sudden peal at the boy's mimicry. If
George did not mimic his uncle to his face, it was only by Dobbin's
rebukes and Amelia's terrified entreaties that the little scapegrace
was induced to desist. And the worthy civilian being haunted by a
dim consciousness that the lad thought him an ass, and was inclined
to turn him into ridicule, used to be extremely timorous and, of
course, doubly pompous and dignified in the presence of Master
Georgy. When it was announced that the young gentleman was expected
in Gillespie Street to dine with his mother, Mr. Jos commonly found
that he had an engagement at the Club. Perhaps nobody was much
grieved at his absence. On those days Mr. Sedley would commonly be
induced to come out from his place of refuge in the upper stories,
and there would be a small family party, whereof Major Dobbin pretty
generally formed one. He was the ami de la maison--old Sedley's
friend, Emmy's friend, Georgy's friend, Jos's counsel and adviser.
"He might almost as well be at Madras for anything WE see of him,"
Miss Ann Dobbin remarked at Camberwell. Ah! Miss Ann, did it not
strike you that it was not YOU whom the Major wanted to marry?

Joseph Sedley then led a life of dignified otiosity such as became a
person of his eminence. His very first point, of course, was to
become a member of the Oriental Club, where he spent his mornings in
the company of his brother Indians, where he dined, or whence he
brought home men to dine.

Amelia had to receive and entertain these gentlemen and their
ladies. From these she heard how soon Smith would be in Council;
how many lacs Jones had brought home with him, how Thomson's House
in London had refused the bills drawn by Thomson, Kibobjee, and Co.,
the Bombay House, and how it was thought the Calcutta House must go
too; how very imprudent, to say the least of it, Mrs. Brown's
conduct (wife of Brown of the Ahmednuggur Irregulars) had been with
young Swankey of the Body Guard, sitting up with him on deck until
all hours, and losing themselves as they were riding out at the
Cape; how Mrs. Hardyman had had out her thirteen sisters, daughters
of a country curate, the Rev: Felix Rabbits, and married eleven of
them, seven high up in the service; how Hornby was wild because his
wife would stay in Europe, and Trotter was appointed Collector at
Ummerapoora. This and similar talk took place at the grand dinners
all round. They had the same conversation; the same silver dishes;
the same saddles of mutton, boiled turkeys, and entrees. Politics
set in a short time after dessert, when the ladies retired upstairs
and talked about their complaints and their children.

Mutato nomine, it is all the same. Don't the barristers' wives talk
about Circuit? Don't the soldiers' ladies gossip about the Regiment?
Don't the clergymen's ladies discourse about Sunday-schools and who
takes whose duty? Don't the very greatest ladies of all talk about
that small clique of persons to whom they belong? And why should our
Indian friends not have their own conversation?--only I admit it is
slow for the laymen whose fate it sometimes is to sit by and listen.

Before long Emmy had a visiting-book, and was driving about
regularly in a carriage, calling upon Lady Bludyer (wife of Major-
General Sir Roger Bludyer, K.C.B., Bengal Army); Lady Huff, wife of
Sir G. Huff, Bombay ditto; Mrs. Pice, the Lady of Pice the
Director, &c. We are not long in using ourselves to changes in
life. That carriage came round to Gillespie Street every day; that
buttony boy sprang up and down from the box with Emmy's and Jos's
visiting-cards; at stated hours Emmy and the carriage went for Jos
to the Club and took him an airing; or, putting old Sedley into the
vehicle, she drove the old man round the Regent's Park. The lady's
maid and the chariot, the visiting-book and the buttony page, became
soon as familiar to Amelia as the humble routine of Brompton. She
accommodated herself to one as to the other. If Fate had ordained
that she should be a Duchess, she would even have done that duty
too. She was voted, in Jos's female society, rather a pleasing
young person--not much in her, but pleasing, and that sort of thing.

The men, as usual, liked her artless kindness and simple refined
demeanour. The gallant young Indian dandies at home on furlough--
immense dandies these--chained and moustached--driving in tearing
cabs, the pillars of the theatres, living at West End hotels--
nevertheless admired Mrs. Osborne, liked to bow to her carriage in
the park, and to be admitted to have the honour of paying her a
morning visit. Swankey of the Body Guard himself, that dangerous
youth, and the greatest buck of all the Indian army now on leave,
was one day discovered by Major Dobbin tete-a-tete with Amelia, and
describing the sport of pig-sticking to her with great humour and
eloquence; and he spoke afterwards of a d--d king's officer that's
always hanging about the house--a long, thin, queer-looking, oldish
fellow--a dry fellow though, that took the shine out of a man in the
talking line.

Had the Major possessed a little more personal vanity he would have
been jealous of so dangerous a young buck as that fascinating Bengal
Captain. But Dobbin was of too simple and generous a nature to have
any doubts about Amelia. He was glad that the young men should pay
her respect, and that others should admire her. Ever since her
womanhood almost, had she not been persecuted and undervalued? It
pleased him to see how kindness bought out her good qualities and
how her spirits gently rose with her prosperity. Any person who
appreciated her paid a compliment to the Major's good judgement--
that is, if a man may be said to have good judgement who is under
the influence of Love's delusion.

After Jos went to Court, which we may be sure he did as a loyal
subject of his Sovereign (showing himself in his full court suit at
the Club, whither Dobbin came to fetch him in a very shabby old
uniform) he who had always been a staunch Loyalist and admirer of
George IV, became such a tremendous Tory and pillar of the State
that he was for having Amelia to go to a Drawing-room, too. He
somehow had worked himself up to believe that he was implicated in
the maintenance of the public welfare and that the Sovereign would
not be happy unless Jos Sedley and his family appeared to rally
round him at St. James's.

Emmy laughed. "Shall I wear the family diamonds, Jos?" she said.

"I wish you would let me buy you some," thought the Major. "I
should like to see any that were too good for you."



CHAPTER LXI

In Which Two Lights are Put Out


There came a day when the round of decorous pleasures and solemn
gaieties in which Mr. Jos Sedley's family indulged was interrupted
by an event which happens in most houses. As you ascend the
staircase of your house from the drawing towards the bedroom floors,
you may have remarked a little arch in the wall right before you,
which at once gives light to the stair which leads from the second
story to the third (where the nursery and servants' chambers
commonly are) and serves for another purpose of utility, of which
the undertaker's men can give you a notion. They rest the coffins
upon that arch, or pass them through it so as not to disturb in any
unseemly manner the cold tenant slumbering within the black ark.

That second-floor arch in a London house, looking up and down the
well of the staircase and commanding the main thoroughfare by which
the inhabitants are passing; by which cook lurks down before
daylight to scour her pots and pans in the kitchen; by which young
master stealthily ascends, having left his boots in the hall, and
let himself in after dawn from a jolly night at the Club; down which
miss comes rustling in fresh ribbons and spreading muslins,
brilliant and beautiful, and prepared for conquest and the ball; or
Master Tommy slides, preferring the banisters for a mode of
conveyance, and disdaining danger and the stair; down which the
mother is fondly carried smiling in her strong husband's arms, as he
steps steadily step by step, and followed by the monthly nurse, on
the day when the medical man has pronounced that the charming
patient may go downstairs; up which John lurks to bed, yawning, with
a sputtering tallow candle, and to gather up before sunrise the
boots which are awaiting him in the passages--that stair, up or down
which babies are carried, old people are helped, guests are
marshalled to the ball, the parson walks to the christening, the
doctor to the sick-room, and the undertaker's men to the upper
floor--what a memento of Life, Death, and Vanity it is--that arch
and stair--if you choose to consider it, and sit on the landing,
looking up and down the well! The doctor will come up to us too for
the last time there, my friend in motley. The nurse will look in at
the curtains, and you take no notice--and then she will fling open
the windows for a little and let in the air. Then they will pull
down all the front blinds of the house and live in the back rooms--
then they will send for the lawyer and other men in black, &c. Your
comedy and mine will have been played then, and we shall be removed,
oh, how far, from the trumpets, and the shouting, and the posture-
making. If we are gentlefolks they will put hatchments over our
late domicile, with gilt cherubim, and mottoes stating that there is
"Quiet in Heaven." Your son will new furnish the house, or perhaps
let it, and go into a more modern quarter; your name will be among
the "Members Deceased" in the lists of your clubs next year.
However much you may be mourned, your widow will like to have her
weeds neatly made--the cook will send or come up to ask about
dinner--the survivor will soon bear to look at your picture over the
mantelpiece, which will presently be deposed from the place of
honour, to make way for the portrait of the son who reigns.

Which of the dead are most tenderly and passionately deplored? Those
who love the survivors the least, I believe. The death of a child
occasions a passion of grief and frantic tears, such as your end,
brother reader, will never inspire. The death of an infant which
scarce knew you, which a week's absence from you would have caused
to forget you, will strike you down more than the loss of your
closest friend, or your first-born son--a man grown like yourself,
with children of his own. We may be harsh and stern with Judah and
Simeon--our love and pity gush out for Benjamin, the little one.
And if you are old, as some reader of this may be or shall be old
and rich, or old and poor--you may one day be thinking for yourself--
"These people are very good round about me, but they won't grieve
too much when I am gone. I am very rich, and they want my
inheritance--or very poor, and they are tired of supporting me."

The period of mourning for Mrs. Sedley's death was only just
concluded, and Jos scarcely had had time to cast off his black and
appear in the splendid waistcoats which he loved, when it became
evident to those about Mr. Sedley that another event was at hand,
and that the old man was about to go seek for his wife in the dark
land whither she had preceded him. "The state of my father's
health," Jos Sedley solemnly remarked at the Club, "prevents me from
giving any LARGE parties this season: but if you will come in
quietly at half-past six, Chutney, my boy, and fake a homely dinner
with one or two of the old set--I shall be always glad to see you."
So Jos and his acquaintances dined and drank their claret among
themselves in silence, whilst the sands of life were running out in
the old man's glass upstairs. The velvet-footed butler brought them
their wine, and they composed themselves to a rubber after dinner,
at which Major Dobbin would sometimes come and take a hand; and Mrs.
Osborne would occasionally descend, when her patient above was
settled for the night, and had commenced one of those lightly
troubled slumbers which visit the pillow of old age.

The old man clung to his daughter during this sickness. He would
take his broths and medicines from scarcely any other hand. To tend
him became almost the sole business of her life. Her bed was placed
close by the door which opened into his chamber, and she was alive
at the slightest noise or disturbance from the couch of the
querulous invalid. Though, to do him justice, he lay awake many an
hour, silent and without stirring, unwilling to awaken his kind and
vigilant nurse.

He loved his daughter with more fondness now, perhaps, than ever he
had done since the days of her childhood. In the discharge of
gentle offices and kind filial duties, this simple creature shone
most especially. "She walks into the room as silently as a
sunbeam," Mr. Dobbin thought as he saw her passing in and out from
her father's room, a cheerful sweetness lighting up her face as she
moved to and fro, graceful and noiseless. When women are brooding
over their children, or busied in a sick-room, who has not seen in
their faces those sweet angelic beams of love and pity?

A secret feud of some years' standing was thus healed, and with a
tacit reconciliation. In these last hours, and touched by her love
and goodness, the old man forgot all his grief against her, and
wrongs which he and his wife had many a long night debated: how she
had given up everything for her boy; how she was careless of her
parents in their old age and misfortune, and only thought of the
child; how absurdly and foolishly, impiously indeed, she took on
when George was removed from her. Old Sedley forgot these charges
as he was making up his last account, and did justice to the gentle
and uncomplaining little martyr. One night when she stole into his
room, she found him awake, when the broken old man made his
confession. "Oh, Emmy, I've been thinking we were very unkind and
unjust to you," he said and put out his cold and feeble hand to her.
She knelt down and prayed by his bedside, as he did too, having
still hold of her hand. When our turn comes, friend, may we have
such company in our prayers!

Perhaps as he was lying awake then, his life may have passed before
him--his early hopeful struggles, his manly successes and
prosperity, his downfall in his declining years, and his present
helpless condition--no chance of revenge against Fortune, which had
had the better of him--neither name nor money to bequeath--a spent-
out, bootless life of defeat and disappointment, and the end here!
Which, I wonder, brother reader, is the better lot, to die
prosperous and famous, or poor and disappointed? To have, and to be
forced to yield; or to sink out of life, having played and lost the
game? That must be a strange feeling, when a day of our life comes
and we say, "To-morrow, success or failure won't matter much, and
the sun will rise, and all the myriads of mankind go to their work
or their pleasure as usual, but I shall be out of the turmoil."

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