CHAPTER XVIII

Who Played on the Piano Captain Dobbin Bought

Our surprised story now finds itself for a moment among very famous

events and personages, and hanging on to the skirts of history. When

the eagles of Napoleon Bonaparte, the Corsican upstart, were flying

from Provence, where they had perched after a brief sojourn in Elba,

and from steeple to steeple until they reached the towers of Notre

Dame, I wonder whether the Imperial birds had any eye for a little

corner of the parish of Bloomsbury, London, which you might have

thought so quiet, that even the whirring and flapping of those mighty

wings would pass unobserved there?

"Napoleon has landed at Cannes." Such news might create a panic at

Vienna, and cause Russia to drop his cards, and take Prussia into a

corner, and Talleyrand and Metternich to wag their heads together,

while Prince Hardenberg, and even the present Marquis of Londonderry,

were puzzled; but how was this intelligence to affect a young lady in

Russell Square, before whose door the watchman sang the hours when she

was asleep: who, if she strolled in the square, was guarded there by

the railings and the beadle: who, if she walked ever so short a

distance to buy a ribbon in Southampton Row, was followed by Black

Sambo with an enormous cane: who was always cared for, dressed, put to

bed, and watched over by ever so many guardian angels, with and without

wages? Bon Dieu, I say, is it not hard that the fateful rush of the

great Imperial struggle can't take place without affecting a poor

little harmless girl of eighteen, who is occupied in billing and

cooing, or working muslin collars in Russell Square? You too, kindly,

homely flower!--is the great roaring war tempest coming to sweep you

down, here, although cowering under the shelter of Holborn? Yes;

Napoleon is flinging his last stake, and poor little Emmy Sedley's

happiness forms, somehow, part of it.

In the first place, her father's fortune was swept down with that fatal

news. All his speculations had of late gone wrong with the luckless

old gentleman. Ventures had failed; merchants had broken; funds had

risen when he calculated they would fall. What need to particularize?

If success is rare and slow, everybody knows how quick and easy ruin

is. Old Sedley had kept his own sad counsel. Everything seemed to go

on as usual in the quiet, opulent house; the good-natured mistress

pursuing, quite unsuspiciously, her bustling idleness, and daily easy

avocations; the daughter absorbed still in one selfish, tender thought,

and quite regardless of all the world besides, when that final crash

came, under which the worthy family fell.

One night Mrs. Sedley was writing cards for a party; the Osbornes had

given one, and she must not be behindhand; John Sedley, who had come

home very late from the City, sate silent at the chimney side, while

his wife was prattling to him; Emmy had gone up to her room ailing and

low-spirited. "She's not happy," the mother went on. "George Osborne

neglects her. I've no patience with the airs of those people. The

girls have not been in the house these three weeks; and George has been

twice in town without coming. Edward Dale saw him at the Opera.

Edward would marry her I'm sure: and there's Captain Dobbin who, I

think, would--only I hate all army men. Such a dandy as George has

become. With his military airs, indeed! We must show some folks that

we're as good as they. Only give Edward Dale any encouragement, and

you'll see. We must have a party, Mr. S. Why don't you speak, John?

Shall I say Tuesday fortnight? Why don't you answer? Good God, John,

what has happened?"

John Sedley sprang up out of his chair to meet his wife, who ran to

him. He seized her in his arms, and said with a hasty voice, "We're

ruined, Mary. We've got the world to begin over again, dear. It's

best that you should know all, and at once." As he spoke, he trembled

in every limb, and almost fell. He thought the news would have

overpowered his wife--his wife, to whom he had never said a hard word.

But it was he that was the most moved, sudden as the shock was to her.

When he sank back into his seat, it was the wife that took the office

of consoler. She took his trembling hand, and kissed it, and put it

round her neck: she called him her John--her dear John--her old

man--her kind old man; she poured out a hundred words of incoherent

love and tenderness; her faithful voice and simple caresses wrought

this sad heart up to an inexpressible delight and anguish, and cheered

and solaced his over-burdened soul.

Only once in the course of the long night as they sate together, and

poor Sedley opened his pent-up soul, and told the story of his losses

and embarrassments--the treason of some of his oldest friends, the

manly kindness of some, from whom he never could have expected it--in a

general confession--only once did the faithful wife give way to emotion.

"My God, my God, it will break Emmy's heart," she said.

The father had forgotten the poor girl. She was lying, awake and

unhappy, overhead. In the midst of friends, home, and kind parents,

she was alone. To how many people can any one tell all? Who will be

open where there is no sympathy, or has call to speak to those who

never can understand? Our gentle Amelia was thus solitary. She had no

confidante, so to speak, ever since she had anything to confide. She

could not tell the old mother her doubts and cares; the would-be

sisters seemed every day more strange to her. And she had misgivings

and fears which she dared not acknowledge to herself, though she was

always secretly brooding over them.

Her heart tried to persist in asserting that George Osborne was worthy

and faithful to her, though she knew otherwise. How many a thing had

she said, and got no echo from him. How many suspicions of selfishness

and indifference had she to encounter and obstinately overcome. To

whom could the poor little martyr tell these daily struggles and

tortures? Her hero himself only half understood her. She did not dare

to own that the man she loved was her inferior; or to feel that she had

given her heart away too soon. Given once, the pure bashful maiden was

too modest, too tender, too trustful, too weak, too much woman to

recall it. We are Turks with the affections of our women; and have

made them subscribe to our doctrine too. We let their bodies go abroad

liberally enough, with smiles and ringlets and pink bonnets to disguise

them instead of veils and yakmaks. But their souls must be seen by

only one man, and they obey not unwillingly, and consent to remain at

home as our slaves--ministering to us and doing drudgery for us.

So imprisoned and tortured was this gentle little heart, when in the

month of March, Anno Domini 1815, Napoleon landed at Cannes, and Louis

XVIII fled, and all Europe was in alarm, and the funds fell, and old

John Sedley was ruined.

We are not going to follow the worthy old stockbroker through those

last pangs and agonies of ruin through which he passed before his

commercial demise befell. They declared him at the Stock Exchange; he

was absent from his house of business: his bills were protested: his

act of bankruptcy formal. The house and furniture of Russell Square

were seized and sold up, and he and his family were thrust away, as we

have seen, to hide their heads where they might.

John Sedley had not the heart to review the domestic establishment who

have appeared now and anon in our pages and of whom he was now forced

by poverty to take leave. The wages of those worthy people were

discharged with that punctuality which men frequently show who only owe

in great sums--they were sorry to leave good places--but they did not

break their hearts at parting from their adored master and mistress.

Amelia's maid was profuse in condolences, but went off quite resigned

to better herself in a genteeler quarter of the town. Black Sambo,

with the infatuation of his profession, determined on setting up a

public-house. Honest old Mrs. Blenkinsop indeed, who had seen the

birth of Jos and Amelia, and the wooing of John Sedley and his wife,

was for staying by them without wages, having amassed a considerable

sum in their service: and she accompanied the fallen people into their

new and humble place of refuge, where she tended them and grumbled

against them for a while.

Of all Sedley's opponents in his debates with his creditors which now

ensued, and harassed the feelings of the humiliated old gentleman so

severely, that in six weeks he oldened more than he had done for

fifteen years before--the most determined and obstinate seemed to be

John Osborne, his old friend and neighbour--John Osborne, whom he had

set up in life--who was under a hundred obligations to him--and whose

son was to marry Sedley's daughter. Any one of these circumstances

would account for the bitterness of Osborne's opposition.

When one man has been under very remarkable obligations to another,

with whom he subsequently quarrels, a common sense of decency, as it

were, makes of the former a much severer enemy than a mere stranger

would be. To account for your own hard-heartedness and ingratitude in

such a case, you are bound to prove the other party's crime. It is not

that you are selfish, brutal, and angry at the failure of a

speculation--no, no--it is that your partner has led you into it by the

basest treachery and with the most sinister motives. From a mere sense

of consistency, a persecutor is bound to show that the fallen man is a

villain--otherwise he, the persecutor, is a wretch himself.

And as a general rule, which may make all creditors who are inclined to

be severe pretty comfortable in their minds, no men embarrassed are

altogether honest, very likely. They conceal something; they

exaggerate chances of good luck; hide away the real state of affairs;

say that things are flourishing when they are hopeless, keep a smiling

face (a dreary smile it is) upon the verge of bankruptcy--are ready to

lay hold of any pretext for delay or of any money, so as to stave off

the inevitable ruin a few days longer. "Down with such dishonesty,"

says the creditor in triumph, and reviles his sinking enemy. "You

fool, why do you catch at a straw?" calm good sense says to the man

that is drowning. "You villain, why do you shrink from plunging into

the irretrievable Gazette?" says prosperity to the poor devil battling

in that black gulf. Who has not remarked the readiness with which the

closest of friends and honestest of men suspect and accuse each other

of cheating when they fall out on money matters? Everybody does it.

Everybody is right, I suppose, and the world is a rogue.

Then Osborne had the intolerable sense of former benefits to goad and

irritate him: these are always a cause of hostility aggravated.

Finally, he had to break off the match between Sedley's daughter and

his son; and as it had gone very far indeed, and as the poor girl's

happiness and perhaps character were compromised, it was necessary to

show the strongest reasons for the rupture, and for John Osborne to

prove John Sedley to be a very bad character indeed.

At the meetings of creditors, then, he comported himself with a

savageness and scorn towards Sedley, which almost succeeded in breaking

the heart of that ruined bankrupt man. On George's intercourse with

Amelia he put an instant veto--menacing the youth with maledictions if

he broke his commands, and vilipending the poor innocent girl as the

basest and most artful of vixens. One of the great conditions of anger

and hatred is, that you must tell and believe lies against the hated

object, in order, as we said, to be consistent.

When the great crash came--the announcement of ruin, and the departure

from Russell Square, and the declaration that all was over between her

and George--all over between her and love, her and happiness, her and

faith in the world--a brutal letter from John Osborne told her in a few

curt lines that her father's conduct had been of such a nature that all

engagements between the families were at an end--when the final award

came, it did not shock her so much as her parents, as her mother rather

expected (for John Sedley himself was entirely prostrate in the ruins

of his own affairs and shattered honour). Amelia took the news very

palely and calmly. It was only the confirmation of the dark presages

which had long gone before. It was the mere reading of the

sentence--of the crime she had long ago been guilty--the crime of

loving wrongly, too violently, against reason. She told no more of her

thoughts now than she had before. She seemed scarcely more unhappy now

when convinced all hope was over, than before when she felt but dared

not confess that it was gone. So she changed from the large house to

the small one without any mark or difference; remained in her little

room for the most part; pined silently; and died away day by day. I do

not mean to say that all females are so. My dear Miss Bullock, I do

not think your heart would break in this way. You are a strong-minded

young woman with proper principles. I do not venture to say that mine

would; it has suffered, and, it must be confessed, survived. But there

are some souls thus gently constituted, thus frail, and delicate, and

tender.

Whenever old John Sedley thought of the affair between George and

Amelia, or alluded to it, it was with bitterness almost as great as Mr.

Osborne himself had shown. He cursed Osborne and his family as

heartless, wicked, and ungrateful. No power on earth, he swore, would

induce him to marry his daughter to the son of such a villain, and he

ordered Emmy to banish George from her mind, and to return all the

presents and letters which she had ever had from him.

She promised acquiescence, and tried to obey. She put up the two or

three trinkets: and, as for the letters, she drew them out of the place

where she kept them; and read them over--as if she did not know them by

heart already: but she could not part with them. That effort was too

much for her; she placed them back in her bosom again--as you have seen

a woman nurse a child that is dead. Young Amelia felt that she would

die or lose her senses outright, if torn away from this last

consolation. How she used to blush and lighten up when those letters

came! How she used to trip away with a beating heart, so that she

might read unseen! If they were cold, yet how perversely this fond

little soul interpreted them into warmth. If they were short or

selfish, what excuses she found for the writer!

It was over these few worthless papers that she brooded and brooded.

She lived in her past life--every letter seemed to recall some

circumstance of it. How well she remembered them all! His looks and

tones, his dress, what he said and how--these relics and remembrances

of dead affection were all that were left her in the world. And the

business of her life, was--to watch the corpse of Love.

To death she looked with inexpressible longing. Then, she thought, I

shall always be able to follow him. I am not praising her conduct or

setting her up as a model for Miss Bullock to imitate. Miss B. knows

how to regulate her feelings better than this poor little creature.

Miss B. would never have committed herself as that imprudent Amelia had

done; pledged her love irretrievably; confessed her heart away, and got

back nothing--only a brittle promise which was snapt and worthless in a

moment. A long engagement is a partnership which one party is free to

keep or to break, but which involves all the capital of the other.

Be cautious then, young ladies; be wary how you engage. Be shy of

loving frankly; never tell all you feel, or (a better way still), feel

very little. See the consequences of being prematurely honest and

confiding, and mistrust yourselves and everybody. Get yourselves

married as they do in France, where the lawyers are the bridesmaids and

confidantes. At any rate, never have any feelings which may make you

uncomfortable, or make any promises which you cannot at any required

moment command and withdraw. That is the way to get on, and be

respected, and have a virtuous character in Vanity Fair.

If Amelia could have heard the comments regarding her which were made

in the circle from which her father's ruin had just driven her, she

would have seen what her own crimes were, and how entirely her

character was jeopardised. Such criminal imprudence Mrs. Smith never

knew of; such horrid familiarities Mrs. Brown had always condemned, and

the end might be a warning to HER daughters. "Captain Osborne, of

course, could not marry a bankrupt's daughter," the Misses Dobbin said.

"It was quite enough to have been swindled by the father. As for that

little Amelia, her folly had really passed all--"

"All what?" Captain Dobbin roared out. "Haven't they been engaged ever

since they were children? Wasn't it as good as a marriage? Dare any

soul on earth breathe a word against the sweetest, the purest, the

tenderest, the most angelical of young women?"

"La, William, don't be so highty-tighty with US. We're not men. We

can't fight you," Miss Jane said. "We've said nothing against Miss

Sedley: but that her conduct throughout was MOST IMPRUDENT, not to call

it by any worse name; and that her parents are people who certainly

merit their misfortunes."

"Hadn't you better, now that Miss Sedley is free, propose for her

yourself, William?" Miss Ann asked sarcastically. "It would be a most

eligible family connection. He! he!"

"I marry her!" Dobbin said, blushing very much, and talking quick. "If

you are so ready, young ladies, to chop and change, do you suppose that

she is? Laugh and sneer at that angel. She can't hear it; and she's

miserable and unfortunate, and deserves to be laughed at. Go on

joking, Ann. You're the wit of the family, and the others like to hear

it."

"I must tell you again we're not in a barrack, William," Miss Ann

remarked.

"In a barrack, by Jove--I wish anybody in a barrack would say what you

do," cried out this uproused British lion. "I should like to hear a

man breathe a word against her, by Jupiter. But men don't talk in this

way, Ann: it's only women, who get together and hiss, and shriek, and

cackle. There, get away--don't begin to cry. I only said you were a

couple of geese," Will Dobbin said, perceiving Miss Ann's pink eyes

were beginning to moisten as usual. "Well, you're not geese, you're

swans--anything you like, only do, do leave Miss Sedley alone."

Anything like William's infatuation about that silly little flirting,

ogling thing was never known, the mamma and sisters agreed together in

thinking: and they trembled lest, her engagement being off with

Osborne, she should take up immediately her other admirer and Captain.

In which forebodings these worthy young women no doubt judged according

to the best of their experience; or rather (for as yet they had had no

opportunities of marrying or of jilting) according to their own notions

of right and wrong.

"It is a mercy, Mamma, that the regiment is ordered abroad," the girls

said. "THIS danger, at any rate, is spared our brother."

Such, indeed, was the fact; and so it is that the French Emperor comes

in to perform a part in this domestic comedy of Vanity Fair which we

are now playing, and which would never have been enacted without the

intervention of this august mute personage. It was he that ruined the

Bourbons and Mr. John Sedley. It was he whose arrival in his capital

called up all France in arms to defend him there; and all Europe to

oust him. While the French nation and army were swearing fidelity round

the eagles in the Champ de Mars, four mighty European hosts were

getting in motion for the great chasse a l'aigle; and one of these was

a British army, of which two heroes of ours, Captain Dobbin and Captain

Osborne, formed a portion.

The news of Napoleon's escape and landing was received by the gallant

--th with a fiery delight and enthusiasm, which everybody can

understand who knows that famous corps. From the colonel to the

smallest drummer in the regiment, all were filled with hope and

ambition and patriotic fury; and thanked the French Emperor as for a

personal kindness in coming to disturb the peace of Europe. Now was

the time the --th had so long panted for, to show their comrades in

arms that they could fight as well as the Peninsular veterans, and that

all the pluck and valour of the --th had not been killed by the West

Indies and the yellow fever. Stubble and Spooney looked to get their

companies without purchase. Before the end of the campaign (which she

resolved to share), Mrs. Major O'Dowd hoped to write herself Mrs.

Colonel O'Dowd, C.B. Our two friends (Dobbin and Osborne) were quite

as much excited as the rest: and each in his way--Mr. Dobbin very

quietly, Mr. Osborne very loudly and energetically--was bent upon doing

his duty, and gaining his share of honour and distinction.

The agitation thrilling through the country and army in consequence of

this news was so great, that private matters were little heeded: and

hence probably George Osborne, just gazetted to his company, busy with

preparations for the march, which must come inevitably, and panting for

further promotion--was not so much affected by other incidents which

would have interested him at a more quiet period. He was not, it must

be confessed, very much cast down by good old Mr. Sedley's catastrophe.

He tried his new uniform, which became him very handsomely, on the day

when the first meeting of the creditors of the unfortunate gentleman

took place. His father told him of the wicked, rascally, shameful

conduct of the bankrupt, reminded him of what he had said about Amelia,

and that their connection was broken off for ever; and gave him that

evening a good sum of money to pay for the new clothes and epaulets in

which he looked so well. Money was always useful to this free-handed

young fellow, and he took it without many words. The bills were up in

the Sedley house, where he had passed so many, many happy hours. He

could see them as he walked from home that night (to the Old

Slaughters', where he put up when in town) shining white in the moon.

That comfortable home was shut, then, upon Amelia and her parents:

where had they taken refuge? The thought of their ruin affected him not

a little. He was very melancholy that night in the coffee-room at the

Slaughters'; and drank a good deal, as his comrades remarked there.

Dobbin came in presently, cautioned him about the drink, which he only

took, he said, because he was deuced low; but when his friend began to

put to him clumsy inquiries, and asked him for news in a significant

manner, Osborne declined entering into conversation with him, avowing,

however, that he was devilish disturbed and unhappy.

Three days afterwards, Dobbin found Osborne in his room at the

barracks--his head on the table, a number of papers about, the young

Captain evidently in a state of great despondency. "She--she's sent me

back some things I gave her--some damned trinkets. Look here!" There

was a little packet directed in the well-known hand to Captain George

Osborne, and some things lying about--a ring, a silver knife he had

bought, as a boy, for her at a fair; a gold chain, and a locket with

hair in it. "It's all over," said he, with a groan of sickening

remorse. "Look, Will, you may read it if you like."

There was a little letter of a few lines, to which he pointed, which

said:

My papa has ordered me to return to you these presents, which you made

in happier days to me; and I am to write to you for the last time. I

think, I know you feel as much as I do the blow which has come upon us.

It is I that absolve you from an engagement which is impossible in our

present misery. I am sure you had no share in it, or in the cruel

suspicions of Mr. Osborne, which are the hardest of all our griefs to

bear. Farewell. Farewell. I pray God to strengthen me to bear this

and other calamities, and to bless you always. A.

I shall often play upon the piano--your piano. It was like you to send

it.

Dobbin was very soft-hearted. The sight of women and children in pain

always used to melt him. The idea of Amelia broken-hearted and lonely

tore that good-natured soul with anguish. And he broke out into an

emotion, which anybody who likes may consider unmanly. He swore that

Amelia was an angel, to which Osborne said aye with all his heart. He,

too, had been reviewing the history of their lives--and had seen her

from her childhood to her present age, so sweet, so innocent, so

charmingly simple, and artlessly fond and tender.

What a pang it was to lose all that: to have had it and not prized it!

A thousand homely scenes and recollections crowded on him--in which he

always saw her good and beautiful. And for himself, he blushed with

remorse and shame, as the remembrance of his own selfishness and

indifference contrasted with that perfect purity. For a while, glory,

war, everything was forgotten, and the pair of friends talked about her

only.

"Where are they?" Osborne asked, after a long talk, and a long

pause--and, in truth, with no little shame at thinking that he had

taken no steps to follow her. "Where are they? There's no address to

the note."

Dobbin knew. He had not merely sent the piano; but had written a note

to Mrs. Sedley, and asked permission to come and see her--and he had

seen her, and Amelia too, yesterday, before he came down to Chatham;

and, what is more, he had brought that farewell letter and packet which

had so moved them.

The good-natured fellow had found Mrs. Sedley only too willing to

receive him, and greatly agitated by the arrival of the piano, which,

as she conjectured, MUST have come from George, and was a signal of

amity on his part. Captain Dobbin did not correct this error of the

worthy lady, but listened to all her story of complaints and

misfortunes with great sympathy--condoled with her losses and

privations, and agreed in reprehending the cruel conduct of Mr. Osborne

towards his first benefactor. When she had eased her overflowing bosom

somewhat, and poured forth many of her sorrows, he had the courage to

ask actually to see Amelia, who was above in her room as usual, and

whom her mother led trembling downstairs.

Her appearance was so ghastly, and her look of despair so pathetic,

that honest William Dobbin was frightened as he beheld it; and read the

most fatal forebodings in that pale fixed face. After sitting in his

company a minute or two, she put the packet into his hand, and said,

"Take this to Captain Osborne, if you please, and--and I hope he's

quite well--and it was very kind of you to come and see us--and we like

our new house very much. And I--I think I'll go upstairs, Mamma, for

I'm not very strong." And with this, and a curtsey and a smile, the

poor child went her way. The mother, as she led her up, cast back

looks of anguish towards Dobbin. The good fellow wanted no such

appeal. He loved her himself too fondly for that. Inexpressible

grief, and pity, and terror pursued him, and he came away as if he was

a criminal after seeing her.

When Osborne heard that his friend had found her, he made hot and

anxious inquiries regarding the poor child. How was she? How did she

look? What did she say? His comrade took his hand, and looked him in

the face.

"George, she's dying," William Dobbin said--and could speak no more.

There was a buxom Irish servant-girl, who performed all the duties of

the little house where the Sedley family had found refuge: and this

girl had in vain, on many previous days, striven to give Amelia aid or

consolation. Emmy was much too sad to answer, or even to be aware of

the attempts the other was making in her favour.

Four hours after the talk between Dobbin and Osborne, this servant-maid

came into Amelia's room, where she sate as usual, brooding

silently over her letters--her little treasures. The girl, smiling,

and looking arch and happy, made many trials to attract poor Emmy's

attention, who, however, took no heed of her.

"Miss Emmy," said the girl.

"I'm coming," Emmy said, not looking round.

"There's a message," the maid went on. "There's

something--somebody--sure, here's a new letter for you--don't be reading

them old ones any more." And she gave her a letter, which Emmy took, and

read.

"I must see you," the letter said. "Dearest Emmy--dearest

love--dearest wife, come to me."

George and her mother were outside, waiting until she had read the

letter.