CHAPTER XXXV

Widow and Mother

The news of the great fights of Quatre Bras and Waterloo reached

England at the same time. The Gazette first published the result of

the two battles; at which glorious intelligence all England thrilled

with triumph and fear. Particulars then followed; and after the

announcement of the victories came the list of the wounded and the

slain. Who can tell the dread with which that catalogue was opened and

read! Fancy, at every village and homestead almost through the three

kingdoms, the great news coming of the battles in Flanders, and the

feelings of exultation and gratitude, bereavement and sickening dismay,

when the lists of the regimental losses were gone through, and it

became known whether the dear friend and relative had escaped or

fallen. Anybody who will take the trouble of looking back to a file of

the newspapers of the time, must, even now, feel at second-hand this

breathless pause of expectation. The lists of casualties are carried

on from day to day: you stop in the midst as in a story which is to be

continued in our next. Think what the feelings must have been as those

papers followed each other fresh from the press; and if such an

interest could be felt in our country, and about a battle where but

twenty thousand of our people were engaged, think of the condition of

Europe for twenty years before, where people were fighting, not by

thousands, but by millions; each one of whom as he struck his enemy

wounded horribly some other innocent heart far away.

The news which that famous Gazette brought to the Osbornes gave a

dreadful shock to the family and its chief. The girls indulged

unrestrained in their grief. The gloom-stricken old father was still

more borne down by his fate and sorrow. He strove to think that a

judgment was on the boy for his disobedience. He dared not own that

the severity of the sentence frightened him, and that its fulfilment

had come too soon upon his curses. Sometimes a shuddering terror

struck him, as if he had been the author of the doom which he had

called down on his son. There was a chance before of reconciliation.

The boy's wife might have died; or he might have come back and said,

Father I have sinned. But there was no hope now. He stood on the

other side of the gulf impassable, haunting his parent with sad eyes.

He remembered them once before so in a fever, when every one thought

the lad was dying, and he lay on his bed speechless, and gazing with a

dreadful gloom. Good God! how the father clung to the doctor then, and

with what a sickening anxiety he followed him: what a weight of grief

was off his mind when, after the crisis of the fever, the lad

recovered, and looked at his father once more with eyes that recognised

him. But now there was no help or cure, or chance of reconcilement:

above all, there were no humble words to soothe vanity outraged and

furious, or bring to its natural flow the poisoned, angry blood. And

it is hard to say which pang it was that tore the proud father's heart

most keenly--that his son should have gone out of the reach of his

forgiveness, or that the apology which his own pride expected should

have escaped him.

Whatever his sensations might have been, however, the stern old man

would have no confidant. He never mentioned his son's name to his

daughters; but ordered the elder to place all the females of the

establishment in mourning; and desired that the male servants should be

similarly attired in deep black. All parties and entertainments, of

course, were to be put off. No communications were made to his future

son-in-law, whose marriage-day had been fixed: but there was enough in

Mr. Osborne's appearance to prevent Mr. Bullock from making any

inquiries, or in any way pressing forward that ceremony. He and the

ladies whispered about it under their voices in the drawing-room

sometimes, whither the father never came. He remained constantly in

his own study; the whole front part of the house being closed until

some time after the completion of the general mourning.

About three weeks after the 18th of June, Mr. Osborne's acquaintance,

Sir William Dobbin, called at Mr. Osborne's house in Russell Square,

with a very pale and agitated face, and insisted upon seeing that

gentleman. Ushered into his room, and after a few words, which neither

the speaker nor the host understood, the former produced from an

inclosure a letter sealed with a large red seal. "My son, Major

Dobbin," the Alderman said, with some hesitation, "despatched me a

letter by an officer of the --th, who arrived in town to-day. My son's

letter contains one for you, Osborne." The Alderman placed the letter

on the table, and Osborne stared at him for a moment or two in silence.

His looks frightened the ambassador, who after looking guiltily for a

little time at the grief-stricken man, hurried away without another

word.

The letter was in George's well-known bold handwriting. It was that one

which he had written before daybreak on the 16th of June, and just

before he took leave of Amelia. The great red seal was emblazoned with

the sham coat of arms which Osborne had assumed from the Peerage, with

"Pax in bello" for a motto; that of the ducal house with which the vain

old man tried to fancy himself connected. The hand that signed it would

never hold pen or sword more. The very seal that sealed it had been

robbed from George's dead body as it lay on the field of battle. The

father knew nothing of this, but sat and looked at the letter in

terrified vacancy. He almost fell when he went to open it.

Have you ever had a difference with a dear friend? How his letters,

written in the period of love and confidence, sicken and rebuke you!

What a dreary mourning it is to dwell upon those vehement protests of

dead affection! What lying epitaphs they make over the corpse of love!

What dark, cruel comments upon Life and Vanities! Most of us have got

or written drawers full of them. They are closet-skeletons which we

keep and shun. Osborne trembled long before the letter from his dead

son.

The poor boy's letter did not say much. He had been too proud to

acknowledge the tenderness which his heart felt. He only said, that on

the eve of a great battle, he wished to bid his father farewell, and

solemnly to implore his good offices for the wife--it might be for the

child--whom he left behind him. He owned with contrition that his

irregularities and his extravagance had already wasted a large part of

his mother's little fortune. He thanked his father for his former

generous conduct; and he promised him that if he fell on the field or

survived it, he would act in a manner worthy of the name of George

Osborne.

His English habit, pride, awkwardness perhaps, had prevented him from

saying more. His father could not see the kiss George had placed on

the superscription of his letter. Mr. Osborne dropped it with the

bitterest, deadliest pang of balked affection and revenge. His son was

still beloved and unforgiven.

About two months afterwards, however, as the young ladies of the family

went to church with their father, they remarked how he took a different

seat from that which he usually occupied when he chose to attend divine

worship; and that from his cushion opposite, he looked up at the wall

over their heads. This caused the young women likewise to gaze in the

direction towards which their father's gloomy eyes pointed: and they

saw an elaborate monument upon the wall, where Britannia was

represented weeping over an urn, and a broken sword and a couchant lion

indicated that the piece of sculpture had been erected in honour of a

deceased warrior. The sculptors of those days had stocks of such

funereal emblems in hand; as you may see still on the walls of St.

Paul's, which are covered with hundreds of these braggart heathen

allegories. There was a constant demand for them during the first

fifteen years of the present century.

Under the memorial in question were emblazoned the well-known and

pompous Osborne arms; and the inscription said, that the monument was

"Sacred to the memory of George Osborne, Junior, Esq., late a Captain

in his Majesty's --th regiment of foot, who fell on the 18th of June,

1815, aged 28 years, while fighting for his king and country in the

glorious victory of Waterloo. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori."

The sight of that stone agitated the nerves of the sisters so much,

that Miss Maria was compelled to leave the church. The congregation

made way respectfully for those sobbing girls clothed in deep black,

and pitied the stern old father seated opposite the memorial of the

dead soldier. "Will he forgive Mrs. George?" the girls said to

themselves as soon as their ebullition of grief was over. Much

conversation passed too among the acquaintances of the Osborne family,

who knew of the rupture between the son and father caused by the

former's marriage, as to the chance of a reconciliation with the young

widow. There were bets among the gentlemen both about Russell Square

and in the City.

If the sisters had any anxiety regarding the possible recognition of

Amelia as a daughter of the family, it was increased presently, and

towards the end of the autumn, by their father's announcement that he

was going abroad. He did not say whither, but they knew at once that

his steps would be turned towards Belgium, and were aware that George's

widow was still in Brussels. They had pretty accurate news indeed of

poor Amelia from Lady Dobbin and her daughters. Our honest Captain had

been promoted in consequence of the death of the second Major of the

regiment on the field; and the brave O'Dowd, who had distinguished

himself greatly here as upon all occasions where he had a chance to

show his coolness and valour, was a Colonel and Companion of the Bath.

Very many of the brave --th, who had suffered severely upon both days

of action, were still at Brussels in the autumn, recovering of their

wounds. The city was a vast military hospital for months after the

great battles; and as men and officers began to rally from their hurts,

the gardens and places of public resort swarmed with maimed warriors,

old and young, who, just rescued out of death, fell to gambling, and

gaiety, and love-making, as people of Vanity Fair will do. Mr. Osborne

found out some of the --th easily. He knew their uniform quite well,

and had been used to follow all the promotions and exchanges in the

regiment, and loved to talk about it and its officers as if he had been

one of the number. On the day after his arrival at Brussels, and as he

issued from his hotel, which faced the park, he saw a soldier in the

well-known facings, reposing on a stone bench in the garden, and went

and sate down trembling by the wounded convalescent man.

"Were you in Captain Osborne's company?" he said, and added, after a

pause, "he was my son, sir."

The man was not of the Captain's company, but he lifted up his

unwounded arm and touched his cap sadly and respectfully to the haggard

broken-spirited gentleman who questioned him. "The whole army didn't

contain a finer or a better officer," the soldier said. "The Sergeant

of the Captain's company (Captain Raymond had it now), was in town,

though, and was just well of a shot in the shoulder. His honour might

see him if he liked, who could tell him anything he wanted to know

about--about the --th's actions. But his honour had seen Major Dobbin,

no doubt, the brave Captain's great friend; and Mrs. Osborne, who was

here too, and had been very bad, he heard everybody say. They say she

was out of her mind like for six weeks or more. But your honour knows

all about that--and asking your pardon"--the man added.

Osborne put a guinea into the soldier's hand, and told him he should

have another if he would bring the Sergeant to the Hotel du Parc; a

promise which very soon brought the desired officer to Mr. Osborne's

presence. And the first soldier went away; and after telling a comrade

or two how Captain Osborne's father was arrived, and what a free-handed

generous gentleman he was, they went and made good cheer with drink and

feasting, as long as the guineas lasted which had come from the proud

purse of the mourning old father.

In the Sergeant's company, who was also just convalescent, Osborne made

the journey of Waterloo and Quatre Bras, a journey which thousands of

his countrymen were then taking. He took the Sergeant with him in his

carriage, and went through both fields under his guidance. He saw the

point of the road where the regiment marched into action on the 16th,

and the slope down which they drove the French cavalry who were

pressing on the retreating Belgians. There was the spot where the

noble Captain cut down the French officer who was grappling with the

young Ensign for the colours, the Colour-Sergeants having been shot

down. Along this road they retreated on the next day, and here was the

bank at which the regiment bivouacked under the rain of the night of

the seventeenth. Further on was the position which they took and held

during the day, forming time after time to receive the charge of the

enemy's horsemen and lying down under the shelter of the bank from the

furious French cannonade. And it was at this declivity when at evening

the whole English line received the order to advance, as the enemy fell

back after his last charge, that the Captain, hurraying and rushing

down the hill waving his sword, received a shot and fell dead. "It was

Major Dobbin who took back the Captain's body to Brussels," the

Sergeant said, in a low voice, "and had him buried, as your honour

knows." The peasants and relic-hunters about the place were screaming

round the pair, as the soldier told his story, offering for sale all

sorts of mementoes of the fight, crosses, and epaulets, and shattered

cuirasses, and eagles.

Osborne gave a sumptuous reward to the Sergeant when he parted with

him, after having visited the scenes of his son's last exploits. His

burial-place he had already seen. Indeed, he had driven thither

immediately after his arrival at Brussels. George's body lay in the

pretty burial-ground of Laeken, near the city; in which place, having

once visited it on a party of pleasure, he had lightly expressed a wish

to have his grave made. And there the young officer was laid by his

friend, in the unconsecrated corner of the garden, separated by a

little hedge from the temples and towers and plantations of flowers and

shrubs, under which the Roman Catholic dead repose. It seemed a

humiliation to old Osborne to think that his son, an English gentleman,

a captain in the famous British army, should not be found worthy to lie

in ground where mere foreigners were buried. Which of us is there can

tell how much vanity lurks in our warmest regard for others, and how

selfish our love is? Old Osborne did not speculate much upon the

mingled nature of his feelings, and how his instinct and selfishness

were combating together. He firmly believed that everything he did was

right, that he ought on all occasions to have his own way--and like the

sting of a wasp or serpent his hatred rushed out armed and poisonous

against anything like opposition. He was proud of his hatred as of

everything else. Always to be right, always to trample forward, and

never to doubt, are not these the great qualities with which dullness

takes the lead in the world?

As after the drive to Waterloo, Mr. Osborne's carriage was nearing the

gates of the city at sunset, they met another open barouche, in which

were a couple of ladies and a gentleman, and by the side of which an

officer was riding. Osborne gave a start back, and the Sergeant,

seated with him, cast a look of surprise at his neighbour, as he

touched his cap to the officer, who mechanically returned his salute.

It was Amelia, with the lame young Ensign by her side, and opposite to

her her faithful friend Mrs. O'Dowd. It was Amelia, but how changed

from the fresh and comely girl Osborne knew. Her face was white and

thin. Her pretty brown hair was parted under a widow's cap--the poor

child. Her eyes were fixed, and looking nowhere. They stared blank in

the face of Osborne, as the carriages crossed each other, but she did

not know him; nor did he recognise her, until looking up, he saw Dobbin

riding by her: and then he knew who it was. He hated her. He did not

know how much until he saw her there. When her carriage had passed on,

he turned and stared at the Sergeant, with a curse and defiance in his

eye cast at his companion, who could not help looking at him--as much

as to say "How dare you look at me? Damn you! I do hate her. It is

she who has tumbled my hopes and all my pride down." "Tell the

scoundrel to drive on quick," he shouted with an oath, to the lackey on

the box. A minute afterwards, a horse came clattering over the pavement

behind Osborne's carriage, and Dobbin rode up. His thoughts had been

elsewhere as the carriages passed each other, and it was not until he

had ridden some paces forward, that he remembered it was Osborne who

had just passed him. Then he turned to examine if the sight of her

father-in-law had made any impression on Amelia, but the poor girl did

not know who had passed. Then William, who daily used to accompany her

in his drives, taking out his watch, made some excuse about an

engagement which he suddenly recollected, and so rode off. She did not

remark that either: but sate looking before her, over the homely

landscape towards the woods in the distance, by which George marched

away.

"Mr. Osborne, Mr. Osborne!" cried Dobbin, as he rode up and held out

his hand. Osborne made no motion to take it, but shouted out once more

and with another curse to his servant to drive on.

Dobbin laid his hand on the carriage side. "I will see you, sir," he

said. "I have a message for you."

"From that woman?" said Osborne, fiercely.

"No," replied the other, "from your son"; at which Osborne fell back

into the corner of his carriage, and Dobbin allowing it to pass on,

rode close behind it, and so through the town until they reached Mr.

Osborne's hotel, and without a word. There he followed Osborne up to

his apartments. George had often been in the rooms; they were the

lodgings which the Crawleys had occupied during their stay in Brussels.

"Pray, have you any commands for me, Captain Dobbin, or, I beg your

pardon, I should say MAJOR Dobbin, since better men than you are dead,

and you step into their SHOES?" said Mr. Osborne, in that sarcastic

tone which he sometimes was pleased to assume.

"Better men ARE dead," Dobbin replied. "I want to speak to you about

one."

"Make it short, sir," said the other with an oath, scowling at his

visitor.

"I am here as his closest friend," the Major resumed, "and the executor

of his will. He made it before he went into action. Are you aware how

small his means are, and of the straitened circumstances of his widow?"

"I don't know his widow, sir," Osborne said. "Let her go back to her

father." But the gentleman whom he addressed was determined to remain

in good temper, and went on without heeding the interruption.

"Do you know, sir, Mrs. Osborne's condition? Her life and her reason

almost have been shaken by the blow which has fallen on her. It is

very doubtful whether she will rally. There is a chance left for her,

however, and it is about this I came to speak to you. She will be a

mother soon. Will you visit the parent's offence upon the child's

head? or will you forgive the child for poor George's sake?"

Osborne broke out into a rhapsody of self-praise and imprecations;--by

the first, excusing himself to his own conscience for his conduct; by

the second, exaggerating the undutifulness of George. No father in all

England could have behaved more generously to a son, who had rebelled

against him wickedly. He had died without even so much as confessing

he was wrong. Let him take the consequences of his undutifulness and

folly. As for himself, Mr. Osborne, he was a man of his word. He had

sworn never to speak to that woman, or to recognize her as his son's

wife. "And that's what you may tell her," he concluded with an oath;

"and that's what I will stick to to the last day of my life."

There was no hope from that quarter then. The widow must live on her

slender pittance, or on such aid as Jos could give her. "I might tell

her, and she would not heed it," thought Dobbin, sadly: for the poor

girl's thoughts were not here at all since her catastrophe, and,

stupefied under the pressure of her sorrow, good and evil were alike

indifferent to her.

So, indeed, were even friendship and kindness. She received them both

uncomplainingly, and having accepted them, relapsed into her grief.

Suppose some twelve months after the above conversation took place to

have passed in the life of our poor Amelia. She has spent the first

portion of that time in a sorrow so profound and pitiable, that we who

have been watching and describing some of the emotions of that weak and

tender heart, must draw back in the presence of the cruel grief under

which it is bleeding. Tread silently round the hapless couch of the

poor prostrate soul. Shut gently the door of the dark chamber wherein

she suffers, as those kind people did who nursed her through the first

months of her pain, and never left her until heaven had sent her

consolation. A day came--of almost terrified delight and wonder--when

the poor widowed girl pressed a child upon her breast--a child, with

the eyes of George who was gone--a little boy, as beautiful as a

cherub. What a miracle it was to hear its first cry! How she laughed

and wept over it--how love, and hope, and prayer woke again in her

bosom as the baby nestled there. She was safe. The doctors who

attended her, and had feared for her life or for her brain, had waited

anxiously for this crisis before they could pronounce that either was

secure. It was worth the long months of doubt and dread which the

persons who had constantly been with her had passed, to see her eyes

once more beaming tenderly upon them.

Our friend Dobbin was one of them. It was he who brought her back to

England and to her mother's house; when Mrs. O'Dowd, receiving a

peremptory summons from her Colonel, had been forced to quit her

patient. To see Dobbin holding the infant, and to hear Amelia's laugh

of triumph as she watched him, would have done any man good who had a

sense of humour. William was the godfather of the child, and exerted

his ingenuity in the purchase of cups, spoons, pap-boats, and corals

for this little Christian.

How his mother nursed him, and dressed him, and lived upon him; how she

drove away all nurses, and would scarce allow any hand but her own to

touch him; how she considered that the greatest favour she could confer

upon his godfather, Major Dobbin, was to allow the Major occasionally

to dandle him, need not be told here. This child was her being. Her

existence was a maternal caress. She enveloped the feeble and

unconscious creature with love and worship. It was her life which the

baby drank in from her bosom. Of nights, and when alone, she had

stealthy and intense raptures of motherly love, such as God's

marvellous care has awarded to the female instinct--joys how far

higher and lower than reason--blind beautiful devotions which only

women's hearts know. It was William Dobbin's task to muse upon these

movements of Amelia's, and to watch her heart; and if his love made him

divine almost all the feelings which agitated it, alas! he could see

with a fatal perspicuity that there was no place there for him. And

so, gently, he bore his fate, knowing it, and content to bear it.

I suppose Amelia's father and mother saw through the intentions of the

Major, and were not ill-disposed to encourage him; for Dobbin visited

their house daily, and stayed for hours with them, or with Amelia, or

with the honest landlord, Mr. Clapp, and his family. He brought, on

one pretext or another, presents to everybody, and almost every day;

and went, with the landlord's little girl, who was rather a favourite

with Amelia, by the name of Major Sugarplums. It was this little child

who commonly acted as mistress of the ceremonies to introduce him to

Mrs. Osborne. She laughed one day when Major Sugarplums' cab drove up

to Fulham, and he descended from it, bringing out a wooden horse, a

drum, a trumpet, and other warlike toys, for little Georgy, who was

scarcely six months old, and for whom the articles in question were

entirely premature.

The child was asleep. "Hush," said Amelia, annoyed, perhaps, at the

creaking of the Major's boots; and she held out her hand; smiling

because William could not take it until he had rid himself of his cargo

of toys. "Go downstairs, little Mary," said he presently to the child,

"I want to speak to Mrs. Osborne." She looked up rather astonished, and

laid down the infant on its bed.

"I am come to say good-bye, Amelia," said he, taking her slender little

white hand gently.

"Good-bye? and where are you going?" she said, with a smile.

"Send the letters to the agents," he said; "they will forward them; for

you will write to me, won't you? I shall be away a long time."

"I'll write to you about Georgy," she said. "Dear William, how good

you have been to him and to me. Look at him. Isn't he like an angel?"

The little pink hands of the child closed mechanically round the honest

soldier's finger, and Amelia looked up in his face with bright maternal

pleasure. The cruellest looks could not have wounded him more than

that glance of hopeless kindness. He bent over the child and mother.

He could not speak for a moment. And it was only with all his strength

that he could force himself to say a God bless you. "God bless you,"

said Amelia, and held up her face and kissed him.

"Hush! Don't wake Georgy!" she added, as William Dobbin went to the

door with heavy steps. She did not hear the noise of his cab-wheels as

he drove away: she was looking at the child, who was laughing in his

sleep.