Vanity Fair - Page 297/573

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?