Vanity Fair - Page 299/573

"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.