Vanity Fair
valet; and I defy any man after I have gone to find anything against my
character." Or suppose, on the other hand, your swan sings quite a
different sort of dirge and you say, "I am a poor blighted,
disappointed old fellow, and have made an utter failure through life.
I was not endowed either with brains or with good fortune, and confess
that I have committed a hundred mistakes and blunders. I own to having
forgotten my duty many a time. I can't pay what I owe. On my last bed
I lie utterly helpless and humble, and I pray forgiveness for my
weakness and throw myself, with a contrite heart, at the feet of the
Divine Mercy." Which of these two speeches, think you, would be the
best oration for your own funeral? Old Sedley made the last; and in
that humble frame of mind, and holding by the hand of his daughter,
life and disappointment and vanity sank away from under him.
"You see," said old Osborne to George, "what comes of merit, and
industry, and judicious speculations, and that. Look at me and my
banker's account. Look at your poor Grandfather Sedley and his
failure. And yet he was a better man than I was, this day twenty
years--a better man, I should say, by ten thousand pound."
Beyond these people and Mr. Clapp's family, who came over from Brompton
to pay a visit of condolence, not a single soul alive ever cared a
penny piece about old John Sedley, or remembered the existence of such
a person.
When old Osborne first heard from his friend Colonel Buckler (as little
Georgy had already informed us) how distinguished an officer Major
Dobbin was, he exhibited a great deal of scornful incredulity and
expressed his surprise how ever such a feller as that should possess
either brains or reputation. But he heard of the Major's fame from
various members of his society. Sir William Dobbin had a great opinion
of his son and narrated many stories illustrative of the Major's
learning, valour, and estimation in the world's opinion. Finally, his
name appeared in the lists of one or two great parties of the nobility,
and this circumstance had a prodigious effect upon the old aristocrat
of Russell Square.
The Major's position, as guardian to Georgy, whose possession had been
ceded to his grandfather, rendered some meetings between the two
gentlemen inevitable; and it was in one of these that old Osborne, a
keen man of business, looking into the Major's accounts with his ward
and the boy's mother, got a hint, which staggered him very much, and at
once pained and pleased him, that it was out of William Dobbin's own
pocket that a part of the fund had been supplied upon which the poor
widow and the child had subsisted.
When pressed upon the point, Dobbin, who could not tell lies, blushed
and stammered a good deal and finally confessed. "The marriage," he
said (at which his interlocutor's face grew dark) "was very much my
doing. I thought my poor friend had gone so far that retreat from his
engagement would have been dishonour to him and death to Mrs. Osborne,
and I could do no less, when she was left without resources, than give
what money I could spare to maintain her."
"Major D.," Mr. Osborne said, looking hard at him and turning very red
too--"you did me a great injury; but give me leave to tell you, sir,
you are an honest feller. There's my hand, sir, though I little thought
that my flesh and blood was living on you--" and the pair shook hands,
with great confusion on Major Dobbin's part, thus found out in his act
of charitable hypocrisy.
He strove to soften the old man and reconcile him towards his son's
memory. "He was such a noble fellow," he said, "that all of us loved
him, and would have done anything for him. I, as a young man in those
days, was flattered beyond measure by his preference for me, and was
more pleased to be seen in his company than in that of the
Commander-in-Chief. I never saw his equal for pluck and daring and all
the qualities of a soldier"; and Dobbin told the old father as many
stories as he could remember regarding the gallantry and achievements
of his son. "And Georgy is so like him," the Major added.
"He's so like him that he makes me tremble sometimes," the grandfather
said.
On one or two evenings the Major came to dine with Mr. Osborne (it was
during the time of the sickness of Mr. Sedley), and as the two sat
together in the evening after dinner, all their talk was about the
departed hero. The father boasted about him according to his wont,
glorifying himself in recounting his son's feats and gallantry, but his
mood was at any rate better and more charitable than that in which he
had been disposed until now to regard the poor fellow; and the
Christian heart of the kind Major was pleased at these symptoms of
returning peace and good-will. On the second evening old Osborne
called Dobbin William, just as he used to do at the time when Dobbin
and George were boys together, and the honest gentleman was pleased by
that mark of reconciliation.
On the next day at breakfast, when Miss Osborne, with the asperity of
her age and character, ventured to make some remark reflecting
slightingly upon the Major's appearance or behaviour--the master of the
house interrupted her. "You'd have been glad enough to git him for
yourself, Miss O. But them grapes are sour. Ha! ha! Major William is
a fine feller."
"That he is, Grandpapa," said Georgy approvingly; and going up close to
the old gentleman, he took a hold of his large grey whiskers, and
laughed in his face good-humouredly, and kissed him. And he told the
story at night to his mother, who fully agreed with the boy. "Indeed he
is," she said. "Your dear father always said so. He is one of the best
and most upright of men." Dobbin happened to drop in very soon after
this conversation, which made Amelia blush perhaps, and the young
scapegrace increased the confusion by telling Dobbin the other part of
the story. "I say, Dob," he said, "there's such an uncommon nice girl
wants to marry you. She's plenty of tin; she wears a front; and she
scolds the servants from morning till night." "Who is it?" asked
Dobbin. "It's Aunt O.," the boy answered. "Grandpapa said so. And I
say, Dob, how prime it would be to have you for my uncle." Old Sedley's
quavering voice from the next room at this moment weakly called for
Amelia, and the laughing ended.
That old Osborne's mind was changing was pretty clear. He asked George
about his uncle sometimes, and laughed at the boy's imitation of the
way in which Jos said "God-bless-my-soul" and gobbled his soup. Then
he said, "It's not respectful, sir, of you younkers to be imitating of
your relations. Miss O., when you go out adriving to-day, leave my
card upon Mr. Sedley, do you hear? There's no quarrel betwigst me and
him anyhow."
The card was returned, and Jos and the Major were asked to dinner--to
a dinner the most splendid and stupid that perhaps ever Mr. Osborne
gave; every inch of the family plate was exhibited, and the best
company was asked. Mr. Sedley took down Miss O. to dinner, and she
was very gracious to him; whereas she hardly spoke to the Major, who
sat apart from her, and by the side of Mr. Osborne, very timid. Jos
said, with great solemnity, it was the best turtle soup he had ever
tasted in his life, and asked Mr. Osborne where he got his Madeira.
"It is some of Sedley's wine," whispered the butler to his master.
"I've had it a long time, and paid a good figure for it, too," Mr.
Osborne said aloud to his guest, and then whispered to his right-hand
neighbour how he had got it "at the old chap's sale."
More than once he asked the Major about--about Mrs. George Osborne--a
theme on which the Major could be very eloquent when he chose. He told
Mr. Osborne of her sufferings--of her passionate attachment to her
husband, whose memory she worshipped still--of the tender and dutiful
manner in which she had supported her parents, and given up her boy,
when it seemed to her her duty to do so. "You don't know what she
endured, sir," said honest Dobbin with a tremor in his voice, "and I
hope and trust you will be reconciled to her. If she took your son
away from you, she gave hers to you; and however much you loved your
George, depend on it, she loved hers ten times more."
"By God, you are a good feller, sir," was all Mr. Osborne said. It had
never struck him that the widow would feel any pain at parting from the
boy, or that his having a fine fortune could grieve her. A
reconciliation was announced as speedy and inevitable, and Amelia's
heart already began to beat at the notion of the awful meeting with
George's father.
It was never, however, destined to take place. Old Sedley's lingering
illness and death supervened, after which a meeting was for some time
impossible. That catastrophe and other events may have worked upon Mr.
Osborne. He was much shaken of late, and aged, and his mind was
working inwardly. He had sent for his lawyers, and probably changed
something in his will. The medical man who looked in pronounced him
shaky, agitated, and talked of a little blood and the seaside; but he
took neither of these remedies.
One day when he should have come down to breakfast, his servant missing
him, went into his dressing-room and found him lying at the foot of the
dressing-table in a fit. Miss Osborne was apprised; the doctors were
sent for; Georgy stopped away from school; the bleeders and cuppers
came. Osborne partially regained cognizance, but never could speak
again, though he tried dreadfully once or twice, and in four days he
died. The doctors went down, and the undertaker's men went up the
stairs, and all the shutters were shut towards the garden in Russell
Square. Bullock rushed from the City in a hurry. "How much money had
he left to that boy? Not half, surely? Surely share and share alike
between the three?" It was an agitating moment.
What was it that poor old man tried once or twice in vain to say? I
hope it was that he wanted to see Amelia and be reconciled before he
left the world to one dear and faithful wife of his son: it was most
likely that, for his will showed that the hatred which he had so long
cherished had gone out of his heart.
They found in the pocket of his dressing-gown the letter with the great
red seal which George had written him from Waterloo. He had looked at
the other papers too, relative to his son, for the key of the box in
which he kept them was also in his pocket, and it was found the seals
and envelopes had been broken--very likely on the night before the
seizure--when the butler had taken him tea into his study, and found
him reading in the great red family Bible.
When the will was opened, it was found that half the property was left
to George, and the remainder between the two sisters. Mr. Bullock to
continue, for their joint benefit, the affairs of the commercial house,
or to go out, as he thought fit. An annuity of five hundred pounds,
chargeable on George's property, was left to his mother, "the widow of
my beloved son, George Osborne," who was to resume the guardianship of
the boy.
"Major William Dobbin, my beloved son's friend," was appointed
executor; "and as out of his kindness and bounty, and with his own
private funds, he maintained my grandson and my son's widow, when they
were otherwise without means of support" (the testator went on to say)
"I hereby thank him heartily for his love and regard for them, and
beseech him to accept such a sum as may be sufficient to purchase his
commission as a Lieutenant-Colonel, or to be disposed of in any way he
may think fit."
When Amelia heard that her father-in-law was reconciled to her, her
heart melted, and she was grateful for the fortune left to her. But
when she heard how Georgy was restored to her, and knew how and by