Vanity Fair
ignorant of the contents, that she was going to help Mr. Sedley without
bestowing upon him either calipash or calipee.
The splendour of the entertainment, and the apartments in which it was
given, alarmed Mr. Dobbin, who remonstrated after dinner, when Jos was
asleep in the great chair. But in vain he cried out against the
enormity of turtle and champagne that was fit for an archbishop. "I've
always been accustomed to travel like a gentleman," George said, "and,
damme, my wife shall travel like a lady. As long as there's a shot in
the locker, she shall want for nothing," said the generous fellow,
quite pleased with himself for his magnificence of spirit. Nor did
Dobbin try and convince him that Amelia's happiness was not centred in
turtle-soup.
A while after dinner, Amelia timidly expressed a wish to go and see her
mamma, at Fulham: which permission George granted her with some
grumbling. And she tripped away to her enormous bedroom, in the centre
of which stood the enormous funereal bed, "that the Emperor
Halixander's sister slep in when the allied sufferings was here," and
put on her little bonnet and shawl with the utmost eagerness and
pleasure. George was still drinking claret when she returned to the
dining-room, and made no signs of moving. "Ar'n't you coming with me,
dearest?" she asked him. No; the "dearest" had "business" that night.
His man should get her a coach and go with her. And the coach being at
the door of the hotel, Amelia made George a little disappointed curtsey
after looking vainly into his face once or twice, and went sadly down
the great staircase, Captain Dobbin after, who handed her into the
vehicle, and saw it drive away to its destination. The very valet was
ashamed of mentioning the address to the hackney-coachman before the
hotel waiters, and promised to instruct him when they got further on.
Dobbin walked home to his old quarters and the Slaughters', thinking
very likely that it would be delightful to be in that hackney-coach,
along with Mrs. Osborne. George was evidently of quite a different
taste; for when he had taken wine enough, he went off to half-price at
the play, to see Mr. Kean perform in Shylock. Captain Osborne was a
great lover of the drama, and had himself performed high-comedy
characters with great distinction in several garrison theatrical
entertainments. Jos slept on until long after dark, when he woke up
with a start at the motions of his servant, who was removing and
emptying the decanters on the table; and the hackney-coach stand was
again put into requisition for a carriage to convey this stout hero to
his lodgings and bed.
Mrs. Sedley, you may be sure, clasped her daughter to her heart with
all maternal eagerness and affection, running out of the door as the
carriage drew up before the little garden-gate, to welcome the weeping,
trembling, young bride. Old Mr. Clapp, who was in his shirt-sleeves,
trimming the garden-plot, shrank back alarmed. The Irish servant-lass
rushed up from the kitchen and smiled a "God bless you." Amelia could
hardly walk along the flags and up the steps into the parlour.
How the floodgates were opened, and mother and daughter wept, when they
were together embracing each other in this sanctuary, may readily be
imagined by every reader who possesses the least sentimental turn.
When don't ladies weep? At what occasion of joy, sorrow, or other
business of life, and, after such an event as a marriage, mother and
daughter were surely at liberty to give way to a sensibility which is
as tender as it is refreshing. About a question of marriage I have seen
women who hate each other kiss and cry together quite fondly. How much
more do they feel when they love! Good mothers are married over again
at their daughters' weddings: and as for subsequent events, who does
not know how ultra-maternal grandmothers are?--in fact a woman, until
she is a grandmother, does not often really know what to be a mother
is. Let us respect Amelia and her mamma whispering and whimpering and
laughing and crying in the parlour and the twilight. Old Mr. Sedley
did. HE had not divined who was in the carriage when it drove up. He
had not flown out to meet his daughter, though he kissed her very
warmly when she entered the room (where he was occupied, as usual, with
his papers and tapes and statements of accounts), and after sitting
with the mother and daughter for a short time, he very wisely left the
little apartment in their possession.
George's valet was looking on in a very supercilious manner at Mr.
Clapp in his shirt-sleeves, watering his rose-bushes. He took off his
hat, however, with much condescension to Mr. Sedley, who asked news
about his son-in-law, and about Jos's carriage, and whether his horses
had been down to Brighton, and about that infernal traitor Bonaparty,
and the war; until the Irish maid-servant came with a plate and a
bottle of wine, from which the old gentleman insisted upon helping the
valet. He gave him a half-guinea too, which the servant pocketed with
a mixture of wonder and contempt. "To the health of your master and
mistress, Trotter," Mr. Sedley said, "and here's something to drink
your health when you get home, Trotter."
There were but nine days past since Amelia had left that little cottage
and home--and yet how far off the time seemed since she had bidden it
farewell. What a gulf lay between her and that past life. She could
look back to it from her present standing-place, and contemplate,
almost as another being, the young unmarried girl absorbed in her love,
having no eyes but for one special object, receiving parental affection
if not ungratefully, at least indifferently, and as if it were her
due--her whole heart and thoughts bent on the accomplishment of one
desire. The review of those days, so lately gone yet so far away,
touched her with shame; and the aspect of the kind parents filled her
with tender remorse. Was the prize gained--the heaven of life--and the
winner still doubtful and unsatisfied? As his hero and heroine pass
the matrimonial barrier, the novelist generally drops the curtain, as
if the drama were over then: the doubts and struggles of life ended:
as if, once landed in the marriage country, all were green and pleasant
there: and wife and husband had nothing to do but to link each other's
arms together, and wander gently downwards towards old age in happy and
perfect fruition. But our little Amelia was just on the bank of her
new country, and was already looking anxiously back towards the sad
friendly figures waving farewell to her across the stream, from the
other distant shore.
In honour of the young bride's arrival, her mother thought it necessary
to prepare I don't know what festive entertainment, and after the first
ebullition of talk, took leave of Mrs. George Osborne for a while, and
dived down to the lower regions of the house to a sort of
kitchen-parlour (occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Clapp, and in the evening,
when her dishes were washed and her curl-papers removed, by Miss
Flannigan, the Irish servant), there to take measures for the preparing
of a magnificent ornamented tea. All people have their ways of
expressing kindness, and it seemed to Mrs. Sedley that a muffin and a
quantity of orange marmalade spread out in a little cut-glass saucer
would be peculiarly agreeable refreshments to Amelia in her most
interesting situation.
While these delicacies were being transacted below, Amelia, leaving the
drawing-room, walked upstairs and found herself, she scarce knew how,
in the little room which she had occupied before her marriage, and in
that very chair in which she had passed so many bitter hours. She sank
back in its arms as if it were an old friend; and fell to thinking over
the past week, and the life beyond it. Already to be looking sadly and
vaguely back: always to be pining for something which, when obtained,
brought doubt and sadness rather than pleasure; here was the lot of our
poor little creature and harmless lost wanderer in the great struggling
crowds of Vanity Fair.
Here she sate, and recalled to herself fondly that image of George to
which she had knelt before marriage. Did she own to herself how
different the real man was from that superb young hero whom she had
worshipped? It requires many, many years--and a man must be very bad
indeed--before a woman's pride and vanity will let her own to such a
confession. Then Rebecca's twinkling green eyes and baleful smile
lighted upon her, and filled her with dismay. And so she sate for
awhile indulging in her usual mood of selfish brooding, in that very
listless melancholy attitude in which the honest maid-servant had found
her, on the day when she brought up the letter in which George renewed
his offer of marriage.
She looked at the little white bed, which had been hers a few days
before, and thought she would like to sleep in it that night, and wake,
as formerly, with her mother smiling over her in the morning: Then she
thought with terror of the great funereal damask pavilion in the vast
and dingy state bedroom, which was awaiting her at the grand hotel in
Cavendish Square. Dear little white bed! how many a long night had she
wept on its pillow! How she had despaired and hoped to die there; and
now were not all her wishes accomplished, and the lover of whom she had
despaired her own for ever? Kind mother! how patiently and tenderly
she had watched round that bed! She went and knelt down by the bedside;
and there this wounded and timorous, but gentle and loving soul, sought
for consolation, where as yet, it must be owned, our little girl had
but seldom looked for it. Love had been her faith hitherto; and the
sad, bleeding disappointed heart began to feel the want of another
consoler.
Have we a right to repeat or to overhear her prayers? These, brother,
are secrets, and out of the domain of Vanity Fair, in which our story
lies.
But this may be said, that when the tea was finally announced, our
young lady came downstairs a great deal more cheerful; that she did not
despond, or deplore her fate, or think about George's coldness, or
Rebecca's eyes, as she had been wont to do of late. She went
downstairs, and kissed her father and mother, and talked to the old
gentleman, and made him more merry than he had been for many a day. She
sate down at the piano which Dobbin had bought for her, and sang over
all her father's favourite old songs. She pronounced the tea to be
excellent, and praised the exquisite taste in which the marmalade was
arranged in the saucers. And in determining to make everybody else
happy, she found herself so; and was sound asleep in the great funereal
pavilion, and only woke up with a smile when George arrived from the
theatre.
For the next day, George had more important "business" to transact than
that which took him to see Mr. Kean in Shylock. Immediately on his
arrival in London he had written off to his father's solicitors,
signifying his royal pleasure that an interview should take place
between them on the morrow. His hotel bill, losses at billiards and
cards to Captain Crawley had almost drained the young man's purse,
which wanted replenishing before he set out on his travels, and he had
no resource but to infringe upon the two thousand pounds which the
attorneys were commissioned to pay over to him. He had a perfect
belief in his own mind that his father would relent before very long.
How could any parent be obdurate for a length of time against such a
paragon as he was? If his mere past and personal merits did not
succeed in mollifying his father, George determined that he would
distinguish himself so prodigiously in the ensuing campaign that the
old gentleman must give in to him. And if not? Bah! the world was