say so," so exactly after the fashion of old Jos that it was
impossible to refrain from laughter. The servants would
explode at dinner if the lad, asking for something which
wasn't at table, put on that countenance and used that
favourite phrase. Even Dobbin would shoot out a sudden
peal at the boy's mimicry. If George did not mimic his
uncle to his face, it was only by Dobbin's rebukes and
Amelia's terrified entreaties that the little scapegrace was
induced to desist. And the worthy civilian being haunted
by a dim consciousness that the lad thought him an ass,
and was inclined to turn him into ridicule, used to be
extremely timorous and, of course, doubly pompous and
dignified in the presence of Master Georgy. When it was
announced that the young gentleman was expected in
Gillespie Street to dine with his mother, Mr. Jos
commonly found that he had an engagement at the Club.
Perhaps nobody was much grieved at his absence. On
those days Mr. Sedley would commonly be induced to
come out from his place of refuge in the upper stories,
and there would be a small family party, whereof Major
Dobbin pretty generally formed one. He was the ami de
la maison--old Sedley's friend, Emmy's friend, Georgy's
friend, Jos's counsel and adviser. "He might almost as
well be at Madras for anything WE see of him," Miss
Ann Dobbin remarked at Camberwell. Ah! Miss Ann, did
it not strike you that it was not YOU whom the Major
wanted to marry?
Joseph Sedley then led a life of dignified otiosity such
as became a person of his eminence. His very first point,
of course, was to become a member of the Oriental Club,
where he spent his mornings in the company of his
brother Indians, where he dined, or whence he brought
home men to dine.
Amelia had to receive and entertain these gentlemen
and their ladies. From these she heard how soon Smith
would be in Council; how many lacs Jones had brought
home with him, how Thomson's House in London had
refused the bills drawn by Thomson, Kibobjee, and Co.,
the Bombay House, and how it was thought the Calcutta
House must go too; how very imprudent, to say the
least of it, Mrs. Brown's conduct (wife of Brown of the
Ahmednuggur Irregulars) had been with young Swankey
of the Body Guard, sitting up with him on deck until all
hours, and losing themselves as they were riding out at
the Cape; how Mrs. Hardyman had had out her thirteen
sisters, daughters of a country curate, the Rev: Felix
Rabbits, and married eleven of them, seven high up in
the service; how Hornby was wild because his wife
would stay in Europe, and Trotter was appointed
Collector at Ummerapoora. This and similar talk took place
at the grand dinners all round. They had the same
conversation; the same silver dishes; the same saddles of
mutton, boiled turkeys, and entrees. Politics set in a
short time after dessert, when the ladies retired upstairs
and talked about their complaints and their children.
Mutato nomine, it is all the same. Don't the barristers'
wives talk about Circuit? Don't the soldiers' ladies
gossip about the Regiment? Don't the clergymen's ladies
discourse about Sunday-schools and who takes whose duty?
Don't the very greatest ladies of all talk about that small
clique of persons to whom they belong? And why should
our Indian friends not have their own conversation?--
only I admit it is slow for the laymen whose fate it
sometimes is to sit by and listen.
Before long Emmy had a visiting-book, and was driving
about regularly in a carriage, calling upon Lady Bludyer
(wife of Major-General Sir Roger Bludyer, K.C.B., Bengal
Army); Lady Huff, wife of Sir G. Huff, Bombay ditto;
Mrs. Pice, the Lady of Pice the Director, &c. We are not
long in using ourselves to changes in life. That carriage
came round to Gillespie Street every day; that buttony
boy sprang up and down from the box with Emmy's and
Jos's visiting-cards; at stated hours Emmy and the
carriage went for Jos to the Club and took him an airing;
or, putting old Sedley into the vehicle, she drove the old
man round the Regent's Park. The lady's maid and the
chariot, the visiting-book and the buttony page, became
soon as familiar to Amelia as the humble routine of
Brompton. She accommodated herself to one as to the
other. If Fate had ordained that she should be a Duchess,
she would even have done that duty too. She was voted, in
Jos's female society, rather a pleasing young person--
not much in her, but pleasing, and that sort of thing.
The men, as usual, liked her artless kindness and
simple refined demeanour. The gallant young Indian dandies
at home on furlough--immense dandies these--chained
and moustached--driving in tearing cabs, the pillars of
the theatres, living at West End hotels--nevertheless
admired Mrs. Osborne, liked to bow to her carriage in the
park, and to be admitted to have the honour of paying
her a morning visit. Swankey of the Body Guard
himself, that dangerous youth, and the greatest buck of all
the Indian army now on leave, was one day discovered
by Major Dobbin tete-a-tete with Amelia, and
describing the sport of pig-sticking to her with great humour and
eloquence; and he spoke afterwards of a d--d king's
officer that's always hanging about the house--a long,
thin, queer-looking, oldish fellow--a dry fellow though,
that took the shine out of a man in the talking line.
Had the Major possessed a little more personal vanity
he would have been jealous of so dangerous a young
buck as that fascinating Bengal Captain. But Dobbin was
of too simple and generous a nature to have any doubts
about Amelia. He was glad that the young men should
pay her respect, and that others should admire her. Ever
since her womanhood almost, had she not been
persecuted and undervalued? It pleased him to see how
kindness bought out her good qualities and how her spirits
gently rose with her prosperity. Any person who
appreciated her paid a compliment to the Major's good
judgement--that is, if a man may be said to have good
judgement who is under the influence of Love's delusion.
After Jos went to Court, which we may be sure he
did as a loyal subject of his Sovereign (showing himself
in his full court suit at the Club, whither Dobbin came
to fetch him in a very shabby old uniform) he who had
always been a staunch Loyalist and admirer of George
IV, became such a tremendous Tory and pillar of the
State that he was for having Amelia to go to a
Drawing-room, too. He somehow had worked himself up
to believe that he was implicated in the maintenance of the
public welfare and that the Sovereign would not be happy
unless Jos Sedley and his family appeared to rally round
him at St. James's.
Emmy laughed. "Shall I wear the family diamonds,
Jos?" she said.
"I wish you would let me buy you some," thought the
Major. "I should like to see any that were too good for
you."
CHAPTER LXI
In Which Two Lights are Put Out
There came a day when the round of decorous pleasures
and solemn gaieties in which Mr. Jos Sedley's family
indulged was interrupted by an event which happens in
most houses. As you ascend the staircase of your house
from the drawing towards the bedroom floors, you may
have remarked a little arch in the wall right before you,
which at once gives light to the stair which leads from
the second story to the third (where the nursery and
servants' chambers commonly are) and serves for
another purpose of utility, of which the undertaker's men
can give you a notion. They rest the coffins upon that
arch, or pass them through it so as not to disturb in any
unseemly manner the cold tenant slumbering within the
black ark.
That second-floor arch in a London house, looking up
and down the well of the staircase and commanding the
main thoroughfare by which the inhabitants are passing;
by which cook lurks down before daylight to scour her
pots and pans in the kitchen; by which young master
stealthily ascends, having left his boots in the hall, and
let himself in after dawn from a jolly night at the Club;
down which miss comes rustling in fresh ribbons and
spreading muslins, brilliant and beautiful, and prepared
for conquest and the ball; or Master Tommy slides,
preferring the banisters for a mode of conveyance, and
disdaining danger and the stair; down which the mother is
fondly carried smiling in her strong husband's arms, as
he steps steadily step by step, and followed by the monthly
nurse, on the day when the medical man has pronounced
that the charming patient may go downstairs;
up which John lurks to bed, yawning, with a sputtering
tallow candle, and to gather up before sunrise the boots
which are awaiting him in the passages--that stair, up or
down which babies are carried, old people are helped,
guests are marshalled to the ball, the parson walks to the
christening, the doctor to the sick-room, and the
undertaker's men to the upper floor--what a memento of Life,
Death, and Vanity it is--that arch and stair--if you
choose to consider it, and sit on the landing, looking up
and down the well! The doctor will come up to us too
for the last time there, my friend in motley. The nurse
will look in at the curtains, and you take no notice--and
then she will fling open the windows for a little and let in
the air. Then they will pull down all the front blinds of the
house and live in the back rooms--then they will send
for the lawyer and other men in black, &c. Your comedy
and mine will have been played then, and we shall be
removed, oh, how far, from the trumpets, and the shouting,
and the posture-making. If we are gentlefolks they
will put hatchments over our late domicile, with gilt
cherubim, and mottoes stating that there is "Quiet in
Heaven." Your son will new furnish the house, or
perhaps let it, and go into a more modern quarter; your
name will be among the "Members Deceased" in the
lists of your clubs next year. However much you may be
mourned, your widow will like to have her weeds neatly
made--the cook will send or come up to ask about
dinner--the survivor will soon bear to look at your picture
over the mantelpiece, which will presently be deposed
from the place of honour, to make way for the portrait of
the son who reigns.
Which of the dead are most tenderly and passionately
deplored? Those who love the survivors the least, I
believe. The death of a child occasions a passion of grief
and frantic tears, such as your end, brother reader, will
never inspire. The death of an infant which scarce knew
you, which a week's absence from you would have caused
to forget you, will strike you down more than the loss of
your closest friend, or your first-born son--a man grown
like yourself, with children of his own. We may be harsh
and stern with Judah and Simeon--our love and pity gush
out for Benjamin, the little one. And if you are old, as
some reader of this may be or shall be old and rich, or
old and poor--you may one day be thinking for yourself
--"These people are very good round about me, but
they won't grieve too much when I am gone. I am very
rich, and they want my inheritance--or very poor, and
they are tired of supporting me."
The period of mourning for Mrs. Sedley's death was
only just concluded, and Jos scarcely had had time to
cast off his black and appear in the splendid waistcoats
which he loved, when it became evident to those about
Mr. Sedley that another event was at hand, and that the
old man was about to go seek for his wife in the dark land
whither she had preceded him. "The state of my father's
health," Jos Sedley solemnly remarked at the Club,
"prevents me from giving any LARGE parties this season: but if
you will come in quietly at half-past six, Chutney, my
boy, and fake a homely dinner with one or two of the
old set--I shall be always glad to see you." So Jos and
his acquaintances dined and drank their claret among
themselves in silence, whilst the sands of life were
running out in the old man's glass upstairs. The velvet-footed
butler brought them their wine, and they composed
themselves to a rubber after dinner, at which Major Dobbin
would sometimes come and take a hand; and Mrs.
Osborne would occasionally descend, when her patient
above was settled for the night, and had commenced one
of those lightly troubled slumbers which visit the pillow
of old age.
The old man clung to his daughter during this
sickness. He would take his broths and medicines from
scarcely any other hand. To tend him became almost the
sole business of her life. Her bed was placed close by the
door which opened into his chamber, and she was alive
at the slightest noise or disturbance from the couch of
the querulous invalid. Though, to do him justice, he lay
awake many an hour, silent and without stirring,
unwilling to awaken his kind and vigilant nurse.
He loved his daughter with more fondness now,
perhaps, than ever he had done since the days of her
childhood. In the discharge of gentle offices and kind filial
duties, this simple creature shone most especially. "She
walks into the room as silently as a sunbeam," Mr.
Dobbin thought as he saw her passing in and out from her
father's room, a cheerful sweetness lighting up her face
as she moved to and fro, graceful and noiseless. When
women are brooding over their children, or busied in a
sick-room, who has not seen in their faces those sweet
angelic beams of love and pity?
A secret feud of some years' standing was thus
healed, and with a tacit reconciliation. In these last
hours, and touched by her love and goodness, the old
man forgot all his grief against her, and wrongs which
