having practised it in former days upon Rawdon Crawley.
He thought her gay, brisk, arch, distinguee, delightful.
In their little drives and dinners, Becky, of course,
quite outshone poor Emmy, who remained very mute
and timid while Mrs. Crawley and her husband rattled
away together, and Captain Crawley (and Jos after he
joined the young married people) gobbled in silence.
Emmy's mind somehow misgave her about her friend.
Rebecca's wit, spirits, and accomplishments troubled her
with a rueful disquiet. They were only a week married,
and here was George already suffering ennui, and eager
for others' society! She trembled for the future. How
shall I be a companion for him, she thought--so clever
and so brilliant, and I such a humble foolish creature?
How noble it was of him to marry me--to give up everything
and stoop down to me! I ought to have refused
him, only I had not the heart. I ought to have stopped at
home and taken care of poor Papa. And her neglect of
her parents (and indeed there was some foundation for
this charge which the poor child's uneasy conscience
brought against her) was now remembered for the first
time, and caused her to blush with humiliation. Oh!
thought she, I have been very wicked and selfish--selfish
in forgetting them in their sorrows--selfish in forcing
George to marry me. I know I'm not worthy of him--I
know he would have been happy without me--and yet--
I tried, I tried to give him up.
It is hard when, before seven days of marriage are
over, such thoughts and confessions as these force
themselves on a little bride's mind. But so it was, and the
night before Dobbin came to join these young people--
on a fine brilliant moonlight night of May--so warm
and balmy that the windows were flung open to the balcony,
from which George and Mrs. Crawley were gazing upon
the calm ocean spread shining before them,
while Rawdon and Jos were engaged at backgammon
within--Amelia couched in a great chair quite neglected, and
watching both these parties, felt a despair and remorse
such as were bitter companions for that tender lonely
soul. Scarce a week was past, and it was come to this!
The future, had she regarded it, offered a dismal prospect;
but Emmy was too shy, so to speak, to look to that,
and embark alone on that wide sea, and unfit to navigate
it without a guide and protector. I know Miss Smith has
a mean opinion of her. But how many, my dear Madam,
are endowed with your prodigious strength of mind?
"Gad, what a fine night, and how bright the moon is!"
George said, with a puff of his cigar, which went soaring
up skywards.
"How delicious they smell in the open air! I adore
them. Who'd think the moon was two hundred and thirty-
six thousand eight hundred and forty-seven miles off?"
Becky added, gazing at that orb with a smile. "Isn't it
clever of me to remember that? Pooh! we learned it all
at Miss Pinkerton's! How calm the sea is, and how clear
everything. I declare I can almost see the coast of
France!" and her bright green eyes streamed out, and
shot into the night as if they could see through it.
"Do you know what I intend to do one morning?" she
said; "I find I can swim beautifully, and some day, when
my Aunt Crawley's companion--old Briggs, you know
--you remember her--that hook-nosed woman, with the
long wisps of hair--when Briggs goes out to bathe, I
intend to dive under her awning, and insist on a
reconciliation in the water. Isn't that a stratagem?"
George burst out laughing at the idea of this aquatic
meeting. "What's the row there, you two?" Rawdon
shouted out, rattling the box. Amelia was making a fool
of herself in an absurd hysterical manner, and retired
to her own room to whimper in private.
Our history is destined in this chapter to go backwards
and forwards in a very irresolute manner seemingly, and
having conducted our story to to-morrow presently, we
shall immediately again have occasion to step back to
yesterday, so that the whole of the tale may get a hearing.
As you behold at her Majesty's drawing-room, the
ambassadors' and high dignitaries' carriages whisk off
from a private door, while Captain Jones's ladies are waiting
for their fly: as you see in the Secretary of the Treasury's
antechamber, a half-dozen of petitioners waiting
patiently for their audience, and called out one by one,
when suddenly an Irish member or some eminent personage
enters the apartment, and instantly walks into Mr.
Under-Secretary over the heads of all the people present:
so in the conduct of a tale, the romancer is obliged to
exercise this most partial sort of justice. Although all the
little incidents must be heard, yet they must be put off
when the great events make their appearance; and surely
such a circumstance as that which brought Dobbin to
Brighton, viz., the ordering out of the Guards and the line
to Belgium, and the mustering of the allied armies in that
country under the command of his Grace the Duke of
Wellington--such a dignified circumstance as that, I say,
was entitled to the pas over all minor occurrences whereof
this history is composed mainly, and hence a little
trifling disarrangement and disorder was excusable and
becoming. We have only now advanced in time so far
beyond Chapter XXII as to have got our various characters
up into their dressing-rooms before the dinner,
which took place as usual on the day of Dobbin's arrival.
George was too humane or too much occupied with the
tie of his neckcloth to convey at once all the news to
Amelia which his comrade had brought with him from
London. He came into her room, however, holding the
attorney's letter in his hand, and with so solemn and
important an air that his wife, always ingeniously on
the watch for calamity, thought the worst was about to
befall, and running up to her husband, besought her
dearest George to tell her everything--he was ordered
abroad; there would be a battle next week--she knew
there would.
Dearest George parried the question about foreign
service, and with a melancholy shake of the head said,
"No, Emmy; it isn't that: it's not myself I care about:
it's you. I have had bad news from my father. He refuses
any communication with me; he has flung us off; and
leaves us to poverty. I can rough it well enough; but
you, my dear, how will you bear it? read here." And he
handed her over the letter.
Amelia, with a look of tender alarm in her eyes,
listened to her noble hero as he uttered the above generous
sentiments, and sitting down on the bed, read the letter
which George gave her with such a pompous martyr-like
air. Her face cleared up as she read the document, however.
The idea of sharing poverty and privation in company
with the beloved object is, as we have before said,
far from being disagreeable to a warm-hearted woman.
The notion was actually pleasant to little Amelia. Then,
as usual, she was ashamed of herself for feeling happy at
such an indecorous moment, and checked her pleasure,
saying demurely, "O, George, how your poor heart must
bleed at the idea of being separated from your papa!"
"It does," said George, with an agonised countenance.
"But he can't be angry with you long," she continued.
"Nobody could, I'm sure. He must forgive you, my
dearest, kindest husband. O, I shall never forgive myself
if he does not."
"What vexes me, my poor Emmy, is not my misfortune,
but yours," George said. "I don't care for a little
poverty; and I think, without vanity, I've talents enough
to make my own way."
"That you have," interposed his wife, who thought that
war should cease, and her husband should be made a
general instantly.
"Yes, I shall make my way as well as another," Osborne
went on; "but you, my dear girl, how can I bear
your being deprived of the comforts and station in
society which my wife had a right to expect? My dearest
girl in barracks; the wife of a soldier in a marching
regiment; subject to all sorts of annoyance and privation!
It makes me miserable."
Emmy, quite at ease, as this was her husband's only
cause of disquiet, took his hand, and with a radiant face
and smile began to warble that stanza from the favourite
song of "Wapping Old Stairs," in which the heroine, after
rebuking her Tom for inattention, promises "his trousers
to mend, and his grog too to make," if he will be constant
and kind, and not forsake her. "Besides," she said,
after a pause, during which she looked as pretty and
happy as any young woman need, "isn't two thousand
pounds an immense deal of money, George?"
George laughed at her naivete; and finally they went
down to dinner, Amelia clinging to George's arm, still
warbling the tune of "Wapping Old Stairs," and more
pleased and light of mind than she had been for some
days past.
Thus the repast, which at length came off, instead of
being dismal, was an exceedingly brisk and merry one.
The excitement of the campaign counteracted in George's
mind the depression occasioned by the disinheriting letter.
Dobbin still kept up his character of rattle. He amused
the company with accounts of the army in Belgium;
where nothing but fetes and gaiety and fashion were
going on. Then, having a particular end in view, this
dexterous captain proceeded to describe Mrs. Major
O'Dowd packing her own and her Major's wardrobe, and
how his best epaulets had been stowed into a tea canister,
whilst her own famous yellow turban, with the bird of
paradise wrapped in brown paper, was locked up in the
Major's tin cocked-hat case, and wondered what effect
it would have at the French king's court at Ghent, or the
great military balls at Brussels.
"Ghent! Brussels!" cried out Amelia with a sudden
shock and start. "Is the regiment ordered away, George
--is it ordered away?" A look of terror came over the
sweet smiling face, and she clung to George as by an
instinct.
"Don't be afraid, dear," he said good-naturedly; "it
is but a twelve hours' passage. It won't hurt you. You
shall go, too, Emmy."
"I intend to go," said Becky. "I'm on the staff. General
Tufto is a great flirt of mine. Isn't he, Rawdon?"
Rawdon laughed out with his usual roar. William
Dobbin flushed up quite red. "She can't go," he said; "think
of the--of the danger," he was going to add; but had
not all his conversation during dinner-time tended to
prove there was none? He became very confused and
silent.
"I must and will go," Amelia cried with the greatest
spirit; and George, applauding her resolution, patted her
under the chin, and asked all the persons present if
they ever saw such a termagant of a wife, and agreed
that the lady should bear him company. "We'll have
Mrs. O'Dowd to chaperon you," he said. What cared she
so long as her husband was near her? Thus somehow
the bitterness of a parting was juggled away. Though war
and danger were in store, war and danger might not
befall for months to come. There was a respite at any rate,
which made the timid little Amelia almost as happy as
a full reprieve would have done, and which even Dobbin
owned in his heart was very welcome. For, to be permitted
to see her was now the greatest privilege and hope
of his life, and he thought with himself secretly how he
would watch and protect her. I wouldn't have let her go
if I had been married to her, he thought. But George was
the master, and his friend did not think fit to remonstrate.
Putting her arm round her friend's waist, Rebecca at
length carried Amelia off from the dinner-table where so
much business of importance had been discussed, and
left the gentlemen in a highly exhilarated state, drinking
and talking very gaily.
In the course of the evening Rawdon got a little family-
note from his wife, which, although he crumpled it up
and burnt it instantly in the candle, we had the good
luck to read over Rebecca's shoulder. "Great news," she
wrote. "Mrs. Bute is gone. Get the money from Cupid tonight,
as he'll be off to-morrow most likely. Mind this.
--R." So when the little company was about adjourning
to coffee in the women's apartment, Rawdon touched
Osborne on the elbow, and said gracefully, "I say, Osborne,
my boy, if quite convenient, I'll trouble you for
that 'ere small trifle." It was not quite convenient, but
nevertheless George gave him a considerable present
instalment in bank-notes from his pocket-book, and a bill
on his agents at a week's date, for the remaining sum.
This matter arranged, George, and Jos, and Dobbin,
held a council of war over their cigars, and agreed that a
general move should be made for London in Jos's open
carriage the next day. Jos, I think, would have preferred
staying until Rawdon Crawley quitted Brighton, but Dobbin
and George overruled him, and he agreed to carry
the party to town, and ordered four horses, as became his
dignity. With these they set off in state, after breakfast,
the next day. Amelia had risen very early in the morning,
and packed her little trunks with the greatest alacrity,
while Osborne lay in bed deploring that she had not a
maid to help her. She was only too glad, however, to
perform this office for herself. A dim uneasy sentiment
about Rebecca filled her mind already; and although they
kissed each other most tenderly at parting, yet we know
what jealousy is; and Mrs. Amelia possessed that among
other virtues of her sex.
Besides these characters who are coming and going
