"Come out, George," said Dobbin, still gravely; "don't
drink."
"Drink! there's nothing like it. Drink yourself, and
light up your lantern jaws, old boy. Here's to you."
Dobbin went up and whispered something to him, at
which George, giving a start and a wild hurray, tossed off
his glass, clapped it on the table, and walked away
speedily on his friend's arm. "The enemy has passed the
Sambre," William said, "and our left is already engaged.
Come away. We are to march in three hours."
Away went George, his nerves quivering with excitement
at the news so long looked for, so sudden when it
came. What were love and intrigue now? He thought
about a thousand things but these in his rapid walk to his
quarters--his past life and future chances--the fate which
might be before him--the wife, the child perhaps, from
whom unseen he might be about to part. Oh, how he
wished that night's work undone! and that with a clear
conscience at least he might say farewell to the tender
and guileless being by whose love he had set such little
store!
He thought over his brief married life. In those few
weeks he had frightfully dissipated his little capital. How
wild and reckless he had been! Should any mischance
befall him: what was then left for her? How unworthy he
was of her. Why had he married her? He was not fit for
marriage. Why had he disobeyed his father, who had been
always so generous to him? Hope, remorse, ambition,
tenderness, and selfish regret filled his heart. He sate
down and wrote to his father, remembering what he had
said once before, when he was engaged to fight a duel.
Dawn faintly streaked the sky as he closed this farewell
letter. He sealed it, and kissed the superscription. He
thought how he had deserted that generous father, and of
the thousand kindnesses which the stern old man had
done him.
He had looked into Amelia's bedroom when he entered;
she lay quiet, and her eyes seemed closed, and he
was glad that she was asleep. On arriving at his quarters
from the ball, he had found his regimental servant already
making preparations for his departure: the man
had understood his signal to be still, and these arrangements
were very quickly and silently made. Should he go
in and wake Amelia, he thought, or leave a note for her
brother to break the news of departure to her? He went
in to look at her once again.
She had been awake when he first entered her room,
but had kept her eyes closed, so that even her wakefulness
should not seem to reproach him. But when he had
returned, so soon after herself, too, this timid little heart
had felt more at ease, and turning towards him as he
stept softly out of the room, she had fallen into a light
sleep. George came in and looked at her again, entering
still more softly. By the pale night-lamp he could see her
sweet, pale face--the purple eyelids were fringed and
closed, and one round arm, smooth and white, lay outside
of the coverlet. Good God! how pure she was; how
gentle, how tender, and how friendless! and he, how
selfish, brutal, and black with crime! Heart-stained, and
shame-stricken, he stood at the bed's foot, and looked at
the sleeping girl. How dared he--who was he, to pray for
one so spotless! God bless her! God bless her! He came to
the bedside, and looked at the hand, the little soft hand,
lying asleep; and he bent over the pillow noiselessly
towards the gentle pale face.
Two fair arms closed tenderly round his neck as he
stooped down. "I am awake, George," the poor child said,
with a sob fit to break the little heart that nestled so
closely by his own. She was awake, poor soul, and to
railings and the beadle: who, if she walked ever so short
a distance to buy a ribbon in Southampton Row, was
followed by Black Sambo with an enormous cane: who
was always cared for, dressed, put to bed, and watched
over by ever so many guardian angels, with and without
wages? Bon Dieu, I say, is it not hard that the fateful
rush of the great Imperial struggle can't take place without
affecting a poor little harmless girl of eighteen, who
is occupied in billing and cooing, or working muslin
collars in Russell Square? You too, kindly, homely flower!
--is the great roaring war tempest coming to sweep you
down, here, although cowering under the shelter of
Holborn? Yes; Napoleon is flinging his last stake, and poor
little Emmy Sedley's happiness forms, somehow, part of it.
In the first place, her father's fortune was swept down
with that fatal news. All his speculations had of late gone
wrong with the luckless old gentleman. Ventures had
failed; merchants had broken; funds had risen when he
calculated they would fall. What need to particularize?
If success is rare and slow, everybody knows how quick
and easy ruin is. Old Sedley had kept his own sad counsel.
Everything seemed to go on as usual in the quiet,
opulent house; the good-natured mistress pursuing, quite
unsuspiciously, her bustling idleness, and daily easy
avocations; the daughter absorbed still in one selfish, tender
thought, and quite regardless of all the world besides,
when that final crash came, under which the worthy
family fell.
One night Mrs. Sedley was writing cards for a party;
the Osbornes had given one, and she must not be
behindhand; John Sedley, who had come home very late from
the City, sate silent at the chimney side, while his wife
was prattling to him; Emmy had gone up to her room
ailing and low-spirited. "She's not happy," the mother
went on. "George Osborne neglects her. I've no patience
with the airs of those people. The girls have not been in
the house these three weeks; and George has been twice
in town without coming. Edward Dale saw him at the
Opera. Edward would marry her I'm sure: and there's
Captain Dobbin who, I think, would--only I hate all
army men. Such a dandy as George has become. With
his military airs, indeed! We must show some folks that
we're as good as they. Only give Edward Dale any
encouragement, and you'll see. We must have a party, Mr.
S. Why don't you speak, John? Shall I say Tuesday fortnight?
Why don't you answer? Good God, John, what has happened?"
John Sedley sprang up out of his chair to meet his
wife, who ran to him. He seized her in his arms, and
said with a hasty voice, "We're ruined, Mary. We've
got the world to begin over again, dear. It's best that you
should know all, and at once." As he spoke, he trembled
in every limb, and almost fell. He thought the news would
have overpowered his wife--his wife, to whom he had
never said a hard word. But it was he that was the most
moved, sudden as the shock was to her. When he sank
back into his seat, it was the wife that took the office of
consoler. She took his trembling hand, and kissed it, and
put it round her neck: she called him her John--her dear
John--her old man--her kind old man; she poured out a
hundred words of incoherent love and tenderness; her
faithful voice and simple caresses wrought this sad heart
up to an inexpressible delight and anguish, and cheered
and solaced his over-burdened soul.
Only once in the course of the long night as they sate
together, and poor Sedley opened his pent-up soul, and
told the story of his losses and embarrassments--the
treason of some of his oldest friends, the manly kindness
of some, from whom he never could have expected it--in
a general confession--only once did the faithful wife give
way to emotion.
"My God, my God, it will break Emmy's heart," she
said.
The father had forgotten the poor girl. She was lying,
awake and unhappy, overhead. In the midst of friends,
home, and kind parents, she was alone. To how many
people can any one tell all? Who will be open where there
is no sympathy, or has call to speak to those who never
can understand? Our gentle Amelia was thus solitary. She
had no confidante, so to speak, ever since she had anything
to confide. She could not tell the old mother her
doubts and cares; the would-be sisters seemed every day
more strange to her. And she had misgivings and fears
which she dared not acknowledge to herself, though she
was always secretly brooding over them.
Her heart tried to persist in asserting that George
Osborne was worthy and faithful to her, though she knew
otherwise. How many a thing had she said, and got no
echo from him. How many suspicions of selfishness and
indifference had she to encounter and obstinately
overcome. To whom could the poor little martyr tell these
daily struggles and tortures? Her hero himself only half
understood her. She did not dare to own that the man she
loved was her inferior; or to feel that she had given her
heart away too soon. Given once, the pure bashful
maiden was too modest, too tender, too trustful, too
weak, too much woman to recall it. We are Turks with
the affections of our women; and have made them
subscribe to our doctrine too. We let their bodies go abroad
liberally enough, with smiles and ringlets and pink
bonnets to disguise them instead of veils and yakmaks. But
their souls must be seen by only one man, and they obey
not unwillingly, and consent to remain at home as our
slaves--ministering to us and doing drudgery for us.
So imprisoned and tortured was this gentle little heart,
when in the month of March, Anno Domini 1815,
Napoleon landed at Cannes, and Louis XVIII fled, and all
Europe was in alarm, and the funds fell, and old John
Sedley was ruined.
We are not going to follow the worthy old stockbroker
through those last pangs and agonies of ruin through
which he passed before his commercial demise befell.
They declared him at the Stock Exchange; he was
absent from his house of business: his bills were protested:
his act of bankruptcy formal. The house and furniture of
Russell Square were seized and sold up, and he and his
family were thrust away, as we have seen, to hide their
heads where they might.
John Sedley had not the heart to review the domestic
establishment who have appeared now and anon in our
pages and of whom he was now forced by poverty to
take leave. The wages of those worthy people were
discharged with that punctuality which men frequently show
who only owe in great sums--they were sorry to leave
good places--but they did not break their hearts at parting
from their adored master and mistress. Amelia's maid
was profuse in condolences, but went off quite resigned
to better herself in a genteeler quarter of the town. Black
Sambo, with the infatuation of his profession, determined
on setting up a public-house. Honest old Mrs. Blenkinsop
indeed, who had seen the birth of Jos and Amelia, and
the wooing of John Sedley and his wife, was for staying
by them without wages, having amassed a considerable
sum in their service: and she accompanied the fallen
people into their new and humble place of refuge, where
she tended them and grumbled against them for a while.
Of all Sedley's opponents in his debates with his creditors
which now ensued, and harassed the feelings of the
humiliated old gentleman so severely, that in six weeks he
oldened more than he had done for fifteen years before--
the most determined and obstinate seemed to be John
Osborne, his old friend and neighbour--John Osborne,
whom he had set up in life--who was under a hundred
obligations to him--and whose son was to marry Sedley's
daughter. Any one of these circumstances would account
for the bitterness of Osborne's opposition.
When one man has been under very remarkable
obligations to another, with whom he subsequently quarrels,
a common sense of decency, as it were, makes of the
former a much severer enemy than a mere stranger
would be. To account for your own hard-heartedness and
ingratitude in such a case, you are bound to prove the
other party's crime. It is not that you are selfish, brutal,
and angry at the failure of a speculation--no, no--it is
that your partner has led you into it by the basest treachery
and with the most sinister motives. From a mere
sense of consistency, a persecutor is bound to show that
the fallen man is a villain--otherwise he, the persecutor,
is a wretch himself.
And as a general rule, which may make all creditors
who are inclined to be severe pretty comfortable in their
minds, no men embarrassed are altogether honest, very
likely. They conceal something; they exaggerate chances
of good luck; hide away the real state of affairs; say that
things are flourishing when they are hopeless, keep a
smiling face (a dreary smile it is) upon the verge of
bankruptcy--are ready to lay hold of any pretext for
delay or of any money, so as to stave off the inevitable
ruin a few days longer. "Down with such dishonesty,"
says the creditor in triumph, and reviles his sinking
enemy. "You fool, why do you catch at a straw?" calm
good sense says to the man that is drowning. "You villain,
why do you shrink from plunging into the irretrievable
Gazette?" says prosperity to the poor devil battling in
that black gulf. Who has not remarked the readiness with
which the closest of friends and honestest of men suspect
and accuse each other of cheating when they fall out
on money matters? Everybody does it. Everybody is right,
I suppose, and the world is a rogue.
Then Osborne had the intolerable sense of former
benefits to goad and irritate him: these are always a
cause of hostility aggravated. Finally, he had to break off
the match between Sedley's daughter and his son; and
as it had gone very far indeed, and as the poor girl's
happiness and perhaps character were compromised, it was
necessary to show the strongest reasons for the rupture,
