and sorrow. He strove to think that a judgment was on
the boy for his disobedience. He dared not own that the
severity of the sentence frightened him, and that its
fulfilment had come too soon upon his curses. Sometimes a
shuddering terror struck him, as if he had been the author
of the doom which he had called down on his son. There
was a chance before of reconciliation. The boy's wife
might have died; or he might have come back and said,
Father I have sinned. But there was no hope now. He
stood on the other side of the gulf impassable, haunting
his parent with sad eyes. He remembered them once
before so in a fever, when every one thought the lad was
dying, and he lay on his bed speechless, and gazing with a
dreadful gloom. Good God! how the father clung to the
doctor then, and with what a sickening anxiety he
followed him: what a weight of grief was off his mind when,
after the crisis of the fever, the lad recovered, and looked
at his father once more with eyes that recognised him.
But now there was no help or cure, or chance of
reconcilement: above all, there were no humble words to
soothe vanity outraged and furious, or bring to its natural
flow the poisoned, angry blood. And it is hard to say
which pang it was that tore the proud father's heart most
keenly--that his son should have gone out of the reach
of his forgiveness, or that the apology which his own
pride expected should have escaped him.
Whatever his sensations might have been, however, the
stem old man would have no confidant. He never
mentioned his son's name to his daughters; but ordered the
elder to place all the females of the establishment in
mourning; and desired that the male servants should be
similarly attired in deep black. All parties and entertainments,
of course, were to be put off. No communications
were made to his future son-in-law, whose marriage-day
had been fixed: but there was enough in Mr. Osborne's
appearance to prevent Mr. Bullock from making any
inquiries, or in any way pressing forward that ceremony.
He and the ladies whispered about it under their voices
in the drawing-room sometimes, whither the father never
came. He remained constantly in his own study; the
whole front part of the house being closed until some
time after the completion of the general mourning.
About three weeks after the 18th of June, Mr.
Osborne's acquaintance, Sir William Dobbin, called at Mr.
Osborne's house in Russell Square, with a very pale and
agitated face, and insisted upon seeing that gentleman.
Ushered into his room, and after a few words, which
neither the speaker nor the host understood, the former
produced from an inclosure a letter sealed with a large
red seal. "My son, Major Dobbin," the Alderman said,
with some hesitation, "despatched me a letter by an
officer of the --th, who arrived in town to-day. My son's
letter contains one for you, Osborne." The Alderman
placed the letter on the table, and Osborne stared at him
for a moment or two in silence. His looks frightened the
ambassador, who after looking guiltily for a little time at
the grief-stricken man, hurried away without another
word.
The letter was in George's well-known bold handwriting.
It was that one which he had written before daybreak
on the 16th of June, and just before he took leave
of Amelia. The great red seal was emblazoned with the
sham coat of arms which Osborne had assumed from
the Peerage, with "Pax in bello" for a motto; that of the
ducal house with which the vain old man tried to fancy
himself connected. The hand that signed it would never
hold pen or sword more. The very seal that sealed it
had been robbed from George's dead body as it lay on the
field of battle. The father knew nothing of this, but sat and
looked at the letter in terrified vacancy. He almost fell
when he went to open it.
Have you ever had a difference with a dear friend?
How his letters, written in the period of love and
confidence, sicken and rebuke you! What a dreary mourning
it is to dwell upon those vehement protests of dead
affection! What lying epitaphs they make over the corpse of
love! What dark, cruel comments upon Life and Vanities!
Most of us have got or written drawers full of them.
They are closet-skeletons which we keep and shun.
Osborne trembled long before the letter from his dead
son.
The poor boy's letter did not say much. He had been
too proud to acknowledge the tenderness which his heart
felt. He only said, that on the eve of a great battle, he
wished to bid his father farewell, and solemnly to implore
his good offices for the wife--it might be for the child--
whom he left behind him. He owned with contrition that
his irregularities and his extravagance had already wasted
a large part of his mother's little fortune. He thanked his
father for his former generous conduct; and he promised
him that if he fell on the field or survived it, he would
act in a manner worthy of the name of George Osborne.
His English habit, pride, awkwardness perhaps, had
prevented him from saying more. His father could not
see the kiss George had placed on the superscription of
his letter. Mr. Osborne dropped it with the bitterest,
deadliest pang of balked affection and revenge. His son
was still beloved and unforgiven.
About two months afterwards, however, as the young
ladies of the family went to church with their father, they
remarked how he took a different seat from that which
he usually occupied when he chose to attend divine
worship; and that from his cushion opposite, he looked up at
the wall over their heads. This caused the young women
likewise to gaze in the direction towards which their
father's gloomy eyes pointed: and they saw an elaborate
monument upon the wall, where Britannia was represented
weeping over an urn, and a broken sword and a
couchant lion indicated that the piece of sculpture had
been erected in honour of a deceased warrior. The
sculptors of those days had stocks of such funereal
emblems in hand; as you may see still on the walls of St.
Paul's, which are covered with hundreds of these
braggart heathen allegories. There was a constant demand
for them during the first fifteen years of the present
century.
Under the memorial in question were emblazoned the
well-known and pompous Osborne arms; and the
inscription said, that the monument was "Sacred to the
memory of George Osborne, Junior, Esq., late a Captain
in his Majesty's --th regiment of foot, who fell on the
18th of June, 1815, aged 28 years, while fighting for his
king and country in the glorious victory of Waterloo.
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori."
The sight of that stone agitated the nerves of the
sisters so much, that Miss Maria was compelled to leave
the church. The congregation made way respectfully for
those sobbing girls clothed in deep black, and pitied the
stern old father seated opposite the memorial of the dead
soldier. "Will he forgive Mrs. George?" the girls said to
themselves as soon as their ebullition of grief was over.
Much conversation passed too among the acquaintances
of the Osborne family, who knew of the rupture between
the son and father caused by the former's marriage, as
to the chance of a reconciliation with the young widow.
There were bets among the gentlemen both about Russell
Square and in the City.
If the sisters had any anxiety regarding the possible
recognition of Amelia as a daughter of the family, it
was increased presently, and towards the end of the
autumn, by their father's announcement that he was going
abroad. He did not say whither, but they knew at once
that his steps would be turned towards Belgium, and were
aware that George's widow was still in Brussels. They
had pretty accurate news indeed of poor Amelia from
Lady Dobbin and her daughters. Our honest Captain had
been promoted in consequence of the death of the second
Major of the regiment on the field; and the brave O'Dowd,
who had distinguished himself greatly here as upon all
occasions where he had a chance to show his coolness
and valour, was a Colonel and Companion of the Bath.
Very many of the brave --th, who had suffered
severely upon both days of action, were still at Brussels
in the autumn, recovering of their wounds. The city was
a vast military hospital for months after the great battles;
and as men and officers began to rally from their hurts,
the gardens and places of public resort swarmed with
maimed warriors, old and young, who, just rescued out of
death, fell to gambling, and gaiety, and love-making, as
people of Vanity Fair will do. Mr. Osborne found out
some of the --th easily. He knew their uniform quite
well, and had been used to follow all the promotions and
exchanges in the regiment, and loved to talk about it and
its officers as if he had been one of the number. On the
day after his arrival at Brussels, and as he issued from
his hotel, which faced the park, he saw a soldier in the
well-known facings, reposing on a stone bench in the
garden, and went and sate down trembling by the
wounded convalescent man.
"Were you in Captain Osborne's company?" he said,
and added, after a pause, "he was my son, sir."
The man was not of the Captain's company, but he
lifted up his unwounded arm and touched-his cap sadly
and respectfully to the haggard broken-spirited gentleman
who questioned him. "The whole army didn't contain
a finer or a better officer," the soldier said. "The Sergeant
of the Captain's company (Captain Raymond had it
now), was in town, though, and was just well of a shot
in the shoulder. His honour might see him if he liked,
who could tell him anything he wanted to know about--
about the --th's actions. But his honour had seen
Major Dobbin, no doubt, the brave Captain's great
friend; and Mrs. Osborne, who was here too, and had
been very bad, he heard everybody say. They say she
was out of her mind like for six weeks or more. But your
honour knows all about that--and asking your pardon"
--the man added.
Osborne put a guinea into the soldier's hand, and told
him he should have another if he would bring the Sergeant
to the Hotel du Parc; a promise which very soon
brought the desired officer to Mr. Osborne's presence.
And the first soldier went away; and after telling a
comrade or two how Captain Osborne's father was arrived,
and what a free-handed generous gentleman he was, they
went and made good cheer with drink and feasting, as
long as the guineas lasted which had come from the
proud purse of the mourning old father.
In the Sergeant's company, who was also just convalescent,
Osborne made the journey of Waterloo and
Quatre Bras, a journey which thousands of his countrymen
were then taking. He took the Sergeant with him in
his carriage, and went through both fields under his
guidance. He saw the point of the road where the regiment
marched into action on the 16th, and the slope down
which they drove the French cavalry who were pressing
on the retreating Belgians. There was the spot where the
noble Captain cut down the French officer who was
grappling with the young Ensign for the colours, the
Colour-Sergeants having been shot down. Along this road
they retreated on the next day, and here was the bank
at which the regiment bivouacked under the rain of the
night of the seventeenth. Further on was the position
which they took and held during the day, forming time
after time to receive the charge of the enemy's horsemen
and lying down under the shelter of the bank from the
furious French cannonade. And it was at this declivity
when at evening the whole English line received the order
to advance, as the enemy fell back after his last charge,
that the Captain, hurraying and rushing down the hill
waving his sword, received a shot and fell dead. "It was
Major Dobbin who took back the Captain's body to
Brussels," the Sergeant said, in a low voice, "and had him
buried, as your honour knows." The peasants and relic-
hunters about the place were screaming round the pair,
as the soldier told his story, offering for sale all sorts of
mementoes of the fight, crosses, and epaulets, and
shattered cuirasses, and eagles.
Osborne gave a sumptuous reward to the Sergeant
when he parted with him, after having visited the scenes
of his son's last exploits. His burial-place he had already
seen. Indeed, he had driven thither immediately after his
arrival at Brussels. George's body lay in the pretty burial-
ground of Laeken, near the city; in which place, having
once visited it on a party of pleasure, he had lightly
expressed a wish to have his grave made. And there the
young officer was laid by his friend, in the unconsecrated
corner of the garden, separated by a little hedge from
the temples and towers and plantations of flowers and
shrubs, under which the Roman Catholic dead repose. It
seemed a humiliation to old Osborne to think that his
son, an English gentleman, a captain in the famous British
army, should not be found worthy to lie in ground where
mere foreigners were buried. Which of us is there can
tell how much vanity lurks in our warmest regard for
others, and how selfish our love is? Old Osborne did
not speculate much upon the mingled nature of his feelings,
and how his instinct and selfishness were combating
together. He firmly believed that everything he did was
right, that he ought on all occasions to have his own way
--and like the sting of a wasp or serpent his hatred
rushed out armed and poisonous against anything like
opposition. He was proud of his hatred as of everything
else. Always to be right, always to trample forward, and
never to doubt, are not these the great qualities with
