mention Glorvina by name, and only in italics, as the
Major's BRIDE, for whom she begged blessings. But the
news of the marriage removed the reserve which she had
kept up towards him. She was glad to be able to own and
feel how warmly and gratefully she regarded him--and as
for the idea of being jealous of Glorvina (Glorvina, indeed!),
Amelia would have scouted it, if an angel from heaven had
hinted it to her. That night, when Georgy came back in the
pony-carriage in which he rejoiced, and in which he was
driven by Sir Wm. Dobbin's old coachman, he had round
his neck a fine gold chain and watch. He said an old lady,
not pretty, had given it him, who cried and kissed him a
great deal. But he didn't like her. He liked grapes very
much. And he only liked his mamma. Amelia shrank and
started; the timid soul felt a presentiment of terror when
she heard that the relations of the child's father had seen
him.
Miss Osborne came back to give her father his dinner. He
had made a good speculation in the City, and was rather in
a good humour that day, and chanced to remark the
agitation under which she laboured. "What's the matter,
Miss Osborne?" he deigned to say.
The woman burst into tears. "Oh, sir," she said, "I've seen
little George. He is as beautiful as an angel--and so like
him!" The old man opposite to her did not say a word, but
flushed up and began to tremble in every limb.
CHAPIER XLIII
In Which the Reader Has to Double the Cape
The astonished reader must be called upon to transport
himself ten thousand miles to the military station of
Bundlegunge, in the Madras division of our Indian empire,
where our gallant old friends of the --th regiment are
quartered under the command of the brave Colonel,
Sir Michael O'Dowd. Time has dealt kindly with that
stout officer, as it does ordinarily with men who have
good stomachs and good tempers and are not perplexed
over much by fatigue of the brain. The Colonel plays a
good knife and fork at tiffin and resumes those weapons
with great success at dinner. He smokes his hookah after
both meals and puffs as quietly while his wife scolds
him as he did under the fire of the French at Waterloo. Age
and heat have not diminished the activity or the eloquence
of the descendant of the Malonys and the Molloys. Her
Ladyship, our old acquaintance, is as much at home at
Madras as at Brussels in the cantonment as under the
tents. On the march you saw her at the head of the
regiment seated on a royal elephant, a noble sight.
Mounted on that beast, she has been into action with tigers
in the jungle, she has been received by native princes, who
have welcomed her and Glorvina into the recesses of their
zenanas and offered her shawls and jewels which it went
to her heart to refuse. The sentries of all arms salute her
wherever she makes her appearance, and she touches her
hat gravely to their salutation. Lady O'Dowd is one of the
greatest ladies in the Presidency of Madras--her quarrel
with Lady Smith, wife of Sir Minos Smith the puisne judge,
is still remembered by some at Madras, when the Colonel's
lady snapped her fingers in the Judge's lady's face and said
SHE'D never walk behind ever a beggarly civilian. Even
now, though it is five-and-twenty years ago, people
remember Lady O'Dowd performing a jig at Government
House, where she danced down two Aides-de-Camp, a
Major of Madras cavalry, and two gentlemen of the Civil
Service; and, persuaded by Major Dobbin, C.B., second in
command of the --th, to retire to the supper-room, lassata
nondum satiata recessit.
Peggy O'Dowd is indeed the same as ever, kind in act and
thought; impetuous in temper; eager to command; a tyrant
over her Michael; a dragon amongst all the ladies of the
regiment; a mother to all the young men, whom she tends
in their sickness, defends in all their scrapes, and with
whom Lady Peggy is immensely popular. But the
Subalterns' and Captains' ladies (the Major is unmarried)
cabal against her a good deal. They say that Glorvina gives
herself airs and that Peggy herself is ill tolerably
domineering. She interfered with a little congregation
which Mrs. Kirk had got up and laughed the young men
away from her sermons, stating that a soldier's wife had no
business to be a parson--that Mrs. Kirk would be much
better mending her husband's clothes; and, if the regiment
wanted sermons, that she had the finest in the world, those
of her uncle, the Dean. She abruptly put a termination to a
flirtation which Lieutenant Stubble of the regiment had
commenced with the Surgeon's wife, threatening to come
down upon Stubble for the money which he had borrowed
from her (for the young fellow was still of an extravagant
turn) unless he broke off at once and went to the Cape on
sick leave. On the other hand, she housed and sheltered
Mrs. Posky, who fled from her bungalow one night,
pursued by her infuriate husband, wielding his second
brandy bottle, and actually carried Posky through the
delirium tremens and broke him of the habit of drinking,
which had grown upon that officer, as all evil habits will
grow upon men. In a word, in adversity she was the best
of comforters, in good fortune the most troublesome of
friends, having a perfectly good opinion of herself always
and an indomitable resolution to have her own way.
Among other points, she had made up her mind that
Glorvina should marry our old friend Dobbin. Mrs. O'Dowd
knew the Major's expectations and appreciated his good
qualities and the high character which he enjoyed in his
profession. Glorvina, a very handsome, fresh-coloured,
black-haired, blue-eyed young lady, who could ride a
horse, or play a sonata with any girl out of the County
Cork, seemed to be the very person destined to insure
Dobbin's happiness--much more than that poor good little
weak-spur'ted Amelia, about whom he used to take on so.--
"Look at Glorvina enter a room," Mrs. O'Dowd would say,
"and compare her with that poor Mrs. Osborne, who
couldn't say boo to a goose. She'd be worthy of you, Major--
you're a quiet man yourself, and want some one to talk for
ye. And though she does not come of such good blood as
the Malonys or Molloys, let me tell ye, she's of an ancient
family that any nobleman might be proud to marry into."
But before she had come to such a resolution and determined to
subjugate Major Dobbin by her endearments, it must be owned
that Glorvina had practised them a good deal elsewhere. She had
had a season in Dublin, and who knows how many in Cork,
Killarney, and Mallow? She had flirted with all the marriageable
officers whom the depots of her country afforded, and all the
bachelor squires who seemed eligible. She had been
engaged to be married a half-score times in Ireland,
besides the clergyman at Bath who used her so ill. She had
flirted all the way to Madras with the Captain and chief
mate of the Ramchunder East Indiaman, and had a season
at the Presidency with her brother and Mrs. O'Dowd, who
was staying there, while the Major of the regiment was in
command at the station. Everybody admired her there;
everybody danced with her; but no one proposed who was
worth the marrying--one or two exceedingly young
subalterns sighed after her, and a beardless civilian or two,
but she rejected these as beneath her pretensions--and
other and younger virgins than Glorvina were married
before her. There are women, and handsome women too,
who have this fortune in life. They fall in love with the
utmost generosity; they ride and walk with half the
Army-list, though they draw near to forty, and yet the
Misses O'Grady are the Misses O'Grady still: Glorvina
persisted that but for Lady O'Dowd's unlucky quarrel with
the Judge's lady, she would have made a good match at
Madras, where old Mr. Chutney, who was at the head of
the civil service (and who afterwards married Miss Dolby,
a young lady only thirteen years of age who had just
arrived from school in Europe), was just at the point of
proposing to her.
Well, although Lady O'Dowd and Glorvina quarrelled a
great number of times every day, and upon almost every
conceivable subject--indeed, if Mick O'Dowd had not
possessed the temper of an angel two such women
constantly about his ears would have driven him out of his
senses--yet they agreed between themselves on this point,
that Glorvina should marry Major Dobbin, and were
determined that the Major should have no rest until the
arrangement was brought about. Undismayed by forty or
fifty previous defeats, Glorvina laid siege to him. She sang
Irish melodies at him unceasingly. She asked him so
frequently and pathetically, Will ye come to the bower?
that it is a wonder how any man of feeling could have
resisted the invitation. She was never tired of inquiring, if
Sorrow had his young days faded, and was ready to listen
and weep like Desdemona at the stories of his dangers and
his campaigns. It has been
said that our honest and dear old friend used to perform
on the flute in private; Glorvina insisted upon having duets
with him, and Lady O'Dowd would rise and artlessly quit
the room when the young couple were so engaged.
Glorvina forced the Major to ride with her of mornings. The
whole cantonment saw them set out and return. She was
constantly writing notes over to him at his house,
borrowing his books, and scoring with her great
pencil-marks such passages of sentiment or humour as
awakened her sympathy. She borrowed his horses, his
servants, his spoons, and palanquin--no wonder that public
rumour assigned her to him, and that the Major's sisters in
England should fancy they were about to have a sister-in-
law.
Dobbin, who was thus vigorously besieged, was in the
meanwhile in a state of the most odious tranquillity. He
used to laugh when the young fellows of the regiment
joked him about Glorvina's manifest attentions to him.
"Bah!" said he, "she is only keeping her hand in--she
practises upon me as she does upon Mrs. Tozer's piano,
because it's the most handy instrument in the station. I am
much too battered and old for such a fine young lady as
Glorvina." And so he went on riding with her, and copying
music and verses into her albums, and playing at chess
with her very submissively; for it is with these simple
amusements that some officers in India are accustomed to
while away their leisure moments, while others of a less
domestic turn hunt hogs, and shoot snipes, or gamble and
smoke cheroots, and betake themselves to brandy-and-
water. As for Sir Michael O'Dowd, though his lady and her
sister both urged him to call upon the Major to explain
himself and not keep on torturing a poor innocent girl in
that shameful way, the old soldier refused point-blank to
have anything to do with the conspiracy. "Faith, the Major's
big enough to choose for himself," Sir Michael said; "he'll
ask ye when he wants ye"; or else he would turn the
matter off jocularly, declaring that "Dobbin was too young
to keep house, and had written home to ask lave of his
mamma." Nay, he went farther, and in private
communications with his Major would caution and rally
him, crying, "Mind your oi, Dob, my boy, them girls is bent
on mischief--me Lady has just got a box of gowns from Europe,
and there's a pink satin for Glorvina, which will finish ye,
Dob, if it's in the power of woman or satin to move ye."
But the truth is, neither beauty nor fashion could conquer
him. Our honest friend had but one idea of a woman in his
head, and that one did not in the least resemble Miss
Glorvina O'Dowd in pink satin. A gentle little woman in black,
with large eyes and brown hair, seldom speaking, save when
spoken to, and then in a voice not the least resembling
Miss Glorvina's--a soft young mother tending an infant
and beckoning the Major up with a smile to look at him--a
rosy-cheeked lass coming singing into the room in Russell
Square or hanging on George Osborne's arm, happy and
loving--there was but this image that filled our honest
Major's mind, by day and by night, and reigned over it
always. Very likely Amelia was not like the portrait the
Major had formed of her: there was a figure in a book of
fashions which his sisters had in England, and with which
William had made away privately, pasting it into the lid
of his desk, and fancying he saw some resemblance to
Mrs. Osborne in the print, whereas I have seen it, and
can vouch that it is but the picture of a high-waisted
gown with an impossible doll's face simpering over it--
and, perhaps, Mr. Dobbin's sentimental Amelia was no
more like the real one than this absurd little print which
he cherished. But what man in love, of us, is better
informed?--or is he much happier when he sees and owns his
delusion? Dobbin was under this spell. He did not bother
his friends and the public much about his feelings, or
indeed lose his natural rest or appetite on account
of them. His head has grizzled since we saw him last, and
a line or two of silver may be seen in the soft brown hair
likewise. But his feelings are not in the least changed or
oldened, and his love remains as fresh as a man's
recollections of boyhood are.
We have said how the two Misses Dobbin and Amelia, the
Major's correspondents in Europe, wrote him letters from
England, Mrs. Osborne congratulating him with great candour
and cordiality upon his approaching nuptials with Miss O'Dowd.
"Your sister has just kindly visited me," Amelia wrote
in her letter, "and informed me of an INTERESTING EVENT,
upon which I beg to offer my MOST SINCERE CONGRATULATIONS.
