Chapter: Widow and Mother

The news of the great fights of Quatre Bras and Waterloo reached
England at the same time.  The Gazette first published the result of
the two battles; at which glorious intelligence all England thrilled
with triumph and fear. Particulars then followed; and after the
announcement of the victories came the list of the wounded and the
slain. Who can tell the dread with which that catalogue was opened and
read!  Fancy, at every village and homestead almost through the three
kingdoms, the great news coming of the battles in Flanders, and the
feelings of exultation and gratitude, bereavement and sickening dismay,
when the lists of the regimental losses were gone through, and it
became known whether the dear friend and relative had escaped or
fallen.  Anybody who will take the trouble of looking back to a file of
the newspapers of the time, must, even now, feel at second-hand this
breathless pause of expectation.  The lists of casualties are carried
on from day to day:  you stop in the midst as in a story which is to be
continued in our next.  Think what the feelings must have been as those
papers followed each other fresh from the press; and if such an
interest could be felt in our country, and about a battle where but
twenty thousand of our people were engaged, think of the condition of
Europe for twenty years before, where people were fighting, not by
thousands, but by millions; each one of whom as he struck his enemy
wounded horribly some other innocent heart far away.

The news which that famous Gazette brought to the Osbornes gave a
dreadful shock to the family and its chief. The girls indulged
unrestrained in their grief.  The gloom-stricken old father was still
more borne down by his fate 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 stern 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 which dullness
takes the lead in the world?

As after the drive to Waterloo, Mr. Osborne's carriage was nearing the
gates of the city at sunset, they met another open barouche, in which
were a couple of ladies and a gentleman, and by the side of which an
officer was riding.  Osborne gave a start back, and the Sergeant,
seated with him, cast a look of surprise at his neighbour, as he
touched his cap to the officer, who mechanically returned his salute.
It was Amelia, with the lame young Ensign by her side, and opposite to
her her faithful friend Mrs. O'Dowd.  It was Amelia, but how changed
from the fresh and comely girl Osborne knew.  Her face was white and
thin.  Her pretty brown hair was parted under a widow's cap--the poor
child.  Her eyes were fixed, and looking nowhere.  They stared blank in
the face of Osborne, as the carriages crossed each other, but she did
not know him; nor did he recognise her, until looking up, he saw Dobbin
riding by her:  and then he knew who it was.  He hated her.  He did not
know how much until he saw her there.  When her carriage had passed on,
he turned and stared at the Sergeant, with a curse and defiance in his
eye cast at his companion, who could not help looking at him--as much
as to say "How dare you look at me? Damn you!  I do hate her.  It is
she who has tumbled my hopes and all my pride down." "Tell the
scoundrel to drive on quick," he shouted with an oath, to the lackey on
the box. A minute afterwards, a horse came clattering over the pavement
behind Osborne's carriage, and Dobbin rode up.  His thoughts had been
elsewhere as the carriages passed each other, and it was not until he
had ridden some paces forward, that he remembered it was Osborne who
had just passed him.  Then he turned to examine if the sight of her
father-in-law had made any impression on Amelia, but the poor girl did
not know who had passed.  Then William, who daily used to accompany her
in his drives, taking out his watch, made some excuse about an
engagement which he suddenly recollected, and so rode off.  She did not
remark that either:  but sate looking before her, over the homely
landscape towards the woods in the distance, by which George marched
away.

"Mr. Osborne, Mr. Osborne!" cried Dobbin, as he rode up and held out
his hand.  Osborne made no motion to take it, but shouted out once more
and with another curse to his servant to drive on.

Dobbin laid his hand on the carriage side.  "I will see you, sir," he
said.  "I have a message for you."

"From that woman?" said Osborne, fiercely.

"No," replied the other, "from your son"; at which Osborne fell back
into the corner of his carriage, and Dobbin allowing it to pass on,
rode close behind it, and so through the town until they reached Mr.
Osborne's hotel, and without a word.  There he followed Osborne up to
his apartments.  George had often been in the rooms; they were the
lodgings which the Crawleys had occupied during their stay in Brussels.

"Pray, have you any commands for me, Captain Dobbin, or, I beg your
pardon, I should say MAJOR Dobbin, since better men than you are dead,
and you step into their SHOES?" said Mr. Osborne, in that sarcastic
tone which he sometimes was pleased to assume.

"Better men ARE dead," Dobbin replied.  "I want to speak to you about
one."

"Make it short, sir," said the other with an oath, scowling at his
visitor.

"I am here as his closest friend," the Major resumed, "and the executor
of his will.  He made it before he went into action.  Are you aware how
small his means are, and of the straitened circumstances of his widow?"

"I don't know his widow, sir," Osborne said.  "Let her go back to her
father." But the gentleman whom he addressed was determined to remain
in good temper, and went on without heeding the interruption.

"Do you know, sir, Mrs. Osborne's condition? Her life and her reason
almost have been shaken by the blow which has fallen on her.  It is
very doubtful whether she will rally.  There is a chance left for her,
however, and it is about this I came to speak to you.  She will be a
mother soon.  Will you visit the parent's offence upon the child's
head? or will you forgive the child for poor George's sake?"

Osborne broke out into a rhapsody of self-praise and imprecations;--by
the first, excusing himself to his own conscience for his conduct; by
the second, exaggerating the undutifulness of George. No father in all
England could have behaved more generously to a son, who had rebelled
against him wickedly.  He had died without even so much as confessing
he was wrong.  Let him take the consequences of his undutifulness and
folly.  As for himself, Mr. Osborne, he was a man of his word.  He had
sworn never to speak to that woman, or to recognize her as his son's
wife.  "And that's what you may tell her," he concluded with an oath;
"and that's what I will stick to to the last day of my life."

There was no hope from that quarter then.  The widow must live on her
slender pittance, or on such aid as Jos could give her.  "I might tell
her, and she would not heed it," thought Dobbin, sadly: for the poor
girl's thoughts were not here at all since her catastrophe, and,
stupefied under the pressure of her sorrow, good and evil were alike
indifferent to her.

So, indeed, were even friendship and kindness.  She received them both
uncomplainingly, and having accepted them, relapsed into her grief.

Suppose some twelve months after the above conversation took place to
have passed in the life of our poor Amelia.  She has spent the first
portion of that time in a sorrow so profound and pitiable, that we who
have been watching and describing some of the emotions of that weak and
tender heart, must draw back in the presence of the cruel grief under
which it is bleeding.  Tread silently round the hapless couch of the
poor prostrate soul. Shut gently the door of the dark chamber wherein
she suffers, as those kind people did who nursed her through the first
months of her pain, and never left her until heaven had sent her
consolation.  A day came--of almost terrified delight and wonder--when
the poor widowed girl pressed a child upon her breast--a child, with
the eyes of George who was gone--a little boy, as beautiful as a
cherub.  What a miracle it was to hear its first cry!  How she laughed
and wept over it--how love, and hope, and prayer woke again in her
bosom as the baby nestled there.  She was safe.  The doctors who
attended her, and had feared for her life or for her brain, had waited
anxiously for this crisis before they could pronounce that either was
secure.  It was worth the long months of doubt and dread which the
persons who had constantly been with her had passed, to see her eyes
once more beaming tenderly upon them.

Our friend Dobbin was one of them.  It was he who brought her back to
England and to her mother's house; when Mrs. O'Dowd, receiving a
peremptory summons from her Colonel, had been forced to quit her
patient. To see Dobbin holding the infant, and to hear Amelia's laugh
of triumph as she watched him, would have done any man good who had a
sense of humour.  William was the godfather of the child, and exerted
his ingenuity in the purchase of cups, spoons, pap-boats, and corals
for this little Christian.

How his mother nursed him, and dressed him, and lived upon him; how she
drove away all nurses, and would scarce allow any hand but her own to
touch him; how she considered that the greatest favour she could confer
upon his godfather, Major Dobbin, was to allow the Major occasionally
to dandle him, need not be told here.  This child was her being.  Her
existence was a maternal caress.  She enveloped the feeble and
unconscious creature with love and worship.  It was her life which the
baby drank in from her bosom.  Of nights, and when alone, she had
stealthy and intense raptures of motherly love, such as God's
marvellous care has awarded to the female instinct--joys how far
higher and lower than reason--blind beautiful devotions which only
women's hearts know.  It was William Dobbin's task to muse upon these
movements of Amelia's, and to watch her heart; and if his love made him
divine almost all the feelings which agitated it, alas! he could see
with a fatal perspicuity that there was no place there for him.  And
so, gently, he bore his fate, knowing it, and content to bear it.

I suppose Amelia's father and mother saw through the intentions of the
Major, and were not ill-disposed to encourage him; for Dobbin visited
their house daily, and stayed for hours with them, or with Amelia, or
with the honest landlord, Mr. Clapp, and his family.  He brought, on
one pretext or another, presents to everybody, and almost every day;
and went, with the landlord's little girl, who was rather a favourite
with Amelia, by the name of Major Sugarplums.  It was this little child
who commonly acted as mistress of the ceremonies to introduce him to
Mrs. Osborne.  She laughed one day when Major Sugarplums' cab drove up
to Fulham, and he descended from it, bringing out a wooden horse, a
drum, a trumpet, and other warlike toys, for little Georgy, who was
scarcely six months old, and for whom the articles in question were
entirely premature.

The child was asleep.  "Hush," said Amelia, annoyed, perhaps, at the
creaking of the Major's boots; and she held out her hand; smiling
because William could not take it until he had rid himself of his cargo
of toys.  "Go downstairs, little Mary," said he presently to the child,
"I want to speak to Mrs. Osborne." She looked up rather astonished, and
laid down the infant on its bed.

"I am come to say good-bye, Amelia," said he, taking her slender little
white hand gently.

"Good-bye? and where are you going?" she said, with a smile.

"Send the letters to the agents," he said; "they will forward them; for
you will write to me, won't you? I shall be away a long time."

"I'll write to you about Georgy," she said.  "Dear William, how good
you have been to him and to me.  Look at him.  Isn't he like an angel?"

The little pink hands of the child closed mechanically round the honest
soldier's finger, and Amelia looked up in his face with bright maternal
pleasure.  The cruellest looks could not have wounded him more than
that glance of hopeless kindness.  He bent over the child and mother.
He could not speak for a moment.  And it was only with all his strength
that he could force himself to say a God bless you.  "God bless you,"
said Amelia, and held up her face and kissed him.

"Hush!  Don't wake Georgy!" she added, as William Dobbin went to the
door with heavy steps.  She did not hear the noise of his cab-wheels as
he drove away:  she was looking at the child, who was laughing in his
sleep.

 OK, enough in Crawley Funville. Now back to Osborne Sadtown. So, Mr. Osborne and George's sisters are totally destroyed by George's death. The women weep openly, but Mr. Osborne doesn't talk about his grief to anyone. His feelings are split. On the one hand, he is really sad that his son is dead. On the other hand, he is furious that now George will never apologize for marrying Amelia. Still, he does commission a hideously gaudy sculpture honoring George for their church. One day, a few months later, Dobbin's father stops by, tells Osborne that Dobbin has been promoted to Major, and gives him a letter. It's the letter George wrote on the eve of the battle. Osborne reads it but can't see the emotions George was feeling while writing it. It's kind of like when you write an email with no emoticons and your tone of voice doesn't come across. George meant to be all emotional and loving and full of remorse, but his father just sees stiffness and pride. He stays just as mad as ever. Sometime later, Osborne announces that he will travel to Belgium. George's sisters know that this is where Amelia still is and they wonder whether their father is going there to forgive her. Osborne gets to Brussels, goes to see George's grave, and then takes a tour of the battlefield where he died, accompanied by a soldier in George's old company. This soldier, among other things, tells him that Amelia is now finally recovered from her shock and deep insanity after George's death. The next day Osborne sees her driving in a carriage with Dobbin, and he declares that he hates her just as much as ever. She doesn't even see him and still seems totally crazy. Dobbin does see him, follows him to his hotel, and tells him that Amelia is pregnant. Osborne gets all defensive about how he was a totally awesome father and George was a totally hateful son. Dobbin realizes that Osborne will never help Amelia out financially. OK, a little pause. We skip ahead a year into the future. Amelia really was going crazy, but when she gave birth she started to recover her ability to love and be emotionally connected to the world. She is a really, really doting mother. She won't let anyone else touch the baby. But still, at least she's not catatonic any more, right? Dobbin is the baby George's godfather. He brings Amelia and baby George back to London to her parents' house. They can see that Dobbin loves her, but Amelia only has eyes for George Jr. Finally, Dobbin can't deal with the situation any more and tells Amelia that he's leaving for a long time. She only half hears him, tells him she'll write about the baby, then shushes him as he goes away.

