And about the war that was ensuing, Mrs. Osborne was not much alarmed;
Bonaparty was to be crushed almost without a struggle. Margate packets
were sailing every day, filled with men of fashion and ladies of note,
on their way to Brussels and Ghent. People were going not so much to a
war as to a fashionable tour. The newspapers laughed the wretched
upstart and swindler to scorn. Such a Corsican wretch as that
withstand the armies of Europe and the genius of the immortal
Wellington! Amelia held him in utter contempt; for it needs not to be
said that this soft and gentle creature took her opinions from those
people who surrounded her, such fidelity being much too humble-minded
to think for itself. Well, in a word, she and her mother performed a
great day's shopping, and she acquitted herself with considerable
liveliness and credit on this her first appearance in the genteel world
of London.
George meanwhile, with his hat on one side, his elbows squared, and his
swaggering martial air, made for Bedford Row, and stalked into the
attorney's offices as if he was lord of every pale-faced clerk who was
scribbling there. He ordered somebody to inform Mr. Higgs that Captain
Osborne was waiting, in a fierce and patronizing way, as if the pekin
of an attorney, who had thrice his brains, fifty times his money, and a
thousand times his experience, was a wretched underling who should
instantly leave all his business in life to attend on the Captain's
pleasure. He did not see the sneer of contempt which passed all round
the room, from the first clerk to the articled gents, from the articled
gents to the ragged writers and white-faced runners, in clothes too
tight for them, as he sate there tapping his boot with his cane, and
thinking what a parcel of miserable poor devils these were. The
miserable poor devils knew all about his affairs. They talked about
them over their pints of beer at their public-house clubs to other
clerks of a night. Ye gods, what do not attorneys and attorneys' clerks
know in London! Nothing is hidden from their inquisition, and their
families mutely rule our city.
Perhaps George expected, when he entered Mr. Higgs's apartment, to find
that gentleman commissioned to give him some message of compromise or
conciliation from his father; perhaps his haughty and cold demeanour
was adopted as a sign of his spirit and resolution: but if so, his
fierceness was met by a chilling coolness and indifference on the
attorney's part, that rendered swaggering absurd. He pretended to be
writing at a paper, when the Captain entered. "Pray, sit down, sir,"
said he, "and I will attend to your little affair in a moment. Mr.
Poe, get the release papers, if you please"; and then he fell to
writing again.