"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.