“It’s Peggy O’Dowd’s fist,” said George, laughing. “I know it by the kisses on the seal.” And in fact, it was a note from Mrs. Major O’Dowd, requesting the pleasure of Mrs. Osborne’s company that very evening to a small friendly party. “You must go,” George said. “You will make acquaintance with the regiment there. O’Dowd goes in command of the regiment, and Peggy goes in command.”
But they had not been for many minutes in the enjoyment of Mrs. O’Dowd’s letter, when the door was flung open, and a stout jolly lady, in a riding-habit, followed by a couple of officers of Ours, entered the room.
“Sure, I couldn’t stop till tay-time. Present me, Garge, my dear fellow, to your lady. Madam, I’m deloighted to see ye; and to present to you me husband, Meejor O’Dowd”; and with this, the jolly lady in the riding-habit grasped Amelia’s hand very warmly, and the latter knew at once that the lady was before her whom her husband had so often laughed at. “You’ve often heard of me from that husband of yours,” said the lady, with great vivacity.
“You’ve often heard of her,” echoed her husband, the Major.
Amelia answered, smiling, “that she had.”
“And small good he’s told you of me,” Mrs. O’Dowd replied; adding that “George was a wicked divvle.”
“That I’ll go bail for,” said the Major, trying to look knowing, at which George laughed; and Mrs. O’Dowd, with a tap of her whip, told the Major to be quiet; and then requested to be presented in form to Mrs. Captain Osborne.
“This, my dear,” said George with great gravity, “is my very good, kind, and excellent friend, Auralia Margaretta, otherwise called Peggy.”
“Faith, you’re right,” interposed the Major.
“Otherwise called Peggy, lady of Major Michael O’Dowd, of our regiment, and daughter of Fitzjurld Ber’sford de Burgo Malony of Glenmalony, County Kildare.”
“And Muryan Squeer, Doblin,” said the lady with calm superiority.
“And Muryan Square, sure enough,” the Major whispered.
“’Twas there ye coorted me, Meejor dear,” the lady said; and the Major assented to this as to every other proposition which was made generally in company.
Major O’Dowd, who had served his sovereign in every quarter of the world, and had paid for every step in his profession by some more than equivalent act of daring and gallantry, was the most modest, silent, sheep-faced and meek of little men, and as obedient to his wife as if he had been her tay-boy. At the mess-table he sat silently, and drank a great deal. When full of liquor, he reeled silently home. When he spoke, it was to agree with everybody on every conceivable point; and he passed through life in perfect ease and good-humour. The hottest suns of India never heated his temper; and the Walcheren ague never shook it. He walked up to a battery with just as much indifference as to a dinner-table; had dined on horse-flesh and turtle with equal relish and appetite; and had an old mother, Mrs. O’Dowd of O’Dowdstown indeed, whom he had never disobeyed but when he ran away and enlisted, and when he persisted in marrying that odious Peggy Malony.
Peggy was one of five sisters, and eleven children of the noble house of Glenmalony; but her husband, though her own cousin, was of the mother’s side, and so had not the inestimable advantage of being allied to the Malonys, whom she believed to be the most famous family in the world. Having tried nine seasons at Dublin and two at Bath and Cheltenham, and not finding a partner for life, Miss Malony ordered her cousin Mick to marry her when she was about thirty-three years of age; and the honest fellow obeying, carried her off to the West Indies, to preside over the ladies of the --th regiment, into which he had just exchanged.
Before Mrs. O’Dowd was half an hour in Amelia’s (or indeed in anybody else’s) company, this amiable lady told all her birth and pedigree to her new friend. “My dear,” said she, good-naturedly, “it was my intention that Garge should be a brother of my own, and my sister Glorvina would have suited him entirely. But as bygones are bygones, and he was engaged to yourself, why, I’m determined to take you as a sister instead, and to look upon you as such, and to love you as one of the family. Faith, you’ve got such a nice good-natured face and way widg you, that I’m sure we’ll agree; and that you’ll be an addition to our family anyway.”
“’Deed and she will,” said O’Dowd, with an approving air, and Amelia felt herself not a little amused and grateful to be thus suddenly introduced to so large a party of relations.
“We’re all good fellows here,” the Major’s lady continued. “There’s not a regiment in the service where you’ll find a more united society nor a more agreeable mess-room. There’s no quarrelling, bickering, slandthering, nor small talk amongst us. We all love each other.”
“Especially Mrs. Magenis,” said George, laughing.
“Mrs. Captain Magenis and me has made up, though her treatment of me would bring me gray hairs with sorrow to the grave.”
“And you with such a beautiful front of black, Peggy, my dear,” the Major cried.
“Hould your tongue, Mick, you booby. Them husbands are always in the way, Mrs. Osborne, my dear; and as for my Mick, I often tell him he should never open his mouth but to give the word of command, or to put meat and drink into it. I’ll tell you about the regiment, and warn you when we’re alone. Introduce me to your brother now; sure he’s a mighty fine man, and reminds me of me cousin, Dan Malony (Malony of Ballymalony, my dear, you know who mar’ied Ophalia Scully, of Oystherstown, own cousin to Lord Poldoody). Mr. Sedley, sir, I’m deloighted to be made known te ye. I suppose you’ll dine at the mess to-day. (Mind that divvle of a docther, Mick, and whatever ye du, keep yourself sober for me party this evening.)”
“It’s the 150th gives us a farewell dinner, my love,” interposed the Major, “but we’ll easy get a card for Mr. Sedley.”
“Run Simple (Ensign Simple, of Ours, my dear Amelia. I forgot to introjuice him to ye). Run in a hurry, with Mrs. Major O’Dowd’s compliments to Colonel Tavish, and Captain Osborne has brought his brothernlaw down, and will bring him to the 150th mess at five o’clock sharp--when you and I, my dear, will take a snack here, if you like.” Before Mrs. O’Dowd’s speech was concluded, the young Ensign was trotting downstairs on his commission.
“Obedience is the soul of the army. We will go to our duty while Mrs. O’Dowd will stay and enlighten you, Emmy,” Captain Osborne said; and the two gentlemen, taking each a wing of the Major, walked out with that officer, grinning at each other over his head.
And, now having her new friend to herself, the impetuous Mrs: O’Dowd proceeded to pour out such a quantity of information as no poor little woman’s memory could ever tax itself to bear. She told Amelia a thousand particulars relative to the very numerous family of which the amazed young lady found herself a member. “Mrs. Heavytop, the Colonel’s wife, died in Jamaica of the yellow faver and a broken heart comboined, for the horrud old Colonel, with a head as bald as a cannon-ball, was making sheep’s eyes at a half-caste girl there. Mrs. Magenis, though without education, was a good woman, but she had the divvle’s tongue, and would cheat her own mother at whist. Mrs. Captain Kirk must turn up her lobster eyes forsooth at the idea of an honest round game (wherein me fawther, as pious a man as ever went to church, me uncle Dane Malony, and our cousin the Bishop, took a hand at loo, or whist, every night of their lives). Nayther of ‘em’s goin’ with the regiment this time,” Mrs. O’Dowd added. “Fanny Magenis stops with her mother, who sells small coal and potatoes, most likely, in Islington-town, hard by London, though she’s always bragging of her father’s ships, and pointing them out to us as they go up the river: and Mrs. Kirk and her children will stop here in Bethesda Place, to be nigh to her favourite preacher, Dr. Ramshorn. Mrs. Bunny’s in an interesting situation--faith, and she always is, then--and has given the Lieutenant seven already. And Ensign Posky’s wife, who joined two months before you, my dear, has quarl’d with Tom Posky a score of times, till you can hear’m all over the bar’ck (they say they’re come to broken pleets, and To
m never accounted for his black oi), and she’ll go back to her mother, who keeps a ladies’ siminary at Richmond--bad luck to her for running away from it! Where did ye get your finishing, my dear? I had moin, and no expince spared, at Madame Flanahan’s, at Ilyssus Grove, Booterstown, near Dublin, wid a Marchioness to teach us the true Parisian pronunciation, and a retired Mejor-General of the French service to put us through the exercise.”
Of this incongruous family our astonished Amelia found herself all of a sudden a member: with Mrs. O’Dowd as an elder sister. She was presented to her other female relations at tea-time, on whom, as she was quiet, good-natured, and not too handsome, she made rather an agreeable impression until the arrival of the gentlemen from the mess of the 150th, who all admired her so, that her sisters began, of course, to find fault with her.
“I hope Osborne has sown his wild oats,” said Mrs. Magenis to Mrs. Bunny. “If a reformed rake makes a good husband, sure it’s she will have the fine chance with Garge,” Mrs. O’Dowd remarked to Posky, who had lost her position as bride in the regiment, and was quite angry with the usurper. And as for Mrs. Kirk: that disciple of Dr. Ramshorn put one or two leading professional questions to Amelia, to see whether she was awakened, whether she was a professing Christian and so forth, and finding from the simplicity of Mrs. Osborne’s replies that she was yet in utter darkness, put into her hands three little penny books with pictures, viz., the “Howling Wilderness,” the “Washerwoman of Wandsworth Common,” and the “British Soldier’s best Bayonet,” which, bent upon awakening her before she slept, Mrs. Kirk begged Amelia to read that night ere she went to bed.
But all the men, like good fellows as they were, rallied round their comrade’s pretty wife, and paid her their court with soldierly gallantry. She had a little triumph, which flushed her spirits and made her eyes sparkle. George was proud of her popularity, and pleased with the manner (which was very gay and graceful, though naive and a little timid) with which she received the gentlemen’s attentions, and answered their compliments. And he in his uniform-- how much handsomer he was than any man in the room! She felt that he was affectionately watching her, and glowed with pleasure at his kindness. “I will make all his friends welcome,” she resolved in her heart. “I will love all as I love him. I will always try and be gay and good-humoured and make his home happy.”
The regiment indeed adopted her with acclamation. The Captains approved, the Lieutenants applauded, the Ensigns admired. Old Cutler, the Doctor, made one or two jokes, which, being professional, need not be repeated; and Cackle, the Assistant M.D. of Edinburgh, condescended to examine her upon leeterature, and tried her with his three best French quotations. Young Stubble went about from man to man whispering, “Jove, isn’t she a pretty gal?” and never took his eyes off her except when the negus came in.
As for Captain Dobbin, he never so much as spoke to her during the whole evening. But he and Captain Porter of the l50th took home Jos to the hotel, who was in a very maudlin state, and had told his tiger-hunt story with great effect, both at the mess-table and at the soiree, to Mrs. O’Dowd in her turban and bird of paradise. Having put the Collector into the hands of his servant, Dobbin loitered about, smoking his cigar before the inn door. George had meanwhile very carefully shawled his wife, and brought her away from Mrs. O’Dowd’s after a general handshaking from the young officers, who accompanied her to the fly, and cheered that vehicle as it drove off. So Amelia gave Dobbin her little hand as she got out of the carriage, and rebuked him smilingly for not having taken any notice of her all night.
The Captain continued that deleterious amusement of smoking, long after the inn and the street were gone to bed. He watched the lights vanish from George’s sitting-room windows, and shine out in the bedroom close at hand. It was almost morning when he returned to his own quarters. He could hear the cheering from the ships in the river, where the transports were already taking in their cargoes preparatory to dropping down the Thames.
Chapter XXVIII
In Which Amelia Invades the Low Countries
The regiment with its officers was to be transported in ships provided by His Majesty’s government for the occasion: and in two days after the festive assembly at Mrs. O’Dowd’s apartments, in the midst of cheering from all the East India ships in the river, and the military on shore, the band playing “God Save the King,” the officers waving their hats, and the crews hurrahing gallantly, the transports went down the river and proceeded under convoy to Ostend. Meanwhile the gallant Jos had agreed to escort his sister and the Major’s wife, the bulk of whose goods and chattels, including the famous bird of paradise and turban, were with the regimental baggage: so that our two heroines drove pretty much unencumbered to Ramsgate, where there were plenty of packets plying, in one of which they had a speedy passage to Ostend.
That period of Jos’s life which now ensued was so full of incident, that it served him for conversation for many years after, and even the tiger-hunt story was put aside for more stirring narratives which he had to tell about the great campaign of Waterloo. As soon as he had agreed to escort his sister abroad, it was remarked that he ceased shaving his upper lip. At Chatham he followed the parades and drills with great assiduity. He listened with the utmost attention to the conversation of his brother officers (as he called them in after days sometimes), and learned as many military names as he could. In these studies the excellent Mrs. O’Dowd was of great assistance to him; and on the day finally when they embarked on board the Lovely Rose, which was to carry them to their destination, he made his appearance in a braided frock-coat and duck trousers, with a foraging cap ornamented with a smart gold band. Having his carriage with him, and informing everybody on board confidentially that he was going to join the Duke of Wellington’s army, folks mistook him for a great personage, a commissary-general, or a government courier at the very least.
He suffered hugely on the voyage, during which the ladies were likewise prostrate; but Amelia was brought to life again as the packet made Ostend, by the sight of the transports conveying her regiment, which entered the harbour almost at the same time with the Lovely Rose. Jos went in a collapsed state to an inn, while Captain Dobbin escorted the ladies, and then busied himself in freeing Jos’s carriage and luggage from the ship and the custom-house, for Mr. Jos was at present without a servant, Osborne’s man and his own pampered menial having conspired together at Chatham, and refused point-blank to cross the water. This revolt, which came very suddenly, and on the last day, so alarmed Mr. Sedley, junior, that he was on the point of giving up the expedition, but Captain Dobbin (who made himself immensely officious in the business, Jos said), rated him and laughed at him soundly: the mustachios were grown in advance, and Jos finally was persuaded to embark. In place of the well-bred and well-fed London domestics, who could only speak English, Dobbin procured for Jos’s party a swarthy little Belgian servant who could speak no language at all; but who, by his bustling behaviour, and by invariably addressing Mr. Sedley as “My lord,” speedily acquired that gentleman’s favour. Times are altered at Ostend now; of the Britons who go thither, very few look like lords, or act like those members of our hereditary aristocracy. They seem for the most part shabby in attire, dingy of linen, lovers of billiards and brandy, and cigars and greasy ordinaries.
But it may be said as a rule, that every Englishman in the Duke of Wellington’s army paid his way. The remembrance of such a fact surely becomes a nation of shopkeepers. It was a blessing for a commerce-loving country to be overrun by such an army of customers: and to have such creditable warriors to feed. And the country which they came to protect is not military. For a long period of history they have let other people fight there. When the present writer went to survey with eagle glance the field of Waterloo, we asked the conductor of the diligence, a portly warlike-looking veteran, whether he had been at the battle. “Pas si bete"--such an answer and sentiment as no Frenchman would own to--was his reply. But, on the other hand, the postilion who drove us was a Viscou
nt, a son of some bankrupt Imperial General, who accepted a pennyworth of beer on the road. The moral is surely a good one.
This flat, flourishing, easy country never could have looked more rich and prosperous than in that opening summer of 1815, when its green fields and quiet cities were enlivened by multiplied red-coats: when its wide chaussees swarmed with brilliant English equipages: when its great canal-boats, gliding by rich pastures and pleasant quaint old villages, by old chateaux lying amongst old trees, were all crowded with well-to-do English travellers: when the soldier who drank at the village inn, not only drank, but paid his score; and Donald, the Highlander, billeted in the Flemish farm-house, rocked the baby’s cradle, while Jean and Jeannette were out getting in the hay. As our painters are bent on military subjects just now, I throw out this as a good subject for the pencil, to illustrate the principle of an honest English war. All looked as brilliant and harmless as a Hyde Park review. Meanwhile, Napoleon screened behind his curtain of frontier-fortresses, was preparing for the outbreak which was to drive all these orderly people into fury and blood; and lay so many of them low.
Everybody had such a perfect feeling of confidence in the leader (for the resolute faith which the Duke of Wellington had inspired in the whole English nation was as intense as that more frantic enthusiasm with which at one time the French regarded Napoleon), the country seemed in so perfect a state of orderly defence, and the help at hand in case of need so near and overwhelming, that alarm was unknown, and our travellers, among whom two were naturally of a very timid sort, were, like all the other multiplied English tourists, entirely at ease. The famous regiment, with so many of whose officers we have made acquaintance, was drafted in canal boats to Bruges and Ghent, thence to march to Brussels. Jos accompanied the ladies in the public boats; the which all old travellers in Flanders must remember for the luxury and accommodation they afforded. So prodigiously good was the eating and drinking on board these sluggish but most comfortable vessels, that there are legends extant of an English traveller, who, coming to Belgium for a week, and travelling in one of these boats, was so delighted with the fare there that he went backwards and forwards from Ghent to Bruges perpetually until the railroads were invented, when he drowned himself on the last trip of the passage-boat. Jos’s death was not to be of this sort, but his comfort was exceeding, and Mrs. O’Dowd insisted that he only wanted her sister Glorvina to make his happiness complete. He sate on the roof of the cabin all day drinking Flemish beer, shouting for Isidor, his servant, and talking gallantly to the ladies.