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.