William Dobbin stood in the church-porch, looking at it, a queer
figure. The small crew of spectators jeered him. He was not thinking
about them or their laughter.
"Come home and have some tiffin, Dobbin," a voice cried behind him; as
a pudgy hand was laid on his shoulder, and the honest fellow's reverie
was interrupted. But the Captain had no heart to go a-feasting with
Jos Sedley. He put the weeping old lady and her attendants into the
carriage along with Jos, and left them without any farther words
passing. This carriage, too, drove away, and the urchins gave another
sarcastical cheer.
"Here, you little beggars," Dobbin said, giving some sixpences amongst
them, and then went off by himself through the rain. It was all over.
They were married, and happy, he prayed God. Never since he was a boy
had he felt so miserable and so lonely. He longed with a heart-sick
yearning for the first few days to be over, that he might see her again.
Some ten days after the above ceremony, three young men of our
acquaintance were enjoying that beautiful prospect of bow windows on
the one side and blue sea on the other, which Brighton affords to the
traveller. Sometimes it is towards the ocean--smiling with countless
dimples, speckled with white sails, with a hundred bathing-machines
kissing the skirt of his blue garment--that the Londoner looks
enraptured: sometimes, on the contrary, a lover of human nature rather
than of prospects of any kind, it is towards the bow windows that he
turns, and that swarm of human life which they exhibit. From one issue
the notes of a piano, which a young lady in ringlets practises six
hours daily, to the delight of the fellow-lodgers: at another, lovely
Polly, the nurse-maid, may be seen dandling Master Omnium in her arms:
whilst Jacob, his papa, is beheld eating prawns, and devouring the
Times for breakfast, at the window below. Yonder are the Misses Leery,
who are looking out for the young officers of the Heavies, who are
pretty sure to be pacing the cliff; or again it is a City man, with a
nautical turn, and a telescope, the size of a six-pounder, who has his
instrument pointed seawards, so as to command every pleasure-boat,
herring-boat, or bathing-machine that comes to, or quits, the shore,
&c., &c. But have we any leisure for a description of Brighton?--for
Brighton, a clean Naples with genteel lazzaroni--for Brighton, that
always looks brisk, gay, and gaudy, like a harlequin's jacket--for
Brighton, which used to be seven hours distant from London at the time
of our story; which is now only a hundred minutes off; and which may
approach who knows how much nearer, unless Joinville comes and untimely
bombards it?
"What a monstrous fine girl that is in the lodgings over the
milliner's," one of these three promenaders remarked to the other;
"Gad, Crawley, did you see what a wink she gave me as I passed?"