Indeed I have no heart, on account of our dear Amelia's sake, to go
through the story of George's last days at home.
At last the day came, the carriage drove up, the little humble packets
containing tokens of love and remembrance were ready and disposed in
the hall long since--George was in his new suit, for which the tailor
had come previously to measure him. He had sprung up with the sun and
put on the new clothes, his mother hearing him from the room close by,
in which she had been lying, in speechless grief and watching. Days
before she had been making preparations for the end, purchasing little
stores for the boy's use, marking his books and linen, talking with him
and preparing him for the change--fondly fancying that he needed
preparation.
So that he had change, what cared he? He was longing for it. By a
thousand eager declarations as to what he would do, when he went to
live with his grandfather, he had shown the poor widow how little the
idea of parting had cast him down. "He would come and see his mamma
often on the pony," he said. "He would come and fetch her in the
carriage; they would drive in the park, and she should have everything
she wanted." The poor mother was fain to content herself with these
selfish demonstrations of attachment, and tried to convince herself how
sincerely her son loved her. He must love her. All children were so:
a little anxious for novelty, and--no, not selfish, but self-willed.
Her child must have his enjoyments and ambition in the world. She
herself, by her own selfishness and imprudent love for him had denied
him his just rights and pleasures hitherto.
I know few things more affecting than that timorous debasement and
self-humiliation of a woman. How she owns that it is she and not the
man who is guilty; how she takes all the faults on her side; how she
courts in a manner punishment for the wrongs which she has not
committed and persists in shielding the real culprit! It is those who
injure women who get the most kindness from them--they are born timid
and tyrants and maltreat those who are humblest before them.
So poor Amelia had been getting ready in silent misery for her son's
departure, and had passed many and many a long solitary hour in making
preparations for the end. George stood by his mother, watching her
arrangements without the least concern. Tears had fallen into his
boxes; passages had been scored in his favourite books; old toys,
relics, treasures had been hoarded away for him, and packed with
strange neatness and care--and of all these things the boy took no
note. The child goes away smiling as the mother breaks her heart. By
heavens it is pitiful, the bootless love of women for children in
Vanity Fair.