I. 1813
Captain William Dobbin loves his best friend. Of course he does. He reminds himself of it regularly, whenever George is being impossible.
"Dob! D— it all, where are you?"
The door of Dobbin's room at the Old Slaughter's flies open, then slams shut behind a laughing George.
It's a habit, loving George Osborne. Something deep in his bones. His gift, his flaw, his curse. And surely such a thing cannot happen twice... Why, a man might go mad.
William Dobbin will surprise himself yet.
He knows in an instant what George wants of him this night - and it's been the law of his life, for ever so long, that whatever George wants, he must have.
And if George Osborne enjoys being b—gered by his best friend, what of that? It's how things are with them, from the time young Osborne joins the regiment - since a night when he asks "Would you really do anything for me, Dob?" and leans in, all glittering charm and nonchalance, to steal a kiss - and Dobbin is lost.
He will give George what he wants, as always, and never tell a soul. Nothing simpler, especially when Dobbin wants it no less.
Yet things are different now, all because of a girl - one he'd only thought of, at first, as being almost good enough for George. No light from Damascus gleams to inform Dobbin that the second great passion of his life has arrived. It's a slow and gentle dawning, the awareness that such things can happen twice, apparently. That, or Dobbin really is cursed.
"I say, Dob! What if Miss Amelia could see us now, eh?"
Dobbin's start of surprise nearly dislocates his spine. Beneath him, George's body shakes with irrepressible laughter.
"Capital thought, what? Let us perch her on that corner of the bed, then, and—"
"Hang it all - why are you... Stop it, George!"
"In her night-dress, naturally, with her hair down, and a sweet little cap—"
"Oh, do stop..."
"But you like it," says George, with a wicked smile over his shoulder. "Do admit, Dob."
Lord forgive him, but he does.
He might, perhaps, have fallen in love with Amelia Sedley even if there were no such being as George Osborne and if she were not George's bride. But a might-have-been is tempered to certainty, to fate, when Dobbin sees his own heart's reflection in Amelia's eyes as she looks at George.
She shares his curse. And George will keep playing his d—d game.
"Suppose we have Emmy watching from the door this time..."
Once again, Dobbin is lost.
II. 1815
Picture Captain George Osborne and Mrs. Osborne in Brighton, on the first night of their honeymoon.
Holding his bride in a tender embrace, George has every reason to feel satisfied with this night's proceedings. Her smile as she rests in his arms pays full tribute to his powers of pleasing. Confident anticipation of this very smile had made him insist on leaving the candles alight, over her modest protests, though in exchange he'd had to refrain from removing her night-dress.
But he can feel a change approaching, and casts about for ways to stave it off. It's always been thus with him: the thrill of the chase, the all-encompassing excitement of pursuit that lets him forget the world and its relentless demands. Lets him lose himself in the quest. And then... it fades away. Every time, once his quarry is caught and he is satisfied.
This is how he is. Why should anything be different now, simply because of a wedding?
Feeling that change coming, he sighs, suddenly wishing very much for Dobbin, for brandy-and-water and some agreeable conversation.
"How very kind Captain Dobbin was today," says Amelia. "We must thank him properly, George."
Surely he hadn't spoken Dob's name aloud... Then he grins, struck by a mischievous thought.
"Must we, my love? Why, what would you have us do? If he were here with us right now in this very room..."
"Oh, George!"
Her startled gasp, her blushes - how amusing they are. His hand moves to the laces of her night-dress, teasing them loose.
"D'you think our dear William would enjoy watching me do this...?"
"Oh, George! How can you... Oh!"
Such a charming little creature, his bride.
Such a pretty manner she has of hanging on his every word, complying with his every wish in a way that is really most gratifying. So like good old Dobbin. What a pair they make, these two who adore him... He wonders, idly, how it would be to have them both at once.
In those weeks before Waterloo, George plays the "William is watching" game over and over again. Captain Dobbin is certainly present in spirit on the night his godson is conceived, even as his physical body lingers in the street outside, smoking a cigar and gazing at the light in George's bedroom window.
George keeps playing the game with Amelia even when his new flirtation absorbs him, ever seeking another layer of diversion to help him forget the world - the impossibility of living on his pay and a paltry two thousand in capital, the insoluble conundrum of what to do if his father never comes round...
The game has barely begun to pall when a French musket ball finds his heart.
III. 1830
Dobbin pauses outside the bedchamber. He has given her enough time to prepare herself; there is no further reason to delay. He will - indeed, he must - go in and do with her what none save George has done, and what Dobbin himself has done with none save George.
There is no book, no script, no possible guide to how a gentleman ought to behave in such circumstances. It cannot even be compared to going into battle. In a way, it's worse.
Dobbin opens the door and walks in.
Amelia sits on the edge of the hotel's high narrow bed. Wide, anxious eyes meet his, below a white lace-trimmed nightcap and above a white night-dress, and he remembers the first time he saw her all in white. It's not the same. Nothing is.
Yet once he moves forward to embrace her, all goes better than he had expected, though he wonders at the force of her insistence that the candles should remain burning.
His hands move almost of their own accord over her body; his thoughts whirl through all the hundreds - nay, thousands - of nights, through the long years, when his dreams had flowed over with variations on this scene of impossible bliss: Amelia in his bed, in his arms.
He doesn't know whether to laugh or weep.
"William," she whispers. "Oh, William... what if... do you think...?"
"What is it?"
"I feel like... Oh, how silly... But what if... what if he is watching us now?"
For a moment Dobbin wishes her words unspoken, because the picture now burrowing into his mind will surely render him incapable of performing this night's task - or bring him to its culmination all too rapidly.
Still and all, it's better than some conversations they might have had.
I knew him first.
I loved him first.
I bore his child.
I gathered his body from the field.
"Should you mind it very much, if he were?"
"No," she answers, glancing up at him with a new boldness. "I think... no. I would not."
She too has changed, perhaps.
"Let him watch, then," says Dobbin, returning to his work with a vigor that draws a squeak of surprise from his wife. "Shall we give him something to see?"
IV.
Imagine him an angel in Heaven, if you will, as poor Emmy did through her years of widowed delusions. Or in a special corner of the Elysian Fields with all the fallen of Waterloo. Or in a special circle of Hell for vain young officers who deceive their lovers, doomed to spend eternity as pet and slave to the shade of Miss Matilda Crawley.
Somewhere beyond the grave, George Osborne sits back with a glass of madeira and a good cigar, and watches the living.
How he laughs.