have roast pheasants and porter, plum-pudding and
French wine. We shall die if you don't."
"That we will," said the young nobleman on the bed;
and this colloquy Jos overheard, though he did not
comprehend it, for the reason that he had never studied
the language in which it was carried on.
"Newmero kattervang dooze, si vous plait," Jos said
in his grandest manner, when he was able to speak.
"Quater fang tooce!" said the student, starting up, and
he bounced into his own room, where he locked the door,
and where Jos heard him laughing with his comrade on
the bed.
The gentleman from Bengal was standing, disconcerted
by this incident, when the door of the 92 opened of
itself and Becky's little head peeped out full of archness
and mischief. She lighted on Jos. "It's you," she said,
coming out. "How I have been waiting for you! Stop!
not yet--in one minute you shall come in." In that instant
she put a rouge-pot, a brandy bottle, and a plate of broken
meat into the bed, gave one smooth to her hair, and
finally let in her visitor.
She had, by way of morning robe, a pink domino, a
trifle faded and soiled, and marked here and there with
pomaturn; but her arms shone out from the loose sleeves
of the dress very white and fair, and it was tied round
her little waist so as not ill to set off the trim little figure
of the wearer. She led Jos by the hand into her garret.
"Come in," she said. "Come and talk to me. Sit yonder
on the chair"; and she gave the civilian's hand a little
squeeze and laughingly placed him upon it. As for
herself, she placed herself on the bed--not on the bottle
and plate, you may be sure--on which Jos might have
reposed, had he chosen that seat; and so there she sat
and talked with her old admirer.
"How little years have changed you," she said with a
look of tender interest. "I should have known you
anywhere. What a comfort it is amongst strangers to see
once more the frank honest face of an old friend!"
The frank honest face, to tell the truth, at this
moment bore any expression but one of openness and
honesty: it was, on the contrary, much perturbed and
puzzled in look. Jos was surveying the queer little apartment
in which he found his old flame. One of her gowns hung
over the bed, another depending from a hook of the door;
her bonnet obscured half the looking-glass, on which,
too, lay the prettiest little pair of bronze boots; a French
novel was on the table by the bedside, with a candle, not
of wax. Becky thought of popping that into the bed too,
but she only put in the little paper night-cap with which
she had put the candle out on going to sleep.
"I should have known you anywhere," she continued;
"a woman never forgets some things. And you were the
first man I ever--I ever saw."
"Was I really?" said Jos. "God bless my soul, you--
you don't say so."
"When I came with your sister from Chiswick, I was
scarcely more than a child," Becky said. "How is that,
dear love? Oh, her husband was a sad wicked man, and
of course it was of me that the poor dear was jealous.
As if I cared about him, heigho! when there was
somebody--but no--don't let us talk of old times"; and she
passed her handkerchief with the tattered lace across
her eyelids.
"Is not this a strange place," she continued, "for a
woman, who has lived in a very different world too, to be
found in? I have had so many griefs and wrongs, Joseph
Sedley; I have been made to suffer so cruelly that I am
almost made mad sometimes. I can't stay still in any
place, but wander about always restless and unhappy.
All my friends have been false to me--all. There is no
such thing as an honest man in the world. I was the truest
wife that ever lived, though I married my husband out of
pique, because somebody else--but never mind that. I
was true, and he trampled upon me and deserted me. I
was the fondest mother. I had but one child, one darling,
one hope, one joy, which I held to my heart with a mother's
affection, which was my life, my prayer, my--my
blessing; and they--they tore it from me--tore it from
me"; and she put her hand to her heart with a passionate
gesture of despair, burying her face for a moment on the
bed.
The brandy-bottle inside clinked up against the plate
which held the cold sausage. Both were moved, no doubt,
by the exhibition of so much grief. Max and Fritz were at
the door, listening with wonder to Mrs. Becky's sobs and
cries. Jos, too, was a good deal frightened and affected at
seeing his old flame in this condition. And she began,
forthwith, to tell her story--a tale so neat, simple, and
artless that it was quite evident from hearing her that if
ever there was a white-robed angel escaped from heaven
to be subject to the infernal machinations and villainy of
fiends here below, that spotless being--that miserable
unsullied martyr, was present on the bed before Jos--on
the bed, sitting on the brandy-bottle.
They had a very long, amicable, and confidential talk
there, in the course of which Jos Sedley was somehow
made aware (but in a manner that did not in the least
scare or offend him) that Becky's heart had first learned
to beat at his enchanting presence; that George Osborne
had certainly paid an unjustifiable court to HER, which
might account for Amelia's jealousy and their little
rupture; but that Becky never gave the least encouragement
to the unfortunate officer, and that she had never ceased
to think about Jos from the very first day she had seen
him, though, of course, her duties as a married woman
were paramount--duties which she had always preserved,
and would, to her dying day, or until the proverbially bad
climate in which Colonel Crawley was living should
release her from a yoke which his cruelty had rendered
odious to her.
Jos went away, convinced that she was the most virtuous,
as she was one of the most fascinating of women,
and revolving in his mind all sorts of benevolent schemes
for her welfare. Her persecutions ought to be ended:
she ought to return to the society of which she was an
ornament. He would see what ought to be done. She
must quit that place and take a quiet lodging. Amelia
must come and see her and befriend her. He would go
and settle about it, and consult with the Major. She wept
tears of heart-felt gratitude as she parted from him, and
pressed his hand as the gallant stout gentleman stooped
down to kiss hers.
So Becky bowed Jos out of her little garret with as
much grace as if it was a palace of which she did the
honours; and that heavy gentleman having disappeared
down the stairs, Max and Fritz came out of their hole,
pipe in mouth, and she amused herself by mimicking Jos
to them as she munched her cold bread and sausage and
took draughts of her favourite brandy-and-water.
Jos walked over to Dobbin's lodgings with great
solemnity and there imparted to him the affecting history
with which he had just been made acquainted, without,
however, mentioning the play business of the night before.
And the two gentlemen were laying their heads together
and consulting as to the best means of being useful to
Mrs. Becky, while she was finishing her interrupted
dejeuner a la fourchette.
How was it that she had come to that little town?
How was it that she had no friends and was wandering
about alone? Little boys at school are taught in their
earliest Latin book that the path of Avernus is very easy
of descent. Let us skip over the interval in the history of
her downward progress. She was not worse now than she
had been in the days of her prosperity--only a little
down on her luck.
As for Mrs. Amelia, she was a woman of such a soft
and foolish disposition that when she heard of anybody
unhappy, her heart straightway melted towards the
sufferer; and as she had never thought or done anything
mortally guilty herself, she had not that abhorrence for
wickedness which distinguishes moralists much more
knowing. If she spoiled everybody who came near her
with kindness and compliments--if she begged pardon
of all her servants for troubling them to answer the bell
--if she apologized to a shopboy who showed her a piece
of silk, or made a curtsey to a street-sweeper with a
complimentary remark upon the elegant state of his crossing
--and she was almost capable of every one of these
follies--the notion that an old acquaintance was miserable
was sure to soften her heart; nor would she hear of
anybody's being deservedly unhappy. A world under such
legislation as hers would not be a very orderly place of
abode; but there are not many women, at least not of the
rulers, who are of her sort. This lady, I believe, would
have abolished all gaols, punishments, handcuffs,
whippings, poverty, sickness, hunger, in the world, and was
such a mean-spirited creature that--we are obliged to
confess it--she could even forget a mortal injury.
When the Major heard from Jos of the sentimental
adventure which had just befallen the latter, he was not,
it must be owned, nearly as much interested as the
gentleman from Bengal. On the contrary, his excitement was
quite the reverse from a pleasurable one; he made use of
a brief but improper expression regarding a poor woman
in distress, saying, in fact, "The little minx, has she
come to light again?" He never had had the slightest liking
for her, but had heartily mistrusted her from the very
first moment when her green eyes had looked at, and
turned away from, his own.
"That little devil brings mischief wherever she goes,"
the Major said disrespectfully. "Who knows what sort of
life she has been leading? And what business has she
here abroad and alone? Don't tell me about persecutors
and enemies; an honest woman always has friends and
never is separated from her family. Why has she left her
husband? He may have been disreputable and wicked, as
you say. He always was. I remember the confounded
blackleg and the way in which he used to cheat and
hoodwink poor George. Wasn't there a scandal about their
separation? I think I heard something," cried out Major
Dobbin, who did not care much about gossip, and whom
Jos tried in vain to convince that Mrs. Becky was in all
respects a most injured and virtuous female.
"Well, well; let's ask Mrs. George," said that arch-
diplomatist of a Major. "Only let us go and consult her.
I suppose you will allow that she is a good judge at any
rate, and knows what is right in such matters."
"Hm! Emmy is very well," said Jos, who did not
happen to be in love with his sister.
"Very well? By Gad, sir, she's the finest lady I ever
met in my life," bounced out the Major. "I say at once,
let us go and ask her if this woman ought to be visited
or not--I will be content with her verdict." Now this
odious, artful rogue of a Major was thinking in his own
mind that he was sure of his case. Emmy, he remembered,
was at one time cruelly and deservedly jealous of
Rebecca, never mentioned her name but with a shrinking
and terror--a jealous woman never forgives, thought
Dobbin: and so the pair went across the street to Mrs.
George's house, where she was contentedly warbling at
a music lesson with Madame Strumpff.
When that lady took her leave, Jos opened the business
with his usual pomp of words. "Amelia, my dear,"
said he, "I have just had the most extraordinary--yes--
God bless my soul! the most extraordinary adventure--
an old friend--yes, a most interesting old friend of
yours, and I may say in old times, has just arrived here,
and I should like you to see her."
"Her!" said Amelia, "who is it? Major Dobbin, if you
please not to break my scissors." The Major was twirling
them round by the little chain from which they sometimes
hung to their lady's waist, and was thereby endangering
his own eye.
It is a woman whom I dislike very much," said the
Major, doggedly, "and whom you have no cause to love."
"It is Rebecca, I'm sure it is Rebecca," Amelia said,
blushing and being very much agitated.
"You are right; you always are," Dobbin answered.
Brussels, Waterloo, old, old times, griefs, pangs,
remembrances, rushed back into Amelia's gentle
heart and caused a cruel agitation there.
"Don't let me see her," Emmy continued. "I couldn't
see her."
"I told you so," Dobbin said to Jos.
"She is very unhappy, and--and that sort of thing,"
Jos urged. "She is very poor and unprotected, and has
been ill--exceedingly ill--and that scoundrel of a
husband has deserted her."
"Ah!" said Amelia
"She hasn't a friend in the world," Jos went on, not
undexterously, "and she said she thought she might trust in
you. She's so miserable, Emmy. She has been almost mad
with grief. Her story quite affected me--'pon my word
and honour, it did--never was such a cruel persecution
borne so angelically, I may say. Her family has been
most cruel to her."
"Poor creature!" Amelia said.
"And if she can get no friend, she says she thinks she'll
die," Jos proceeded in a low tremulous voice. "God bless
my soul! do you know that she tried to kill herself? She
carries laudanum with her--I saw the bottle in her room
--such a miserable little room--at a third-rate house,
the Elephant, up in the roof at the top of all. I went
there."
This did not seem to affect Emmy. She even smiled a
little. Perhaps she figured Jos to herself panting up the
stair.
"She's beside herself with grief," he resumed. "The
