admirer. He didn't go to sleep after dinner, as his
custom was in the much less lively society of Amelia. He
drove out with Becky in his open carriage. He asked little
parties and invented festivities to do her honour.
Tapeworm, the Charge d'Affaires, who had abused her
so cruelly, came to dine with Jos, and then came every
day to pay his respects to Becky. Poor Emmy, who was
never very talkative, and more glum and silent than ever
after Dobbin's departure, was quite forgotten when this
superior genius made her appearance. The French
Minister was as much charmed with her as his English rival.
The German ladies, never particularly squeamish as
regards morals, especially in English people, were delighted
with the cleverness and wit of Mrs. Osborne's charming
friend, and though she did not ask to go to Court,
yet the most august and Transparent Personages there
heard of her fascinations and were quite curious to know
her. When it became known that she was noble, of an
ancient English family, that her husband was a Colonel
of the Guard, Excellenz and Governor of an island, only
separated from his lady by one of those trifling differences
which are of little account in a country where
Werther is still read and the Wahlverwandtschaften of
Goethe is considered an edifying moral book, nobody
thought of refusing to receive her in the very highest
society of the little Duchy; and the ladies were even more
ready to call her du and to swear eternal friendship for
her than they had been to bestow the same inestimable
benefits upon Amelia. Love and Liberty are interpreted
by those simple Germans in a way which honest folks in
Yorkshire and Somersetshire little understand, and a lady
might, in some philosophic and civilized towns, be
divorced ever so many times from her respective husbands
and keep her character in society. Jos's house never was
so pleasant since he had a house of his own as Rebecca
caused it to be. She sang, she played, she laughed, she
talked in two or three languages, she brought everybody
to the house, and she made Jos believe that it was his
own great social talents and wit which gathered the
society of the place round about him.
As for Emmy, who found herself not in the least
mistress of her own house, except when the bills were
to be paid, Becky soon discovered the way to soothe and
please her. She talked to her perpetually about Major
Dobbin sent about his business, and made no scruple
of declaring her admiration for that excellent, high-
minded gentleman, and of telling Emmy that she had
behaved most cruelly regarding him. Emmy defended her
conduct and showed that it was dictated only by the
purest religious principles; that a woman once, &c., and to
such an angel as him whom she had had the good
fortune to marry, was married forever; but she had no
objection to hear the Major praised as much as ever
Becky chose to praise him, and indeed, brought the
conversation round to the Dobbin subject a score of times
every day.
Means were easily found to win the favour of Georgy
and the servants. Amelia's maid, it has been said, was
heart and soul in favour of the generous Major. Having at
first disliked Becky for being the means of dismissing
him from the presence of her mistress, she was reconciled
to Mrs. Crawley subsequently, because the latter
became William's most ardent admirer and champion. And
in those nightly conclaves in which the two ladies
indulged after their parties, and while Miss Payne was
"brushing their 'airs," as she called the yellow locks of
the one and the soft brown tresses of the other, this
girl always put in her word for that dear good gentleman
Major Dobbin. Her advocacy did not make Amelia
angry any more than Rebecca's admiration of him. She
made George write to him constantly and persisted in
sending Mamma's kind love in a postscript. And as she
looked at her husband's portrait of nights, it no longer
reproached her--perhaps she reproached it, now
William was gone.
Emmy was not very happy after her heroic sacrifice.
She was very distraite, nervous, silent, and ill to please.
The family had never known her so peevish. She grew
pale and ill. She used to try to sing certain songs
("Einsam bin ich nicht alleine," was one of them, that tender
love-song of Weber's which~ in old-fashioned days,
young ladies, and when you were scarcely born, showed
that those who lived before you knew too how to love
and to sing) certain songs, I say, to which the Major
was partial; and as she warbled them in the twilight in the
drawing-room, she would break off in the midst of the
song, and walk into her neighbouring apartment, and
there, no doubt, take refuge in the miniature of her
husband.
Some books still subsisted, after Dobbin's departure,
with his name written in them; a German dictionary, for
instance, with "William Dobbin, --th Reg.," in the fly-leaf;
a guide-book with his initials; and one or two other
volumes which belonged to the Major. Emmy cleared these
away and put them on the drawers, where she placed her
work-box, her desk, her Bible, and prayer-book, under
the pictures of the two Georges. And the Major, on going
away, having left his gloves behind him, it is a fact that
Georgy, rummaging his mother's desk some time
afterwards, found the gloves neatly folded up and put away in
what they call the secret-drawers of the desk.
Not caring for society, and moping there a great deal,
Emmy's chief pleasure in the summer evenings was to
take long walks with Georgy (during which Rebecca
was left to the society of Mr. Joseph), and then the
mother and son used to talk about the Major in a way
which even made the boy smile. She told him that she
thought Major William was the best man in all the world
--the gentlest and the kindest, the bravest and the
humblest. Over and over again she told him how they owed
everything which they possessed in the world to that
kind friend's benevolent care of them; how he had
befriended them all through their poverty and misfortunes;
watched over them when nobody cared for them; how all
his comrades admired him though he never spoke of his
own gallant actions; how Georgy's father trusted him
beyond all other men, and had been constantly befriended
by the good William. "Why, when your papa was a little
boy," she said, "he often told me that it was William
who defended him against a tyrant at the school where
they were; and their friendship never ceased from that
day until the last, when your dear father fell."
"Did Dobbin kill the man who killed Papa?" Georgy
said. "I'm sure he did, or he would if he could have
caught him, wouldn't he, Mother? When I'm in the Army,
won't I hate the French?--that's all."
In such colloquies the mother and the child passed a
great deal of their time together. The artless woman had
made a confidant of the boy. He was as much William's
friend as everybody else who knew him well.
By the way, Mrs. Becky, not to be behind hand in
sentiment, had got a miniature too hanging up in her
room, to the surprise and amusement of most people,
and the delight of the original, who was no other than
our friend Jos. On her first coming to favour the Sedleys
with a visit, the little woman, who had arrived with a
remarkably small shabby kit, was perhaps ashamed of the
meanness of her trunks and bandboxes, and often spoke
with great respect about her baggage left behind at
Leipzig, which she must have from that city. When a traveller
talks to you perpetually about the splendour of his
luggage, which he does not happen to have with him, my
son, beware of that traveller! He is, ten to one, an
impostor.
Neither Jos nor Emmy knew this important maxim. It
seemed to them of no consequence whether Becky had a
quantity of very fine clothes in invisible trunks; but
as her present supply was exceedingly shabby, Emmy
supplied her out of her own stores, or took her to the
best milliner in the town and there fitted her out. It was
no more torn collars now, I promise you, and faded silks
trailing off at the shoulder. Becky changed her habits
with her situation in life--the rouge-pot was suspended
--another excitement to which she had accustomed
herself was also put aside, or at least only indulged in in
privacy, as when she was prevailed on by Jos of a
summer evening, Emmy and the boy being absent on their
walks, to take a little spirit-and-water. But if she did not
indulge--the courier did: that rascal Kirsch could not
be kept from the bottle, nor could he tell how much
he took when he applied to it. He was sometimes
surprised himself at the way in which Mr. Sedley's Cognac
diminished. Well, well, this is a painful subject. Becky
did not very likely indulge so much as she used before
she entered a decorous family.
At last the much-bragged-about boxes arrived from
Leipzig; three of them not by any means large or splendid;
nor did Becky appear to take out any sort of dresses
or ornaments from the boxes when they did arrive. But
out of one, which contained a mass of her papers (it
was that very box which Rawdon Crawley had
ransacked in his furious hunt for Becky's concealed money),
she took a picture with great glee, which she pinned up
in her room, and to which she introduced Jos. It was
the portrait of a gentleman in pencil, his face having the
advantage of being painted up in pink. He was riding
on an elephant away from some cocoa-nut trees and a
pagoda: it was an Eastern scene.
"God bless my soul, it is my portrait," Jos cried out.
It was he indeed, blooming in youth and beauty, in a
nankeen jacket of the cut of 1804. It was the old picture
that used to hang up in Russell Square.
"I bought it," said Becky in a voice trembling with
emotion; "I went to see if I could be of any use to my kind
friends. I have never parted with that picture--I never
will."
"Won't you?" Jos cried with a look of unutterable
rapture and satisfaction. "Did you really now value it
for my sake?"
"You know I did, well enough," said Becky; "but
why speak--why think--why look back! It is too late
now!"
That evening's conversation was delicious for Jos.
Emmy only came in to go to bed very tired and unwell.
Jos and his fair guest had a charming tete-a-tete, and
his sister could hear, as she lay awake in her adjoining
chamber, Rebecca singing over to Jos the old songs of
1815. He did not sleep, for a wonder, that night, any
more than Amelia.
It was June, and, by consequence, high season in
London; Jos, who read the incomparable Galignani (the
exile's best friend) through every day, used to favour the
ladies with extracts from his paper during their
breakfast. Every week in this paper there is a full account of
military movements, in which Jos, as a man who had
seen service, was especially interested. On one occasion
he read out--"Arrival of the --th regiment. Gravesend,
June 20.--The Ramchunder, East Indiaman, came into the
river this morning, having on board 14 officers, and 132
rank and file of this gallant corps. They have been
absent from England fourteen years, having been embarked
the year after Waterloo, in which glorious conflict they
took an active part, and having subsequently distinguished
themselves in the Burmese war. The veteran colonel, Sir
Michael O'Dowd, K.C.B., with his lady and sister, landed
here yesterday, with Captains Posky, Stubble, Macraw,
Malony; Lieutenants Smith, Jones, Thompson, F. Thomson;
Ensigns Hicks and Grady; the band on the pier
playing the national anthem, and the crowd loudly cheering
the gallant veterans as they went into Wayte's hotel,
where a sumptuous banquet was provided for the defenders
of Old England. During the repast, which we need not
say was served up in Wayte's best style, the cheering
continued so enthusiastically that Lady O'Dowd and the
Colonel came forward to the balcony and drank the
healths of their fellow-countrymen in a bumper of Wayte's
best claret."
On a second occasion Jos read a brief announcement
--Major Dobbin had joined the --th regiment at Chatham;
and subsequently he promulgated accounts of the
presentations at the Drawing-room of Colonel Sir
Michael O'Dowd, K.C.B., Lady O'Dowd (by Mrs. Malloy
Malony of Ballymalony), and Miss Glorvina O'Dowd (by
Lady O'Dowd). Almost directly after this, Dobbin's name
appeared among the Lieutenant-Colonels: for old Marshal
Tiptoff had died during the passage of the --th from
Madras, and the Sovereign was pleased to advance
Colonel Sir Michael O'Dowd to the rank of Major-General on
his return to England, with an intimation that he should
be Colonel of the distinguished regiment which he had so
long commanded.
Amelia had been made aware of some of these
movements. The correspondence between George and his
guardian had not ceased by any means: William had even
written once or twice to her since his departure, but in a
manner so unconstrainedly cold that the poor woman felt
now in her turn that she had lost her power over him
and that, as he had said, he was free. He had left her,
and she was wretched. The memory of his almost countless
services, and lofty and affectionate regard, now
presented itself to her and rebuked her day and night. She
brooded over those recollections according to her wont,
saw the purity and beauty of the affection with which she
had trifled, and reproached herself for having flung away
such a treasure.
It was gone indeed. William had spent it all out. He
loved her no more, he thought, as he had loved her.
He never could again. That sort of regard, which he had
