Vanity Fair
knees at No. 92, bawling through the keyhole supplications to the
person within.
"Go away," said a well-known voice, which made Jos thrill, "I expect
somebody; I expect my grandpapa. He mustn't see you there."
"Angel Englanderinn!" bellowed the kneeling student with the whity-brown
ringlets and the large finger-ring, "do take compassion upon us.
Make an appointment. Dine with me and Fritz at the inn in the park. We
will 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