Vanity Fair (114 page)

As Jos came creaking and puffing up the final stairs, and was
speechless when he got to the landing, and began to wipe his face
and then to look for No. 92, the room where he was directed to seek
for the person he wanted, the door of the opposite chamber, No. 90,
was open, and a student, in jack-boots and a dirty schlafrock, was
lying on the bed smoking a long pipe; whilst another student in long
yellow hair and a braided coat, exceeding smart and dirty too, was
actually on his 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 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."