Vanity Fair (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

by William Makepeace Thackeray

  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.vi 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 shop-boy who showed her a piece of silk, or made a curtsy 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, dis respectfully. ‘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.‘

  ‘H‘m! 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 an gelically, 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 agonies that woman has endured are quite frightful to hear of. She had a little boy of the same age as Georgy.‘

  ‘Yes, yes, I think I remember,‘ Emmy remarked. ‘Well?‘

  ‘The most beautiful child ever seen,‘ Jos said, who was very fat, and easily moved, and had been touched by the story Becky told; ‘a perfect angel, who adored his mother. The ruffians tore him shrieking out of her arms, and have never allowed him to see her.‘

  ‘Dear Joseph,‘ Emmy cried out, starting up at once, ‘let us go and see her this minute.‘ And she ran into her adjoining bedchamber, tied on her bonnet in a flutter, came out with her shawl on her arm, and ordered Dobbin to follow.

  He went and put her shawl-it was a white Cashmere, consigned to her by the major himself from India—over her shoulders. He saw there was nothing for it but to obey; and she put her hand into his arm, and they went away.

  ‘It is number 92, up four pair of stairs,‘ Jos said, perhaps not very willing to ascend the steps again; but he placed himself in the window of his drawing-room, which commands the place on which the ‘Elephant‘ stands, and saw the pair marching through the market.

  It was as well that Becky saw them too from her garret; for she and the two students were chattering and laughing there; they had been joking about the appearance of Becky‘s grandpapa-whose arrival and departure they had witnessed—but she had time to dismiss them, and have her little room clear before the landlord of the ‘Elephant‘, who knew that Mrs. Osborne was a great favourite at the Serene Court, and respected her accordingly, led the way up the stairs to the roof-story, encouraging miladi and Herr Major as they achieved the ascent.

  ‘Gracious lady, gracious lady!‘ said the landlord, knocking at Becky‘s door; he had called her madame the day before, and was by no means courteous to her.

  ‘Who is it?‘ Becky said, putting out her head, and she gave a little scream. There stood Emmy in a tremble, and Dobbin, the tall major with his cane.

  He stood still watching, and very much interested at the scene; but Emmy sprang forward with open arms towards Rebe
cca, and forgave her at that moment and embraced her and kissed her with all her heart. Ah, poor wretch, when was your lip pressed before by such pure kisses?

  CHAPTER LXVI

  Amantium Iraevj

  Frankness and kindness like Amelia‘s were likely to touch even such a hardened little reprobate as Becky. She returned Emmy‘s caresses and kind speeches with something very like gratitude, and an emotion which, if it was not lasting, for a moment was almost genuine. That was a lucky stroke of hers about the child ‘torn from her arms shrieking‘. It was by that harrowing misfortune that Becky had won her friend back, and it was one of the very first points, we may be certain, upon which our poor simple little Emmy began to talk to her new-found acquaintance.

  ‘And so they took your darling child from you,‘ our simpleton cried out. ‘Oh, Rebecca, my poor dear suffering friend, I know what it is to lose a boy, and to feel for those who have lost one. But please Heaven yours will be restored to you, as a merciful, merciful Providence has brought me back mine.‘

  ‘The child, my child? Oh, yes, my agonies were frightful,‘ Becky owned, not perhaps without a twinge of conscience. It jarred upon her, to be obliged to commence instantly to tell lies in reply to so much confidence and simplicity. But that is the misfortune of beginning with this kind of forgery. When one fib becomes due as it were, you must forge another to take up the old acceptance; and so the stock of your lies in circulation inevitably multiplies, and the danger of detection increases every day.

  ‘My agonies,‘ Becky continued, ‘were terrible (I hope she won‘t sit down on the bottle) when they took him away from me; I thought I should die; but I fortunately had a brain fever, during which my doctor gave me up, and—and I recovered, and—and here I am, poor and friendless.‘

  ‘How old is he?‘ Emmy asked.

  ‘Eleven,‘ said Becky.

  ‘Eleven!‘ cried the other. ‘Why, he was born the same year with Georgy, who is—‘

  ‘I know, I know,‘ Becky cried out, who had in fact quite forgotten all about little Rawdon‘s age. ‘Grief has made me forget so many things, dearest Amelia. I am very much changed: half wild sometimes. He was eleven when they took him away from me. Bless his sweet face; I have never seen it again.‘

  ‘Was he fair or dark?‘ went on that absurd little Emmy. ‘Show me his hair.‘

  Becky almost laughed at her simplicity. ‘Not to-day, love,—some other time, when my trunks arrive from Leipsic, whence I came to this place, and a little drawing of him, which I made in happy days.‘

  ‘Poor Becky, poor Becky!‘ said Emmy. ‘How thankful, how thankful I ought to be!‘ (though I doubt whether that practice of piety inculcated upon us by our womankind in early youth, namely, to be thankful because we are better off than somebody else, be a very rational religious exercise;) and then she began to think as usual, how her son was the handsomest, the best, and the cleverest boy in the whole world.

  ‘You will see my Georgy,‘ was the best thing Emmy could think of to console Becky. If anything could make her comfortable that would.

  And so the two women continued talking for an hour or more, during which Becky had the opportunity of giving her new friend a full and complete version of her private history. She showed how her marriage with Rawdon Crawley had always been viewed by the family with feelings of the utmost hostility; how her sister-in-law (an artful woman) had poisoned her husband‘s mind against her; how he had formed odious connexions, which had estranged his affections from her; how she had borne everything—poverty, neglect, coldness from the being whom she most loved—and all for the sake of her child; how, finally, and by the most flagrant outrage, she had been driven into demanding a separation from her husband, when the wretch did not scruple to ask that she should sacrifice her own fair fame so that he might procure advancement through the means of a very great and powerful but unprincipled man—the Marquis of Steyne, indeed. The atrocious monster!

  This part of her eventful history Becky gave with the utmost feminine delicacy, and the most indignant virtue. Forced to fly her husband‘s roof by this insult, the coward had pursued his revenge, by taking her child from her. And thus Becky said she was a wanderer, poor, unprotected, friendless, and wretched.

  Emmy received this story, which was told at some length, as those persons who are acquainted with her character may imagine that she would. She quivered with indignation at the account of the conduct of the miserable Rawdon and the unprincipled Steyne. Her eyes made notes of admiration for every one of the sentences in which Becky described the persecutions of her aristocratic relatives, and the falling away of her husband. (Becky did not abuse him. She spoke rather in sorrow than in anger. She had loved him only too fondly: and was he not the father of her boy?) And as for the separation scene from the child, while Becky was reciting it, Emmy retired altogether behind her pocket-handkerchief, so that the consummate little tragedian must have been charmed to see the effect which her performance produced on her audience.

  Whilst the ladies were carrying on their conversation, Amelia‘s constant escort, the major (who, of course, did not wish to interrupt their conference, and found himself rather tired of creaking about the narrow stair passage of which the roof brushed the nap from his hat), descended to the ground-floor of the house and into the great room common to all the frequenters of the ‘Elephant‘, out of which the stair led. This apartment is always in a fume of smoke, and liberally sprinkled with beer. On a dirty table stand scores of corresponding brass candlesticks with tallow candles for the lodgers, whose keys hang up in rows over the candles. Emmy had passed blushing through the room anon, where all sorts of people were collected; Tyrolese glove-sellers and Danubian linen-merchants, with their packs; students recruiting themselves with Butterbrodsvk and meat; idlers, playing cards or dominoes, on the sloppy, beery tables; tumblers refreshing during the cessation of their performances;—in a word, all the fumum and strepitusvl of a German inn in fair-time. The waiter brought the major a mug of beer, as a matter of course; and he took out a cigar, and amused himself with that pernicious vegetable and a newspaper until his charge should come down to claim him.

  Max and Fritz came presently downstairs, their caps on one side, their spurs jingling, their pipes splendid with coats-of-arms and full-blown tassels, and they hung up the key of No. 90 on the board, and called for the ration of Butterbrod and beer. The pair sat down by the major, and fell into a conversation of which he could not help hearing somewhat. It was mainly about Fuchs and Philistervm and duels and drinking-bouts at the neighbouring University of Schoppenhausen, from which renowned seat of learning they had just come in the Eilwagenvn with Becky, as it appeared, by their side, and in order to be present at the bridal fetes at Pumpernickel.

  ‘The little Engländerin seems to be en bays de gonnaissance,‘vo said Max, who knew the French language, to Fritz, his comrade. ‘After the fat grandfather went away, there came a pretty little compatriot. I heard them chattering and whimpering together in the little woman‘s chamber.‘

  ‘We must take the tickets for her concert,‘ Fritz said. ‘Hast thou any money, Max?‘

  ‘Bah,‘ said the other,‘the concert is a concert in nubibus.vp Hans said that she advertised one at Leipzig: and the Burschenvq took many tickets. But she went off without singing. She said in the coach yesterday that her pianist had fallen ill at Dresden. She cannot sing, it is my belief: her voice is as cracked as thine, 0 thou: beer-soaking Renowner!‘

  ‘It is cracked; I hear her trying out of her window a schrecklichvr English ballad, called “De Rose upon de Balgony”.‘

  ‘Saufen and Singenvs go not together,‘ observed Fritz with the red nose, who evidently preferred the former amusement. ‘No, thou shalt take none of her tickets. She won money at the trente-et-quarante last night. I saw her: she made a little English boy play for her. We will spend thy money there or at the theatre, or we will treat her to French wine or cognac in the Aurelius-garden, but the tickets we will not buy. What sayest thou? Ye
t another mug of beer?‘ and one and another successively having buried their blond whiskers in the mawkish draught, curled them and swaggered off into the fair.

  The major, who had seen the key of number 90 put up on its hook, and had heard the conversation of the two young university bloods, was not at a loss to understand that their talk related to Becky. ‘The little devil is at her old tricks,‘ he thought, and he smiled as he recalled old days, when he had witnessed the desperate flirtation with Jos, and the ludicrous end of that adventure. He and George had often laughed over it subsequently, and until a few weeks after George‘s marriage, when he also was caught in the little Circe‘s toils,vt and had an understanding with her which his comrade certainly suspected, but preferred to ignore. William was too much hurt or ashamed to ask to fathom that disgraceful mystery, although once, and evidently with remorse on his mind, George had alluded to it. It was on the morning of Waterloo as the young men stood together in front of their line, surveying the black masses of Frenchmen who crowned the opposite heights, and as the rain was coming down, ‘I have been mixing in a foolish intrigue with a woman,‘ George said. ‘I am glad we were marched away. If I drop, I hope Emmy will never know of that business. I wish to God it had never been begun!‘ And William was pleased to think, and had more than once soothed poor George‘s widow with the narrative, that Osborne, after quitting his wife, and after the action of Quatre Bras, on the first day, spoke gravely and affectionately to his comrade of his father and his wife. On these facts, too, William had insisted very strongly in his conversations with the elder Osborne: and had thus been the means of reconciling the old gentleman to his son‘s memory, just at the close of the elder man‘s life.