Vanity Fair (119 page)

"What can they mean?" asked Georgy, who did not like these
gentlemen. "I heard the Major say to Mrs. Crawley yesterday, 'No,
no, Becky, you shan't keep the old buck to yourself. We must have
the bones in, or, dammy, I'll split.' What could the Major mean,
Mamma?"

"Major! don't call him Major!" Emmy said. "I'm sure I can't tell
what he meant." His presence and that of his friend inspired the
little lady with intolerable terror and aversion. They paid her
tipsy compliments; they leered at her over the dinner-table. And
the Captain made her advances that filled her with sickening dismay,
nor would she ever see him unless she had George by her side.

Rebecca, to do her justice, never would let either of these men
remain alone with Amelia; the Major was disengaged too, and swore he
would be the winner of her. A couple of ruffians were fighting for
this innocent creature, gambling for her at her own table, and
though she was not aware of the rascals' designs upon her, yet she
felt a horror and uneasiness in their presence and longed to fly.

She besought, she entreated Jos to go. Not he. He was slow of
movement, tied to his Doctor, and perhaps to some other leading-
strings. At least Becky was not anxious to go to England.

At last she took a great resolution—made the great plunge. She
wrote off a letter to a friend whom she had on the other side of the
water, a letter about which she did not speak a word to anybody,
which she carried herself to the post under her shawl; nor was any
remark made about it, only that she looked very much flushed and
agitated when Georgy met her, and she kissed him, and hung over him
a great deal that night. She did not come out of her room after her
return from her walk. Becky thought it was Major Loder and the
Captain who frightened her.

"She mustn't stop here," Becky reasoned with herself. "She must go
away, the silly little fool. She is still whimpering after that
gaby of a husband—dead (and served right!) these fifteen years.
She shan't marry either of these men. It's too bad of Loder. No;
she shall marry the bamboo cane, I'll settle it this very night."

So Becky took a cup of tea to Amelia in her private apartment and
found that lady in the company of her miniatures, and in a most
melancholy and nervous condition. She laid down the cup of tea.

"Thank you," said Amelia.

"Listen to me, Amelia," said Becky, marching up and down the room
before the other and surveying her with a sort of contemptuous
kindness. "I want to talk to you. You must go away from here and
from the impertinences of these men. I won't have you harassed by
them: and they will insult you if you stay. I tell you they are
rascals: men fit to send to the hulks. Never mind how I know them.
I know everybody. Jos can't protect you; he is too weak and wants a
protector himself. You are no more fit to live in the world than a
baby in arms. You must marry, or you and your precious boy will go
to ruin. You must have a husband, you fool; and one of the best
gentlemen I ever saw has offered you a hundred times, and you have
rejected him, you silly, heartless, ungrateful little creature!"

"I tried—I tried my best, indeed I did, Rebecca," said Amelia
deprecatingly, "but I couldn't forget—"; and she finished the
sentence by looking up at the portrait.

"Couldn't forget HIM!" cried out Becky, "that selfish humbug, that
low-bred cockney dandy, that padded booby, who had neither wit, nor
manners, nor heart, and was no more to be compared to your friend
with the bamboo cane than you are to Queen Elizabeth. Why, the man
was weary of you, and would have jilted you, but that Dobbin forced
him to keep his word. He owned it to me. He never cared for you.
He used to sneer about you to me, time after time, and made love to
me the week after he married you."

"It's false! It's false! Rebecca," cried out Amelia, starting up.

"Look there, you fool," Becky said, still with provoking good
humour, and taking a little paper out of her belt, she opened it and
flung it into Emmy's lap. "You know his handwriting. He wrote that
to me—wanted me to run away with him—gave it me under your nose,
the day before he was shot—and served him right!" Becky repeated.

Emmy did not hear her; she was looking at the letter. It was that
which George had put into the bouquet and given to Becky on the
night of the Duchess of Richmond's ball. It was as she said: the
foolish young man had asked her to fly.

Emmy's head sank down, and for almost the last time in which she
shall be called upon to weep in this history, she commenced that
work. Her head fell to her bosom, and her hands went up to her
eyes; and there for a while, she gave way to her emotions, as Becky
stood on and regarded her. Who shall analyse those tears and say
whether they were sweet or bitter? Was she most grieved because the
idol of her life was tumbled down and shivered at her feet, or
indignant that her love had been so despised, or glad because the
barrier was removed which modesty had placed between her and a new,
a real affection? "There is nothing to forbid me now," she thought.
"I may love him with all my heart now. Oh, I will, I will, if he
will but let me and forgive me." I believe it was this feeling
rushed over all the others which agitated that gentle little bosom.

Indeed, she did not cry so much as Becky expected—the other soothed
and kissed her—a rare mark of sympathy with Mrs. Becky. She
treated Emmy like a child and patted her head. "And now let us get
pen and ink and write to him to come this minute," she said.

"I—I wrote to him this morning," Emmy said, blushing exceedingly.
Becky screamed with laughter—"Un biglietto," she sang out with
Rosina, "eccolo qua!"—the whole house echoed with her shrill
singing.

Two mornings after this little scene, although the day was rainy and
gusty, and Amelia had had an exceedingly wakeful night, listening to
the wind roaring, and pitying all travellers by land and by water,
yet she got up early and insisted upon taking a walk on the Dike
with Georgy; and there she paced as the rain beat into her face, and
she looked out westward across the dark sea line and over the
swollen billows which came tumbling and frothing to the shore.
Neither spoke much, except now and then, when the boy said a few
words to his timid companion, indicative of sympathy and protection.

"I hope he won't cross in such weather," Emmy said.

"I bet ten to one he does," the boy answered. "Look, Mother,
there's the smoke of the steamer." It was that signal, sure enough.

But though the steamer was under way, he might not be on board; he
might not have got the letter; he might not choose to come. A
hundred fears poured one over the other into the little heart, as
fast as the waves on to the Dike.

The boat followed the smoke into sight. Georgy had a dandy
telescope and got the vessel under view in the most skilful manner.
And he made appropriate nautical comments upon the manner of the
approach of the steamer as she came nearer and nearer, dipping and
rising in the water. The signal of an English steamer in sight went
fluttering up to the mast on the pier. I daresay Mrs. Amelia's
heart was in a similar flutter.

Emmy tried to look through the telescope over George's shoulder, but
she could make nothing of it. She only saw a black eclipse bobbing
up and down before her eyes.

George took the glass again and raked the vessel. "How she does
pitch!" he said. "There goes a wave slap over her bows. There's
only two people on deck besides the steersman. There's a man lying
down, and a—chap in a—cloak with a—Hooray!—it's Dob, by Jingo!"
He clapped to the telescope and flung his arms round his mother. As
for that lady, let us say what she did in the words of a favourite
poet—"Dakruoen gelasasa." She was sure it was William. It could be
no other. What she had said about hoping that he would not come was
all hypocrisy. Of course he would come; what could he do else but
come? She knew he would come.

The ship came swiftly nearer and nearer. As they went in to meet
her at the landing-place at the quay, Emmy's knees trembled so that
she scarcely could run. She would have liked to kneel down and say
her prayers of thanks there. Oh, she thought, she would be all her
life saying them!

It was such a bad day that as the vessel came alongside of the quay
there were no idlers abroad, scarcely even a commissioner on the
look out for the few passengers in the steamer. That young
scapegrace George had fled too, and as the gentleman in the old
cloak lined with red stuff stepped on to the shore, there was
scarcely any one present to see what took place, which was briefly
this:

A lady in a dripping white bonnet and shawl, with her two little
hands out before her, went up to him, and in the next minute she had
altogether disappeared under the folds of the old cloak, and was
kissing one of his hands with all her might; whilst the other, I
suppose, was engaged in holding her to his heart (which her head
just about reached) and in preventing her from tumbling down. She
was murmuring something about—forgive—dear William—dear, dear,
dearest friend—kiss, kiss, kiss, and so forth—and in fact went on
under the cloak in an absurd manner.

When Emmy emerged from it, she still kept tight hold of one of
William's hands, and looked up in his face. It was full of sadness
and tender love and pity. She understood its reproach and hung down
her head.

"It was time you sent for me, dear Amelia," he said.

"You will never go again, William?"

"No, never," he answered, and pressed the dear little soul once more
to his heart.

As they issued out of the custom-house precincts, Georgy broke out
on them, with his telescope up to his eye, and a loud laugh of
welcome; he danced round the couple and performed many facetious
antics as he led them up to the house. Jos wasn't up yet; Becky not
visible (though she looked at them through the blinds). Georgy ran
off to see about breakfast. Emmy, whose shawl and bonnet were off
in the passage in the hands of Mrs. Payne, now went to undo the
clasp of William's cloak, and—we will, if you please, go with
George, and look after breakfast for the Colonel. The vessel is in
port. He has got the prize he has been trying for all his life. The
bird has come in at last. There it is with its head on his
shoulder, billing and cooing close up to his heart, with soft
outstretched fluttering wings. This is what he has asked for every
day and hour for eighteen years. This is what he pined after. Here
it is—the summit, the end—the last page of the third volume.
Good-bye, Colonel—God bless you, honest William!—Farewell, dear
Amelia—Grow green again, tender little parasite, round the rugged
old oak to which you cling!

Perhaps it was compunction towards the kind and simple creature, who
had been the first in life to defend her, perhaps it was a dislike
to all such sentimental scenes—but Rebecca, satisfied with her part
in the transaction, never presented herself before Colonel Dobbin
and the lady whom he married. "Particular business," she said, took
her to Bruges, whither she went, and only Georgy and his uncle were
present at the marriage ceremony. When it was over, and Georgy had
rejoined his parents, Mrs. Becky returned (just for a few days) to
comfort the solitary bachelor, Joseph Sedley. He preferred a
continental life, he said, and declined to join in housekeeping with
his sister and her husband.

Emmy was very glad in her heart to think that she had written to her
husband before she read or knew of that letter of George's. "I knew
it all along," William said; "but could I use that weapon against
the poor fellow's memory? It was that which made me suffer so when
you—"

"Never speak of that day again," Emmy cried out, so contrite and
humble that William turned off the conversation by his account of
Glorvina and dear old Peggy O'Dowd, with whom he was sitting when
the letter of recall reached him. "If you hadn't sent for me," he
added with a laugh, "who knows what Glorvina's name might be now?"

At present it is Glorvina Posky (now Mrs. Major Posky); she took him
on the death of his first wife, having resolved never to marry out
of the regiment. Lady O'Dowd is also so attached to it that, she
says, if anything were to happen to Mick, bedad she'd come back and
marry some of 'em. But the Major-General is quite well and lives in
great splendour at O'Dowdstown, with a pack of beagles, and (with
the exception of perhaps their neighbour, Hoggarty of Castle
Hoggarty) he is the first man of his county. Her Ladyship still
dances jigs, and insisted on standing up with the Master of the
Horse at the Lord Lieutenant's last ball. Both she and Glorvina
declared that Dobbin had used the latter SHEAMFULLY, but Posky
falling in, Glorvina was consoled, and a beautiful turban from Paris
appeased the wrath of Lady O'Dowd.

When Colonel Dobbin quitted the service, which he did immediately
after his marriage, he rented a pretty little country place in
Hampshire, not far from Queen's Crawley, where, after the passing of
the Reform Bill, Sir Pitt and his family constantly resided now.
All idea of a Peerage was out of the question, the Baronet's two
seats in Parliament being lost. He was both out of pocket and out
of spirits by that catastrophe, failed in his health, and prophesied
the speedy ruin of the Empire.

Lady Jane and Mrs. Dobbin became great friends—there was a
perpetual crossing of pony-chaises between the Hall and the
Evergreens, the Colonel's place (rented of his friend Major Ponto,
who was abroad with his family). Her Ladyship was godmother to Mrs.
Dobbin's child, which bore her name, and was christened by the Rev.
James Crawley, who succeeded his father in the living: and a pretty
close friendship subsisted between the two lads, George and Rawdon,
who hunted and shot together in the vacations, were both entered of
the same college at Cambridge, and quarrelled with each other about
Lady Jane's daughter, with whom they were both, of course, in love.
A match between George and that young lady was long a favourite
scheme of both the matrons, though I have heard that Miss Crawley
herself inclined towards her cousin.