Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray [free ebook reader for iphone TXT] 📗

after him and stopped him on the threshold of the Elephant to make him pay for the beer which he had not consumed. Emmy laughed: she called him a naughty man, who wanted to run away in debt, and, in fact, made some jokes suitable to the occasion and the small-beer. She was in high spirits and good humour, and tripped across the marketplace very briskly. She wanted to see Jos that instant. The Major laughed at the impetuous affection Mrs. Amelia exhibited; for, in truth, it was not very often that she wanted her brother “that instant.”

They found the civilian in his saloon on the first-floor; he had been pacing the room, and biting his nails, and looking over the marketplace towards the Elephant a hundred times at least during the past hour whilst Emmy was closeted with her friend in the garret and the Major was beating the tattoo on the sloppy tables of the public room below, and he was, on his side too, very anxious to see Mrs. Osborne.

“Well?” said he.

“The poor dear creature, how she has suffered!” Emmy said.

“God bless my soul, yes,” Jos said, wagging his head, so that his cheeks quivered like jellies.

“She may have Payne’s room, who can go upstairs,” Emmy continued. Payne was a staid English maid and personal attendant upon Mrs. Osborne, to whom the courier, as in duty bound, paid court, and whom Georgy used to “lark” dreadfully with accounts of German robbers and ghosts. She passed her time chiefly in grumbling, in ordering about her mistress, and in stating her intention to return the next morning to her native village of Clapham. “She may have Payne’s room,” Emmy said.

“Why, you don’t mean to say you are going to have that woman into the house?” bounced out the Major, jumping up.

“Of course we are,” said Amelia in the most innocent way in the world. “Don’t be angry and break the furniture, Major Dobbin. Of course we are going to have her here.”

“Of course, my dear,” Jos said.

“The poor creature, after all her sufferings,” Emmy continued; “her horrid banker broken and run away; her husband⁠—wicked wretch⁠—having deserted her and taken her child away from her” (here she doubled her two little fists and held them in a most menacing attitude before her, so that the Major was charmed to see such a dauntless virago) “the poor dear thing! quite alone and absolutely forced to give lessons in singing to get her bread⁠—and not have her here!”

“Take lessons, my dear Mrs. George,” cried the Major, “but don’t have her in the house. I implore you don’t.”

“Pooh,” said Jos.

“You who are always good and kind⁠—always used to be at any rate⁠—I’m astonished at you, Major William,” Amelia cried. “Why, what is the moment to help her but when she is so miserable? Now is the time to be of service to her. The oldest friend I ever had, and not⁠—”

“She was not always your friend, Amelia,” the Major said, for he was quite angry. This allusion was too much for Emmy, who, looking the Major almost fiercely in the face, said, “For shame, Major Dobbin!” and after having fired this shot, she walked out of the room with a most majestic air and shut her own door briskly on herself and her outraged dignity.

“To allude to that!” she said, when the door was closed. “Oh, it was cruel of him to remind me of it,” and she looked up at George’s picture, which hung there as usual, with the portrait of the boy underneath. “It was cruel of him. If I had forgiven it, ought he to have spoken? No. And it is from his own lips that I know how wicked and groundless my jealousy was; and that you were pure⁠—oh, yes, you were pure, my saint in heaven!”

She paced the room, trembling and indignant. She went and leaned on the chest of drawers over which the picture hung, and gazed and gazed at it. Its eyes seemed to look down on her with a reproach that deepened as she looked.

The early dear, dear memories of that brief prime of love rushed back upon her. The wound which years had scarcely cicatrized bled afresh, and oh, how bitterly! She could not bear the reproaches of the husband there before her. It couldn’t be. Never, never.

Poor Dobbin; poor old William! That unlucky word had undone the work of many a year⁠—the long laborious edifice of a life of love and constancy⁠—raised too upon what secret and hidden foundations, wherein lay buried passions, uncounted struggles, unknown sacrifices⁠—a little word was spoken, and down fell the fair palace of hope⁠—one word, and away flew the bird which he had been trying all his life to lure!

William, though he saw by Amelia’s looks that a great crisis had come, nevertheless continued to implore Sedley, in the most energetic terms, to beware of Rebecca; and he eagerly, almost frantically, adjured Jos not to receive her. He besought Mr. Sedley to inquire at least regarding her; told him how he had heard that she was in the company of gamblers and people of ill repute; pointed out what evil she had done in former days, how she and Crawley had misled poor George into ruin, how she was now parted from her husband, by her own confession, and, perhaps, for good reason. What a dangerous companion she would be for his sister, who knew nothing of the affairs of the world! William implored Jos, with all the eloquence which he could bring to bear, and a great deal more energy than this quiet gentleman was ordinarily in the habit of showing, to keep Rebecca out of his household.

Had he been less violent, or more dexterous, he might have succeeded in his supplications to Jos; but the civilian was not a little jealous of the airs of superiority which the Major constantly exhibited towards him, as he fancied (indeed, he had imparted his opinions to Mr. Kirsch, the courier, whose bills Major Dobbin checked