Vanity Fair - Page 489/573

He remembered George pacing up and down the room, and biting his nails,

and swearing that the Governor must come round, and that if he didn't,

he didn't care a straw, on the day before he was married. He could

fancy him walking in, banging the door of Dobbin's room, and his own

hard by-"You ain't got young," John said, calmly surveying his friend of former

days.

Dobbin laughed. "Ten years and a fever don't make a man young, John,"

he said. "It is you that are always young--no, you are always old."

"What became of Captain Osborne's widow?" John said. "Fine young

fellow that. Lord, how he used to spend his money. He never came back

after that day he was marched from here. He owes me three pound at

this minute. Look here, I have it in my book. 'April 10, 1815,

Captain Osborne: '3 pounds.' I wonder whether his father would pay

me," and so saying, John of the Slaughters' pulled out the very morocco

pocket-book in which he had noted his loan to the Captain, upon a

greasy faded page still extant, with many other scrawled memoranda

regarding the bygone frequenters of the house.

Having inducted his customer into the room, John retired with perfect

calmness; and Major Dobbin, not without a blush and a grin at his own

absurdity, chose out of his kit the very smartest and most becoming

civil costume he possessed, and laughed at his own tanned face and grey

hair, as he surveyed them in the dreary little toilet-glass on the

dressing-table.

"I'm glad old John didn't forget me," he thought. "She'll know me, too,

I hope." And he sallied out of the inn, bending his steps once more in

the direction of Brompton.

Every minute incident of his last meeting with Amelia was present to

the constant man's mind as he walked towards her house. The arch and

the Achilles statue were up since he had last been in Piccadilly; a

hundred changes had occurred which his eye and mind vaguely noted. He

began to tremble as he walked up the lane from Brompton, that

well-remembered lane leading to the street where she lived. Was she

going to be married or not? If he were to meet her with the little

boy--Good God, what should he do? He saw a woman coming to him with a

child of five years old--was that she? He began to shake at the mere

possibility. When he came up to the row of houses, at last, where she

lived, and to the gate, he caught hold of it and paused. He might have

heard the thumping of his own heart. "May God Almighty bless her,

whatever has happened," he thought to himself. "Psha! she may be gone

from here," he said and went in through the gate.