Vanity Fair - Page 558/573

"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."

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.