"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
connections, 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 butterbrods 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 strepitus 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.