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Becky was always affable, easy, and good-natured--and
with men especially.
Numbers of people were going abroad as usual at the
end of the season, and Becky had plenty of opportunities
of finding out by the behaviour of her acquaintances of
the great London world the opinion of "society" as
regarded her conduct. One day it was Lady Partlet and her
daughters whom Becky confronted as she was walking
modestly on Boulogne pier, the cliffs of Albion shining
in the distance across the deep blue sea. Lady Partlet
marshalled all her daughters round her with a sweep of
her parasol and retreated from the pier, darting savage
glances at poor little Becky who stood alone there.
On another day the packet came in. It had been
blowing fresh, and it always suited Becky's humour to
see the droll woe-begone faces of the people as they
emerged from the boat. Lady Slingstone happened to be
on board this day. Her ladyship had been exceedingly ill
in her carriage, and was greatly exhausted and scarcely
fit to walk up the plank from the ship to the pier. But
all her energies rallied the instant she saw Becky smiling
roguishly under a pink bonnet, and giving her a
glance of scorn such as would have shrivelled up most
women, she walked into the Custom House quite
unsupported. Becky only laughed: but I don't think she liked
it. She felt she was alone, quite alone, and the far-off
shining cliffs of England were impassable to her.
The behaviour of the men had undergone too I don't
know what change. Grinstone showed his teeth and
laughed in her face with a familiarity that was not pleasant.
Little Bob Suckling, who was cap in hand to her
three months before, and would walk a mile in the rain
to see for her carriage in the line at Gaunt House, was
talking to Fitzoof of the Guards (Lord Heehaw's son)
one day upon the jetty, as Becky took her walk there.
Little Bobby nodded to her over his shoulder, without
moving his hat, and continued his conversation with the
heir of Heehaw. Tom Raikes tried to walk into her
sitting-room at the inn with a cigar in his mouth, but she
closed the door upon him, and would have locked it,
only that his fingers were inside. She began to feel that
she was very lonely indeed. "If HE'D been here," she said,
"those cowards would never have dared to insult me."
She thought about "him" with great sadness and
perhaps longing--about his honest, stupid, constant kindness
and fidelity; his never-ceasing obedience; his good
humour; his bravery and courage. Very likely she cried,
for she was particularly lively, and had put on a little
extra rouge, when she came down to dinner.
She rouged regularly now; and--and her maid got
Cognac for her besides that which was charged in the
hotel bill.
Perhaps the insults of the men were not, however, so
intolerable to her as the sympathy of certain women.
Mrs. Crackenbury and Mrs. Washington White passed
through Boulogne on their way to Switzerland. ~The party
were protected by Colonel Horner, young Beaumoris, and
of course old Crackenbury, and Mrs. White's little girl.)
THEY did not avoid her. They giggled, cackled, tattled,
condoled, consoled, and patronized her until they drove
her almost wild with rage. To be patronized by THEM!
she thought, as they went away simpering after kissing
her. And she heard Beaumoris's laugh ringing on the
stair and knew quite well how to interpret his hilarity.
It was after this visit that Becky, who had paid her
weekly bills, Becky who had made herself agreeable to
everybody in the house, who smiled at the landlady,
called the waiters "monsieur," and paid the chambermaids
in politeness and apologies, what far more than
compensated for a little niggardliness in point of money
(of which Becky never was free), that Becky, we say,
received a notice to quit from the landlord, who had
been told by some one that she was quite an unfit
person to have at his hotel, where English ladies would not
sit down with her. And she was forced to fly into lodgings
of which the dulness and solitude were most wearisome
to her.
Still she held up, in spite of these rebuffs, and tried to
make a character for herself and conquer scandal. She
went to church very regularly and sang louder than
anybody there. She took up the cause of the widows of the
shipwrecked fishermen, and gave work and drawings for
the Quashyboo Mission; she subscribed to the Assembly
and WOULDN'T waltz. In a word, she did everything that
was respectable, and that is why we dwell upon this
part of her career with more fondness than upon
subsequent parts of her history, which are not so pleasant.
She saw people avoiding her, and still laboriously smiled
upon them; you never could suppose from her
countenance what pangs of humiliation she might be
enduring inwardly.
Her history was after all a mystery. Parties were
divided about her. Some people who took the trouble to
busy themselves in the matter said that she was the
criminal, whilst others vowed that she was as innocent
as a lamb and that her odious husband was in fault.
She won over a good many by bursting into tears
about her boy and exhibiting the most frantic grief
when his name was mentioned, or she saw anybody like
him. She gained good Mrs. Alderney's heart in that way,
who was rather the Queen of British Boulogne and gave
the most dinners and balls of all the residents there, by
weeping when Master Alderney came from Dr. Swishtail's
academy to pass his holidays with his mother. "He and
her Rawdon were of the same age, and so like," Becky
said in a voice choking with agony; whereas there was
five years' difference between the boys' ages, and no
more likeness between them than between my respected
reader and his humble servant. Wenham, when he was
going abroad, on his way to Kissingen to join Lord
Steyne, enlightened Mrs. Alderney on this point and told
her how he was much more able to describe little
Rawdon than his mamma, who notoriously hated him and
never saw him; how he was thirteen years old, while
little Alderney was but nine, fair, while the other darling
was dark--in a word, caused the lady in question to
repent of her good humour.
Whenever Becky made a little circle for herself with
incredible toils and labour, somebody came and swept it
down rudely, and she had all her work to begin over
again. It was very hard; very hard; lonely and
disheartening.
There was Mrs. Newbright, who took her up for some
time, attracted by the sweetness of her singing at church
and by her proper views upon serious subjects, concerning
which in former days, at Queen's Crawley, Mrs.
Becky had had a good deal of instruction. Well, she not
only took tracts, but she read them. She worked flannel
petticoats for the Quashyboos--cotton night-caps for the
Cocoanut Indians--painted handscreens for the
conversion of the Pope and the Jews--sat under Mr. Rowls
on Wednesdays, Mr. Huggleton on Thursdays, attended
two Sunday services at church, besides Mr. Bawler, the
Darbyite, in the evening, and all in vain. Mrs. Newbright
had occasion to correspond with the Countess of Southdown
about the Warmingpan Fund for the Fiji
Islanders (for the management of which admirable
charity both these ladies formed part of a female committee),
and having mentioned her "sweet friend," Mrs. Rawdon
Crawley, the Dowager Countess wrote back such a
letter regarding Becky, with such particulars, hints, facts,
falsehoods, and general comminations, that intimacy
between Mrs. Newbright and Mrs. Crawley ceased forthwith,
and all the serious world of Tours, where this misfortune
took place, immediately parted company with the
reprobate. Those who know the English Colonies abroad
know that we carry with us us our pride, pills, prejudices,
Harvey-sauces, cayenne-peppers, and other Lares,
making a little Britain wherever we settle down.
From one colony to another Becky fled uneasily. From
Boulogne to Dieppe, from Dieppe to Caen, from Caen
to Tours--trying with all her might to be respectable,
and alas! always found out some day or other and
pecked out of the cage by the real daws.
Mrs. Hook Eagles took her up at one of these places--
a woman without a blemish in her character and a house
in Portman Square. She was staying at the hotel at Dieppe,
whither Becky fled, and they made each other's acquaintance
first at sea, where they were swimming together,
and subsequently at the table d'hote of the hotel. Mrs
Eagles had heard--who indeed had not?--some of the
scandal of the Steyne affair; but after a conversation
with Becky, she pronounced that Mrs. Crawley was an
angel, her husband a ruffian, Lord Steyne an
unprincipled wretch, as everybody knew, and the whole case
against Mrs. Crawley an infamous and wicked conspiracy
of that rascal Wenham. "If you were a man of
any spirit, Mr. Eagles, you would box the wretch's ears
the next time you see him at the Club," she said to her
husband. But Eagles was only a quiet old gentleman,
husband to Mrs. Eagles, with a taste for geology, and not tall
enough to reach anybody's ears.
The Eagles then patronized Mrs. Rawdon, took her to
live with her at her own house at Paris, quarrelled with
the ambassador's wife because she would not receive her
protegee, and did all that lay in woman's power to keep
Becky straight in the paths of virtue and good repute.
Becky was very respectable and orderly at first, but
the life of humdrum virtue grew utterly tedious to her
before long. It was the same routine every day, the same
dulness and comfort, the same drive over the same
stupid Bois de Boulogne, the same company of an
evening, the same Blair's Sermon of a Sunday night--the
same opera always being acted over and over again;
Becky was dying of weariness, when, luckily for her,
young Mr. Eagles came from Cambridge, and his mother,
seeing the impression which her little friend made upon
him, straightway gave Becky warning.
Then she tried keeping house with a female friend;
then the double menage began to quarrel and get into
debt. Then she determined upon a boarding-house existence
and lived for some time at that famous mansion
kept by Madame de Saint Amour, in the Rue Royale, at
Paris, where she began exercising her graces and
fascinations upon the shabby dandies and fly-blown beauties
who frequented her landlady's salons. Becky loved
society and, indeed, could no more exist without it than an
opium-eater without his dram, and she was happy
enough at the period of her boarding-house life. "The
women here are as amusing as those in May Fair," she
told an old London friend who met her, "only, their
dresses are not quite so fresh. The men wear cleaned
gloves, and are sad rogues, certainly, but they are not
worse than Jack This and Tom That. The mistress of the
house is a little vulgar, but I don't think she is so vulgar
as Lady --" and here she named the name of a
great leader of fashion that I would die rather than
reveal. In fact, when you saw Madame de Saint Amour's
rooms lighted up of a night, men with plaques and
cordons at the ecarte tables, and the women at a little
distance, you might fancy yourself for a while in good
society, and that Madame was a real Countess. Many
people did so fancy, and Becky was for a while one of the
most dashing ladies of the Countess's salons.
But it is probable that her old creditors of 1815 found
her out and caused her to leave Paris, for the poor little
woman was forced to fly from the city rather suddenly,
and went thence to Brussels.
How well she remembered the place! She grinned as
she looked up at the little entresol which she had
occupied, and thought of the Bareacres family, bawling
for horses and flight, as their carriage stood in the
porte-cochere of the hotel. She went to Waterloo and to
Laeken, where George Osborne's monument much
struck her. She made a little sketch of it. "That poor
Cupid!" she said; "how dreadfully he was in love with
me, and what a fool he was! I wonder whether little
Emmy is alive. It was a good little creature; and that
fat brother of hers. I have his funny fat picture still
among my papers. They were kind simple people."
At Brussels Becky arrived, recommended by Madame
de Saint Amour to her friend, Madame la Comtesse de
Borodino, widow of Napoleon's General, the famous
Count de Borodino, who was left with no resource by the
deceased hero but that of a table d'hote and an ecarte
table. Second-rate dandies and roues, widow-ladies who
always have a lawsuit, and very simple English folks, who
fancy they see "Continental society" at these houses, put
down their money, or ate their meals, at Madame de
Borodino's tables. The gallant young fellows treated the
company round to champagne at the table d'hote, rode
out with the women, or hired horses on country excursions,
clubbed money to take boxes at the play or the
opera, betted over the fair shoulders of the ladies at the
ecarte tables, and wrote home to their parents in
Devonshire about their felicitous introduction to foreign
society.
Here, as at Paris, Becky was a boarding-house queen,
and ruled in select pensions. She never refused the
champagne, or the bouquets, or the drives into the country,
or the private boxes; but what she preferred was the
ecarte at night,--and she played audaciously. First she
played only for a little, then for five-franc pieces, then for
Napoleons, then for notes: then she would not be able
to pay her month's pension: then she borrowed from
the young gentlemen: then she got into cash again and
bullied Madame de Borodino, whom she had coaxed and
wheedled before: then she was playing for ten sous at a
time, and in a dire state of poverty: then her quarter's
allowance would come in, and she would pay off Madame
de Borodino's score and would once more take the
cards against Monsieur de Rossignol, or the Chevalier de
Raff.
When Becky left Brussels, the sad truth is that she
owed three months' pension to Madame de Borodino, of
which fact, and of the gambling, and of the drinking, and
of the going down on her knees to the Reverend Mr.
Muff, Ministre Anglican, and borrowing money of him,
and of her coaxing and flirting with Milor Noodle, son of
Sir Noodle, pupil of the Rev. Mr. Muff, whom she used
to take into her private room, and of whom she won
large sums at ecarte--of which fact, I say, and of a
hundred of her other knaveries, the Countess de
Borodino informs every English person who stops at her
establishment, and announces that Madame Rawdon was
no better than a vipere.
So our little wanderer went about setting up her tent
in various cities of Europe, as restless as Ulysses or
Bampfylde Moore Carew. Her taste for disrespectability
grew more and more remarkable. She became a perfect
Bohemian ere long, herding with people whom it would
make your hair stand on end to meet.
There is no town of any mark in Europe but it has its
little colony of English raffs--men whose names Mr.
Hemp the officer reads out periodically at the Sheriffs'
Court--young gentlemen of very good family often, only
that the latter disowns them; frequenters of billiard-
rooms and estaminets, patrons of foreign races and
gaming-tables. They people the debtors' prisons--they
drink and swagger--they fight and brawl--they run away
without paying--they have duels with French and German
officers--they cheat Mr. Spooney at ecarte--they get
the money and drive off to Baden in magnificent britzkas
--they try their infallible martingale and lurk about the
tables with empty pockets, shabby bullies, penniless
bucks, until they can swindle a Jew banker with a sham
bill of exchange, or find another Mr. Spooney to rob.
The alternations of splendour and misery which these
people undergo are very queer to view. Their life must
be one of great excitement. Becky--must it be owned?--
took to this life, and took to it not unkindly. She went
about from town to town among these Bohemians. The
lucky Mrs. Rawdon was known at every play-table in
Germany. She and Madame de Cruchecassee kept house at
Florence together. It is said she was ordered out of
Munich, and my friend Mr. Frederick Pigeon avers that it
was at her house at Lausanne that he was hocussed at
supper and lost eight hundred pounds to Major Loder
and the Honourable Mr. Deuceace. We are bound, you
see, to give some account of Becky's biography, but of
this part, the less, perhaps, that is said the better.
They say that, when Mrs. Crawley was particularly
down on her luck, she gave concerts and lessons in music
here and there. There was a Madame de Raudon, who
certainly had a matinee musicale at Wildbad,
accompanied by Herr Spoff, premier pianist to the Hospodar of
Wallachia, and my little friend Mr. Eaves, who knew
everybody and had travelled everywhere, always used to
declare that he was at Strasburg in the year 1830, when a
certain Madame Rebecque made her appearance in the
opera of the Dame Blanche, giving occasion to a furious
row in the theatre there. She was hissed off the stage by
the audience, partly from her own incompetency, but
chiefly from the ill-advised sympathy of some persons in
the parquet, (where the officers of the garrison had their
admissions); and Eaves was certain that the unfortunate
debutante in question was no other than Mrs.
Rawdon Crawley.
She was, in fact, no better than a vagabond upon this
earth. When she got her money she gambled; when she
had gambled it she was put to shifts to live; who knows
how or by what means she succeeded? It is said that she
was once seen at St. Petersburg, but was summarily
dismissed from that capital by the police, so that there
cannot be any possibility of truth in the report that she was
a Russian spy at Toplitz and Vienna afterwards. I have
even been informed that at Paris she discovered a
relation of her own, no less a person than her maternal
grandmother, who was not by any means a
Montmorenci, but a hideous old box-opener at a theatre on
the Boulevards. The meeting between them, of which
other persons, as it is hinted elsewhere, seem to have
been acquainted, must have been a very affecting
interview. The present historian can give no certain details
regarding the event.
It happened at Rome once that Mrs. de Rawdon's half-
year's salary had just been paid into the principal
banker's there, and, as everybody who had a balance of
above five hundred scudi was invited to the balls which
this prince of merchants gave during the winter, Becky
had the honour of a card, and appeared at one of the
Prince and Princess Polonia's splendid evening entertainments.
The Princess was of the family of Pompili, lineally
descended from the second king of Rome, and Egeria
of the house of Olympus, while the Prince's grandfather,
Alessandro Polonia, sold wash-balls, essences,
tobacco, and pocket-handkerchiefs, ran errands for
gentlemen, and lent money in a small way. All the great
company in Rome thronged to his saloons--Princes,
Dukes, Ambassadors, artists, fiddlers, monsignori, young
bears with their leaders--every rank and condition of
man. His halls blazed with light and magnificence; were
resplendent with gilt frames (containing pictures), and
dubious antiques; and the enormous gilt crown and arms
of the princely owner, a gold mushroom on a crimson
field (the colour of the pocket-handkerchiefs which he
sold), and the silver fountain of the Pompili family shone
all over the roof, doors, and panels of the house, and
over the grand velvet baldaquins prepared to receive
Popes and Emperors.
So Becky, who had arrived in the diligence from
Florence, and was lodged at an inn in a very modest way,
got a card for Prince Polonia's entertainment, and her
maid dressed her with unusual care, and she went to this
fine ball leaning on the arm of Major Loder, with whom
she happened to be travelling at the time--(the same
man who shot Prince Ravoli at Naples the next year, and
was caned by Sir John Buckskin for carrying four kings
in his hat besides those which he used in playing at
ecarte )--and this pair went into the rooms together,
and Becky saw a number of old faces which she
remembered in happier days, when she was not innocent,
but not found out. Major Loder knew a great number
of foreigners, keen-looking whiskered men with dirty
striped ribbons in their buttonholes, and a very small
display of linen; but his own countrymen, it might be
remarked, eschewed the Major. Becky, too, knew some
ladies here and there--French widows, dubious Italian
countesses, whose husbands had treated them ill--faugh
--what shall we say, we who have moved among
some of the finest company of Vanity Fair, of this refuse
and sediment of rascals? If we play, let it be with clean
cards, and not with this dirty pack. But every man who
has formed one of the innumerable army of travellers
has seen these marauding irregulars hanging on, like
Nym and Pistol, to the main force, wearing the king's
colours and boasting of his commission, but pillaging
for themselves, and occasionally gibbeted by the roadside.
Well, she was hanging on the arm of Major Loder,
and they went through the rooms together, and drank a
great quantity of champagne at the buffet, where the
people, and especially the Major's irregular corps,
struggled furiously for refreshments, of which when the
pair had had enough, they pushed on until they reached
the Duchess's own pink velvet saloon, at the end of the
suite of apartments (where the statue of the Venus is,
and the great Venice looking-glasses, framed in silver),
and where the princely family were entertaining their
most distinguished guests at a round table at supper. It
was just such a little select banquet as that of which
Becky recollected that she had partaken at Lord Steyne's
--and there he sat at Polonia's table, and she saw him.
The scar cut by the diamond on his white, bald,
shining forehead made a burning red mark; his red whiskers
were dyed of a purple hue, which made his pale face
look still paler. He wore his collar and orders, his blue
ribbon and garter. He was a greater Prince than any
there, though there was a reigning Duke and a Royal
Highness, with their princesses, and near his Lordship
was seated the beautiful Countess of Belladonna, nee
de Glandier, whose husband (the Count Paolo della
Belladonna), so well known for his brilliant entomological
collections, had been long absent on a mission to the
Emperor of Morocco.
When Becky beheld that familiar and illustrious face,
how vulgar all of a sudden did Major Loder appear to
her, and how that odious Captain Rook did smell of
tobacco! In one instant she reassumed her fine-ladyship
and tried to look and feel as if she were in May Fair
once more. "That woman looks stupid and ill-humoured,"
she thought; "I am sure she can't amuse him. No, he must
be bored by her--he never was by me." A hundred such
touching hopes, fears, and memories palpitated in her
little heart, as she looked with her brightest eyes (the
rouge which she wore up to her eyelids made them
twinkle) towards the great nobleman. Of a Star and Garter
night Lord Steyne used also to put on his grandest
manner and to look and speak like a great prince, as he was.
Becky admired him smiling sumptuously, easy, lofty, and
stately. Ah, bon Dieu, what a pleasant companion he
was, what a brilliant wit, what a rich fund of talk, what
a grand manner!--and she had exchanged this for Major
Loder, reeking of cigars and brandy-and-water, and
Captain Rook with his horsejockey jokes and prize-ring
slang, and their like. "I wonder whether he will know
me," she thought. Lord Steyne was talking and laughing
with a great and illustrious lady at his side, when he
looked up and saw Becky.
She was all over in a flutter as their eyes met, and she
put on the very best smile she could muster, and dropped
him a little, timid, imploring curtsey. He stared aghast
at her for a minute, as Macbeth might on beholding
Banquo's sudden appearance at his ball-supper, and remained
looking at her with open mouth, when that horrid Major
Loder pulled her away.
"Come away into the supper-room, Mrs. R.," was that
gentleman's remark: "seeing these nobs grubbing away
has made me peckish too. Let's go and try the old
governor's champagne." Becky thought the Major had had
a great deal too much already.
The day after she went to walk on the Pincian Hill--
the Hyde Park of the Roman idlers--possibly in hopes to
have another sight of Lord Steyne. But she met another
acquaintance there: it was Mr. Fiche, his lordship's
confidential man, who came up nodding to her rather
familiarly and putting a finger to his hat. "I knew that Madame
was here," he said; "I followed her from her hotel. I have
some advice to give Madame."
"From the Marquis of Steyne?" Becky asked, resuming
as much of her dignity as she could muster, and not
a little agitated by hope and expectation.
"No," said the valet; "it is from me. Rome is very
unwholesome."
"Not at this season, Monsieur Fiche--not till after
Easter."
"I tell Madame it is unwholesome now. There is always
malaria for some people. That cursed marsh wind kills
many at all seasons. Look, Madame Crawley, you were
always bon enfant, and I have an interest in you, parole
d'honneur. Be warned. Go away from Rome, I tell you--
or you will be ill and die."
Becky laughed, though in rage and fury. "What!
assassinate poor little me?" she said. "How romantic! Does
my lord carry bravos for couriers, and stilettos in the
fourgons? Bah! I will stay, if but to plague him. I have
those who will defend me whilst I am here."
It was Monsieur Fiche's turn to laugh now. "Defend
you," he said, "and who? The Major, the Captain, any
one of those gambling men whom Madame sees would
take her life for a hundred louis. We know things about
Major Loder (he is no more a Major than I am my Lord
the Marquis) which would send him to the galleys or
worse. We know everything and have friends everywhere.
We know whom you saw at Paris, and what relations you
found there. Yes, Madame may stare, but we do. How
was it that no minister on the Continent would receive
Madame? She has offended somebody: who never
forgives--whose rage redoubled when he saw you. He was
like a madman last night when he came home. Madame
de Belladonna made him a scene about you and fired off
in one of her furies."
"Oh, it was Madame de Belladonna, was it?" Becky
said, relieved a little, for the information she had just got
had scared her.
"No--she does not matter--she is always jealous. I
tell you it was Monseigneur. You did wrong to show
yourself to him. And if you stay here you will repent it. Mark
my words. Go. Here is my lord's carriage"--and seizing
Becky's arm, he rushed down an alley of the garden as
Lord Steyne's barouche, blazing with heraldic devices,
came whirling along the avenue, borne by the almost
priceless horses, and bearing Madame de Belladonna
lolling on the cushions, dark, sulky, and blooming, a King
Charles in her lap, a white parasol swaying over her
head, and old Steyne stretched at her side with a livid
face and ghastly eyes. Hate, or anger, or desire caused
them to brighten now and then still, but ordinarily, they
gave no light, and seemed tired of looking out on a world
of which almost all the pleasure and all the best beauty
had palled upon the worn-out wicked old man.
"Monseigneur has never recovered the shock of that
night, never," Monsieur Fiche whispered to Mrs. Crawley
as the carriage flashed by, and she peeped out at it
from behind the shrubs that hid her. "That was a
consolation at any rate," Becky thought.
Whether my lord really had murderous intentions
towards Mrs. Becky as Monsieur Fiche said (since
Monseigneur's death he has returned to his native country,
where he lives much respected, and has purchased from
his Prince the title of Baron Ficci), and the factotum
objected to have to do with assassination; or whether he
simply had a commission to frighten Mrs. Crawley out of
a city where his Lordship proposed to pass the winter,
and the sight of her would be eminently disagreeable to
the great nobleman, is a point which has never been
ascertained: but the threat had its effect upon the little
woman, and she sought no more to intrude herself upon
the presence of her old patron.
Everybody knows the melancholy end of that
nobleman, which befell at Naples two months after the French
Revolution of 1830; when the Most Honourable George
Gustavus, Marquis of Steyne, Earl of Gaunt and of Gaunt
Castle, in the Peerage of Ireland, Viscount Hellborough,
Baron Pitchley and Grillsby, a Knight of the Most Noble
Order of the Garter, of the Golden Fleece of Spain, of
the Russian Order of Saint Nicholas of the First Class, of
the Turkish Order of the Crescent, First Lord of the
Powder Closet and Groom of the Back Stairs, Colonel of
the Gaunt or Regent's Own Regiment of Militia, a Trustee
of the British Museum, an Elder Brother of the Trinity
House, a Governor of the White Friars, and D.C.L.--
died after a series of fits brought on, as the papers said,
by the shock occasioned to his lordship's sensibilities by
the downfall of the ancient French monarchy.
An eloquent catalogue appeared in a weekly print,
describing his virtues, his magnificence, his talents, and
his good actions. His sensibility, his attachment to the
illustrious House of Bourbon, with which he claimed an
alliance, were such that he could not survive the
misfortunes of his august kinsmen. His body was buried at
Naples, and his heart--that heart which always beat with
every generous and noble emotion was brought back to
Castle Gaunt in a silver urn. "In him," Mr. Wagg said,
"the poor and the Fine Arts have lost a beneficent patron,
society one of its most brilliant ornaments, and England
one of her loftiest patriots and statesmen," &c., &c.
His will was a good deal disputed, and an attempt was
made to force from Madame de Belladonna the
celebrated jewel called the "Jew's-eye" diamond, which his
lordship always wore on his forefinger, and which it was
said that she removed from it after his lamented demise.
But his confidential friend and attendant, Monsieur Fiche
proved that the ring had been presented to the said
Madame de Belladonna two days before the Marquis's
death, as were the bank-notes, jewels, Neapolitan and
French bonds, &c., found in his lordship's secretaire and
claimed by his heirs from that injured woman.
CHAPTER LXV
Full of Business and Pleasure
The day after the meeting at the play-table, Jos had
himself arrayed with unusual care and splendour, and
without thinking it necessary to say a word to any
member of his family regarding the occurrences of the previous
night, or asking for their company in his walk, he sallied
forth at an early hour, and was presently seen making
inquiries at the door of the Elephant Hotel. In consequence
of the fetes the house was full of company, the
tables in the street were already surrounded by persons
smoking and drinking the national small-beer, the public
rooms were in a cloud of smoke, and Mr. Jos having, in
his pompous way, and with his clumsy German, made
inquiries for the person of whom he was in search, was
directed to the very top of the house, above the first-floor
rooms where some travelling pedlars had lived, and were
exhibiting their jewellery and brocades; above the second-
floor apartments occupied by the etat major of the
gambling firm; above the third-floor rooms, tenanted by the
band of renowned Bohemian vaulters and tumblers; and
so on to the little cabins of the roof, where, among
students, bagmen, small tradesmen, and country-folks come
in for the festival, Becky had found a little nest--as dirty
a little refuge as ever beauty lay hid in.
Becky liked the life. She was at home with everybody
in the place, pedlars, punters, tumblers, students and all.
She was of a wild, roving nature, inherited from father
and mother, who were both Bohemians, by taste and
circumstance; if a lord was not by, she would talk to his
courier with the greatest pleasure; the din, the stir, the
drink, the smoke, the tattle of the Hebrew pedlars, the
solemn, braggart ways of the poor tumblers, the sournois
talk of the gambling-table officials, the songs and swagger
of the students, and the general buzz and hum of
the place had pleased and tickled the little woman, even
when her luck was down and she had not wherewithal to
pay her bill. How pleasant was all the bustle to her now
that her purse was full of the money which little Georgy
had won for her the night before!
As Jos came creaking and puffing up the final stairs,
and was speechless when he got to the landing, and began
to wipe his face and then to look for No. 92, the room
where he was directed to seek for the person he wanted,
the door of the opposite chamber, No. 90, was open,
and a student, in jack-boots and a dirty schlafrock, was
lying on the bed smoking a long pipe; whilst another
student in long yellow hair and a braided coat, exceeding
smart and dirty too, was actually on his knees at No. 92,
bawling through the keyhole supplications to the person
within.
"Go away," said a well-known voice, which made Jos
thrill, "I expect somebody; I expect my grandpapa. He
mustn't see you there."
"Angel Englanderinn!" bellowed the kneeling student
with the whity-brown ringlets and the large finger-ring,
"do take compassion upon us. Make an appointment.
Dine with me and Fritz at the inn in the park. We will
have roast pheasants and porter, plum-pudding and
French wine. We shall die if you don't."
"That we will," said the young nobleman on the bed;
and this colloquy Jos overheard, though he did not
comprehend it, for the reason that he had never studied
the language in which it was carried on.
"Newmero kattervang dooze, si vous plait," Jos said
in his grandest manner, when he was able to speak.
"Quater fang tooce!" said the student, starting up, and
he bounced into his own room, where he locked the door,
and where Jos heard him laughing with his comrade on
the bed.
The gentleman from Bengal was standing, disconcerted
by this incident, when the door of the 92 opened of
itself and Becky's little head peeped out full of archness
and mischief. She lighted on Jos. "It's you," she said,
coming out. "How I have been waiting for you! Stop!
not yet--in one minute you shall come in." In that instant
she put a rouge-pot, a brandy bottle, and a plate of broken
meat into the bed, gave one smooth to her hair, and
finally let in her visitor.
She had, by way of morning robe, a pink domino, a
trifle faded and soiled, and marked here and there with
pomaturn; but her arms shone out from the loose sleeves
of the dress very white and fair, and it was tied round
her little waist so as not ill to set off the trim little figure
of the wearer. She led Jos by the hand into her garret.
"Come in," she said. "Come and talk to me. Sit yonder
on the chair"; and she gave the civilian's hand a little
squeeze and laughingly placed him upon it. As for
herself, she placed herself on the bed--not on the bottle
and plate, you may be sure--on which Jos might have
reposed, had he chosen that seat; and so there she sat
and talked with her old admirer.
"How little years have changed you," she said with a
look of tender interest. "I should have known you
anywhere. What a comfort it is amongst strangers to see
once more the frank honest face of an old friend!"
The frank honest face, to tell the truth, at this
moment bore any expression but one of openness and
honesty: it was, on the contrary, much perturbed and
puzzled in look. Jos was surveying the queer little apartment
in which he found his old flame. One of her gowns hung
over the bed, another depending from a hook of the door;
her bonnet obscured half the looking-glass, on which,
too, lay the prettiest little pair of bronze boots; a French
novel was on the table by the bedside, with a candle, not
of wax. Becky thought of popping that into the bed too,
but she only put in the little paper night-cap with which
she had put the candle out on going to sleep.
"I should have known you anywhere," she continued;
"a woman never forgets some things. And you were the
first man I ever--I ever saw."
"Was I really?" said Jos. "God bless my soul, you--
you don't say so."
"When I came with your sister from Chiswick, I was
scarcely more than a child," Becky said. "How is that,
dear love? Oh, her husband was a sad wicked man, and
of course it was of me that the poor dear was jealous.
As if I cared about him, heigho! when there was
somebody--but no--don't let us talk of old times"; and she
passed her handkerchief with the tattered lace across
her eyelids.
"Is not this a strange place," she continued, "for a
woman, who has lived in a very different world too, to be
found in? I have had so many griefs and wrongs, Joseph
Sedley; I have been made to suffer so cruelly that I am
almost made mad sometimes. I can't stay still in any
place, but wander about always restless and unhappy.
All my friends have been false to me--all. There is no
such thing as an honest man in the world. I was the truest
wife that ever lived, though I married my husband out of
pique, because somebody else--but never mind that. I
was true, and he trampled upon me and deserted me. I
was the fondest mother. I had but one child, one darling,
one hope, one joy, which I held to my heart with a mother's
affection, which was my life, my prayer, my--my
blessing; and they--they tore it from me--tore it from
me"; and she put her hand to her heart with a passionate
gesture of despair, burying her face for a moment on the
bed.
The brandy-bottle inside clinked up against the plate
which held the cold sausage. Both were moved, no doubt,
by the exhibition of so much grief. Max and Fritz were at
the door, listening with wonder to Mrs. Becky's sobs and
cries. Jos, too, was a good deal frightened and affected at
seeing his old flame in this condition. And she began,
forthwith, to tell her story--a tale so neat, simple, and
artless that it was quite evident from hearing her that if
ever there was a white-robed angel escaped from heaven
to be subject to the infernal machinations and villainy of
fiends here below, that spotless being--that miserable
unsullied martyr, was present on the bed before Jos--on
the bed, sitting on the brandy-bottle.
They had a very long, amicable, and confidential talk
there, in the course of which Jos Sedley was somehow
made aware (but in a manner that did not in the least
scare or offend him) that Becky's heart had first learned
to beat at his enchanting presence; that George Osborne
had certainly paid an unjustifiable court to HER, which
might account for Amelia's jealousy and their little
rupture; but that Becky never gave the least encouragement
to the unfortunate officer, and that she had never ceased
to think about Jos from the very first day she had seen
him, though, of course, her duties as a married woman
were paramount--duties which she had always preserved,
and would, to her dying day, or until the proverbially bad
climate in which Colonel Crawley was living should
release her from a yoke which his cruelty had rendered
odious to her.
Jos went away, convinced that she was the most virtuous,
as she was one of the most fascinating of women,
and revolving in his mind all sorts of benevolent schemes
for her welfare. Her persecutions ought to be ended:
she ought to return to the society of which she was an
ornament. He would see what ought to be done. She
must quit that place and take a quiet lodging. Amelia
must come and see her and befriend her. He would go
and settle about it, and consult with the Major. She wept
tears of heart-felt gratitude as she parted from him, and
pressed his hand as the gallant stout gentleman stooped
down to kiss hers.
So Becky bowed Jos out of her little garret with as
much grace as if it was a palace of which she did the
honours; and that heavy gentleman having disappeared
down the stairs, Max and Fritz came out of their hole,
pipe in mouth, and she amused herself by mimicking Jos
to them as she munched her cold bread and sausage and
took draughts of her favourite brandy-and-water.
Jos walked over to Dobbin's lodgings with great
solemnity and there imparted to him the affecting history
with which he had just been made acquainted, without,
however, mentioning the play business of the night before.
And the two gentlemen were laying their heads together
and consulting as to the best means of being useful to
Mrs. Becky, while she was finishing her interrupted
dejeuner a la fourchette.
How was it that she had come to that little town?
How was it that she had no friends and was wandering
about alone? Little boys at school are taught in their
earliest Latin book that the path of Avernus is very easy
of descent. Let us skip over the interval in the history of
her downward progress. She was not worse now than she
had been in the days of her prosperity--only a little
down on her luck.
As for Mrs. Amelia, she was a woman of such a soft
and foolish disposition that when she heard of anybody
unhappy, her heart straightway melted towards the
sufferer; and as she had never thought or done anything
mortally guilty herself, she had not that abhorrence for
wickedness which distinguishes moralists much more
knowing. If she spoiled everybody who came near her
with kindness and compliments--if she begged pardon
of all her servants for troubling them to answer the bell
--if she apologized to a shopboy who showed her a piece
of silk, or made a curtsey to a street-sweeper with a
complimentary remark upon the elegant state of his crossing
--and she was almost capable of every one of these
follies--the notion that an old acquaintance was miserable
was sure to soften her heart; nor would she hear of
anybody's being deservedly unhappy. A world under such
legislation as hers would not be a very orderly place of
abode; but there are not many women, at least not of the
rulers, who are of her sort. This lady, I believe, would
have abolished all gaols, punishments, handcuffs,
whippings, poverty, sickness, hunger, in the world, and was
such a mean-spirited creature that--we are obliged to
confess it--she could even forget a mortal injury.
When the Major heard from Jos of the sentimental
adventure which had just befallen the latter, he was not,
it must be owned, nearly as much interested as the
gentleman from Bengal. On the contrary, his excitement was
quite the reverse from a pleasurable one; he made use of
a brief but improper expression regarding a poor woman
in distress, saying, in fact, "The little minx, has she
come to light again?" He never had had the slightest liking
for her, but had heartily mistrusted her from the very
first moment when her green eyes had looked at, and
turned away from, his own.
"That little devil brings mischief wherever she goes,"
the Major said disrespectfully. "Who knows what sort of
life she has been leading? And what business has she
here abroad and alone? Don't tell me about persecutors
and enemies; an honest woman always has friends and
never is separated from her family. Why has she left her
husband? He may have been disreputable and wicked, as
you say. He always was. I remember the confounded
blackleg and the way in which he used to cheat and
hoodwink poor George. Wasn't there a scandal about their
separation? I think I heard something," cried out Major
Dobbin, who did not care much about gossip, and whom
Jos tried in vain to convince that Mrs. Becky was in all
respects a most injured and virtuous female.
"Well, well; let's ask Mrs. George," said that arch-
diplomatist of a Major. "Only let us go and consult her.
I suppose you will allow that she is a good judge at any
rate, and knows what is right in such matters."
"Hm! Emmy is very well," said Jos, who did not
happen to be in love with his sister.
"Very well? By Gad, sir, she's the finest lady I ever
met in my life," bounced out the Major. "I say at once,
let us go and ask her if this woman ought to be visited
or not--I will be content with her verdict." Now this
odious, artful rogue of a Major was thinking in his own
mind that he was sure of his case. Emmy, he remembered,
was at one time cruelly and deservedly jealous of
Rebecca, never mentioned her name but with a shrinking
and terror--a jealous woman never forgives, thought
Dobbin: and so the pair went across the street to Mrs.
George's house, where she was contentedly warbling at
a music lesson with Madame Strumpff.
When that lady took her leave, Jos opened the business
with his usual pomp of words. "Amelia, my dear,"
said he, "I have just had the most extraordinary--yes--
God bless my soul! the most extraordinary adventure--
an old friend--yes, a most interesting old friend of
yours, and I may say in old times, has just arrived here,
and I should like you to see her."
"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
with men especially.
Numbers of people were going abroad as usual at the
end of the season, and Becky had plenty of opportunities
of finding out by the behaviour of her acquaintances of
the great London world the opinion of "society" as
regarded her conduct. One day it was Lady Partlet and her
daughters whom Becky confronted as she was walking
modestly on Boulogne pier, the cliffs of Albion shining
in the distance across the deep blue sea. Lady Partlet
marshalled all her daughters round her with a sweep of
her parasol and retreated from the pier, darting savage
glances at poor little Becky who stood alone there.
On another day the packet came in. It had been
blowing fresh, and it always suited Becky's humour to
see the droll woe-begone faces of the people as they
emerged from the boat. Lady Slingstone happened to be
on board this day. Her ladyship had been exceedingly ill
in her carriage, and was greatly exhausted and scarcely
fit to walk up the plank from the ship to the pier. But
all her energies rallied the instant she saw Becky smiling
roguishly under a pink bonnet, and giving her a
glance of scorn such as would have shrivelled up most
women, she walked into the Custom House quite
unsupported. Becky only laughed: but I don't think she liked
it. She felt she was alone, quite alone, and the far-off
shining cliffs of England were impassable to her.
The behaviour of the men had undergone too I don't
know what change. Grinstone showed his teeth and
laughed in her face with a familiarity that was not pleasant.
Little Bob Suckling, who was cap in hand to her
three months before, and would walk a mile in the rain
to see for her carriage in the line at Gaunt House, was
talking to Fitzoof of the Guards (Lord Heehaw's son)
one day upon the jetty, as Becky took her walk there.
Little Bobby nodded to her over his shoulder, without
moving his hat, and continued his conversation with the
heir of Heehaw. Tom Raikes tried to walk into her
sitting-room at the inn with a cigar in his mouth, but she
closed the door upon him, and would have locked it,
only that his fingers were inside. She began to feel that
she was very lonely indeed. "If HE'D been here," she said,
"those cowards would never have dared to insult me."
She thought about "him" with great sadness and
perhaps longing--about his honest, stupid, constant kindness
and fidelity; his never-ceasing obedience; his good
humour; his bravery and courage. Very likely she cried,
for she was particularly lively, and had put on a little
extra rouge, when she came down to dinner.
She rouged regularly now; and--and her maid got
Cognac for her besides that which was charged in the
hotel bill.
Perhaps the insults of the men were not, however, so
intolerable to her as the sympathy of certain women.
Mrs. Crackenbury and Mrs. Washington White passed
through Boulogne on their way to Switzerland. ~The party
were protected by Colonel Horner, young Beaumoris, and
of course old Crackenbury, and Mrs. White's little girl.)
THEY did not avoid her. They giggled, cackled, tattled,
condoled, consoled, and patronized her until they drove
her almost wild with rage. To be patronized by THEM!
she thought, as they went away simpering after kissing
her. And she heard Beaumoris's laugh ringing on the
stair and knew quite well how to interpret his hilarity.
It was after this visit that Becky, who had paid her
weekly bills, Becky who had made herself agreeable to
everybody in the house, who smiled at the landlady,
called the waiters "monsieur," and paid the chambermaids
in politeness and apologies, what far more than
compensated for a little niggardliness in point of money
(of which Becky never was free), that Becky, we say,
received a notice to quit from the landlord, who had
been told by some one that she was quite an unfit
person to have at his hotel, where English ladies would not
sit down with her. And she was forced to fly into lodgings
of which the dulness and solitude were most wearisome
to her.
Still she held up, in spite of these rebuffs, and tried to
make a character for herself and conquer scandal. She
went to church very regularly and sang louder than
anybody there. She took up the cause of the widows of the
shipwrecked fishermen, and gave work and drawings for
the Quashyboo Mission; she subscribed to the Assembly
and WOULDN'T waltz. In a word, she did everything that
was respectable, and that is why we dwell upon this
part of her career with more fondness than upon
subsequent parts of her history, which are not so pleasant.
She saw people avoiding her, and still laboriously smiled
upon them; you never could suppose from her
countenance what pangs of humiliation she might be
enduring inwardly.
Her history was after all a mystery. Parties were
divided about her. Some people who took the trouble to
busy themselves in the matter said that she was the
criminal, whilst others vowed that she was as innocent
as a lamb and that her odious husband was in fault.
She won over a good many by bursting into tears
about her boy and exhibiting the most frantic grief
when his name was mentioned, or she saw anybody like
him. She gained good Mrs. Alderney's heart in that way,
who was rather the Queen of British Boulogne and gave
the most dinners and balls of all the residents there, by
weeping when Master Alderney came from Dr. Swishtail's
academy to pass his holidays with his mother. "He and
her Rawdon were of the same age, and so like," Becky
said in a voice choking with agony; whereas there was
five years' difference between the boys' ages, and no
more likeness between them than between my respected
reader and his humble servant. Wenham, when he was
going abroad, on his way to Kissingen to join Lord
Steyne, enlightened Mrs. Alderney on this point and told
her how he was much more able to describe little
Rawdon than his mamma, who notoriously hated him and
never saw him; how he was thirteen years old, while
little Alderney was but nine, fair, while the other darling
was dark--in a word, caused the lady in question to
repent of her good humour.
Whenever Becky made a little circle for herself with
incredible toils and labour, somebody came and swept it
down rudely, and she had all her work to begin over
again. It was very hard; very hard; lonely and
disheartening.
There was Mrs. Newbright, who took her up for some
time, attracted by the sweetness of her singing at church
and by her proper views upon serious subjects, concerning
which in former days, at Queen's Crawley, Mrs.
Becky had had a good deal of instruction. Well, she not
only took tracts, but she read them. She worked flannel
petticoats for the Quashyboos--cotton night-caps for the
Cocoanut Indians--painted handscreens for the
conversion of the Pope and the Jews--sat under Mr. Rowls
on Wednesdays, Mr. Huggleton on Thursdays, attended
two Sunday services at church, besides Mr. Bawler, the
Darbyite, in the evening, and all in vain. Mrs. Newbright
had occasion to correspond with the Countess of Southdown
about the Warmingpan Fund for the Fiji
Islanders (for the management of which admirable
charity both these ladies formed part of a female committee),
and having mentioned her "sweet friend," Mrs. Rawdon
Crawley, the Dowager Countess wrote back such a
letter regarding Becky, with such particulars, hints, facts,
falsehoods, and general comminations, that intimacy
between Mrs. Newbright and Mrs. Crawley ceased forthwith,
and all the serious world of Tours, where this misfortune
took place, immediately parted company with the
reprobate. Those who know the English Colonies abroad
know that we carry with us us our pride, pills, prejudices,
Harvey-sauces, cayenne-peppers, and other Lares,
making a little Britain wherever we settle down.
From one colony to another Becky fled uneasily. From
Boulogne to Dieppe, from Dieppe to Caen, from Caen
to Tours--trying with all her might to be respectable,
and alas! always found out some day or other and
pecked out of the cage by the real daws.
Mrs. Hook Eagles took her up at one of these places--
a woman without a blemish in her character and a house
in Portman Square. She was staying at the hotel at Dieppe,
whither Becky fled, and they made each other's acquaintance
first at sea, where they were swimming together,
and subsequently at the table d'hote of the hotel. Mrs
Eagles had heard--who indeed had not?--some of the
scandal of the Steyne affair; but after a conversation
with Becky, she pronounced that Mrs. Crawley was an
angel, her husband a ruffian, Lord Steyne an
unprincipled wretch, as everybody knew, and the whole case
against Mrs. Crawley an infamous and wicked conspiracy
of that rascal Wenham. "If you were a man of
any spirit, Mr. Eagles, you would box the wretch's ears
the next time you see him at the Club," she said to her
husband. But Eagles was only a quiet old gentleman,
husband to Mrs. Eagles, with a taste for geology, and not tall
enough to reach anybody's ears.
The Eagles then patronized Mrs. Rawdon, took her to
live with her at her own house at Paris, quarrelled with
the ambassador's wife because she would not receive her
protegee, and did all that lay in woman's power to keep
Becky straight in the paths of virtue and good repute.
Becky was very respectable and orderly at first, but
the life of humdrum virtue grew utterly tedious to her
before long. It was the same routine every day, the same
dulness and comfort, the same drive over the same
stupid Bois de Boulogne, the same company of an
evening, the same Blair's Sermon of a Sunday night--the
same opera always being acted over and over again;
Becky was dying of weariness, when, luckily for her,
young Mr. Eagles came from Cambridge, and his mother,
seeing the impression which her little friend made upon
him, straightway gave Becky warning.
Then she tried keeping house with a female friend;
then the double menage began to quarrel and get into
debt. Then she determined upon a boarding-house existence
and lived for some time at that famous mansion
kept by Madame de Saint Amour, in the Rue Royale, at
Paris, where she began exercising her graces and
fascinations upon the shabby dandies and fly-blown beauties
who frequented her landlady's salons. Becky loved
society and, indeed, could no more exist without it than an
opium-eater without his dram, and she was happy
enough at the period of her boarding-house life. "The
women here are as amusing as those in May Fair," she
told an old London friend who met her, "only, their
dresses are not quite so fresh. The men wear cleaned
gloves, and are sad rogues, certainly, but they are not
worse than Jack This and Tom That. The mistress of the
house is a little vulgar, but I don't think she is so vulgar
as Lady --" and here she named the name of a
great leader of fashion that I would die rather than
reveal. In fact, when you saw Madame de Saint Amour's
rooms lighted up of a night, men with plaques and
cordons at the ecarte tables, and the women at a little
distance, you might fancy yourself for a while in good
society, and that Madame was a real Countess. Many
people did so fancy, and Becky was for a while one of the
most dashing ladies of the Countess's salons.
But it is probable that her old creditors of 1815 found
her out and caused her to leave Paris, for the poor little
woman was forced to fly from the city rather suddenly,
and went thence to Brussels.
How well she remembered the place! She grinned as
she looked up at the little entresol which she had
occupied, and thought of the Bareacres family, bawling
for horses and flight, as their carriage stood in the
porte-cochere of the hotel. She went to Waterloo and to
Laeken, where George Osborne's monument much
struck her. She made a little sketch of it. "That poor
Cupid!" she said; "how dreadfully he was in love with
me, and what a fool he was! I wonder whether little
Emmy is alive. It was a good little creature; and that
fat brother of hers. I have his funny fat picture still
among my papers. They were kind simple people."
At Brussels Becky arrived, recommended by Madame
de Saint Amour to her friend, Madame la Comtesse de
Borodino, widow of Napoleon's General, the famous
Count de Borodino, who was left with no resource by the
deceased hero but that of a table d'hote and an ecarte
table. Second-rate dandies and roues, widow-ladies who
always have a lawsuit, and very simple English folks, who
fancy they see "Continental society" at these houses, put
down their money, or ate their meals, at Madame de
Borodino's tables. The gallant young fellows treated the
company round to champagne at the table d'hote, rode
out with the women, or hired horses on country excursions,
clubbed money to take boxes at the play or the
opera, betted over the fair shoulders of the ladies at the
ecarte tables, and wrote home to their parents in
Devonshire about their felicitous introduction to foreign
society.
Here, as at Paris, Becky was a boarding-house queen,
and ruled in select pensions. She never refused the
champagne, or the bouquets, or the drives into the country,
or the private boxes; but what she preferred was the
ecarte at night,--and she played audaciously. First she
played only for a little, then for five-franc pieces, then for
Napoleons, then for notes: then she would not be able
to pay her month's pension: then she borrowed from
the young gentlemen: then she got into cash again and
bullied Madame de Borodino, whom she had coaxed and
wheedled before: then she was playing for ten sous at a
time, and in a dire state of poverty: then her quarter's
allowance would come in, and she would pay off Madame
de Borodino's score and would once more take the
cards against Monsieur de Rossignol, or the Chevalier de
Raff.
When Becky left Brussels, the sad truth is that she
owed three months' pension to Madame de Borodino, of
which fact, and of the gambling, and of the drinking, and
of the going down on her knees to the Reverend Mr.
Muff, Ministre Anglican, and borrowing money of him,
and of her coaxing and flirting with Milor Noodle, son of
Sir Noodle, pupil of the Rev. Mr. Muff, whom she used
to take into her private room, and of whom she won
large sums at ecarte--of which fact, I say, and of a
hundred of her other knaveries, the Countess de
Borodino informs every English person who stops at her
establishment, and announces that Madame Rawdon was
no better than a vipere.
So our little wanderer went about setting up her tent
in various cities of Europe, as restless as Ulysses or
Bampfylde Moore Carew. Her taste for disrespectability
grew more and more remarkable. She became a perfect
Bohemian ere long, herding with people whom it would
make your hair stand on end to meet.
There is no town of any mark in Europe but it has its
little colony of English raffs--men whose names Mr.
Hemp the officer reads out periodically at the Sheriffs'
Court--young gentlemen of very good family often, only
that the latter disowns them; frequenters of billiard-
rooms and estaminets, patrons of foreign races and
gaming-tables. They people the debtors' prisons--they
drink and swagger--they fight and brawl--they run away
without paying--they have duels with French and German
officers--they cheat Mr. Spooney at ecarte--they get
the money and drive off to Baden in magnificent britzkas
--they try their infallible martingale and lurk about the
tables with empty pockets, shabby bullies, penniless
bucks, until they can swindle a Jew banker with a sham
bill of exchange, or find another Mr. Spooney to rob.
The alternations of splendour and misery which these
people undergo are very queer to view. Their life must
be one of great excitement. Becky--must it be owned?--
took to this life, and took to it not unkindly. She went
about from town to town among these Bohemians. The
lucky Mrs. Rawdon was known at every play-table in
Germany. She and Madame de Cruchecassee kept house at
Florence together. It is said she was ordered out of
Munich, and my friend Mr. Frederick Pigeon avers that it
was at her house at Lausanne that he was hocussed at
supper and lost eight hundred pounds to Major Loder
and the Honourable Mr. Deuceace. We are bound, you
see, to give some account of Becky's biography, but of
this part, the less, perhaps, that is said the better.
They say that, when Mrs. Crawley was particularly
down on her luck, she gave concerts and lessons in music
here and there. There was a Madame de Raudon, who
certainly had a matinee musicale at Wildbad,
accompanied by Herr Spoff, premier pianist to the Hospodar of
Wallachia, and my little friend Mr. Eaves, who knew
everybody and had travelled everywhere, always used to
declare that he was at Strasburg in the year 1830, when a
certain Madame Rebecque made her appearance in the
opera of the Dame Blanche, giving occasion to a furious
row in the theatre there. She was hissed off the stage by
the audience, partly from her own incompetency, but
chiefly from the ill-advised sympathy of some persons in
the parquet, (where the officers of the garrison had their
admissions); and Eaves was certain that the unfortunate
debutante in question was no other than Mrs.
Rawdon Crawley.
She was, in fact, no better than a vagabond upon this
earth. When she got her money she gambled; when she
had gambled it she was put to shifts to live; who knows
how or by what means she succeeded? It is said that she
was once seen at St. Petersburg, but was summarily
dismissed from that capital by the police, so that there
cannot be any possibility of truth in the report that she was
a Russian spy at Toplitz and Vienna afterwards. I have
even been informed that at Paris she discovered a
relation of her own, no less a person than her maternal
grandmother, who was not by any means a
Montmorenci, but a hideous old box-opener at a theatre on
the Boulevards. The meeting between them, of which
other persons, as it is hinted elsewhere, seem to have
been acquainted, must have been a very affecting
interview. The present historian can give no certain details
regarding the event.
It happened at Rome once that Mrs. de Rawdon's half-
year's salary had just been paid into the principal
banker's there, and, as everybody who had a balance of
above five hundred scudi was invited to the balls which
this prince of merchants gave during the winter, Becky
had the honour of a card, and appeared at one of the
Prince and Princess Polonia's splendid evening entertainments.
The Princess was of the family of Pompili, lineally
descended from the second king of Rome, and Egeria
of the house of Olympus, while the Prince's grandfather,
Alessandro Polonia, sold wash-balls, essences,
tobacco, and pocket-handkerchiefs, ran errands for
gentlemen, and lent money in a small way. All the great
company in Rome thronged to his saloons--Princes,
Dukes, Ambassadors, artists, fiddlers, monsignori, young
bears with their leaders--every rank and condition of
man. His halls blazed with light and magnificence; were
resplendent with gilt frames (containing pictures), and
dubious antiques; and the enormous gilt crown and arms
of the princely owner, a gold mushroom on a crimson
field (the colour of the pocket-handkerchiefs which he
sold), and the silver fountain of the Pompili family shone
all over the roof, doors, and panels of the house, and
over the grand velvet baldaquins prepared to receive
Popes and Emperors.
So Becky, who had arrived in the diligence from
Florence, and was lodged at an inn in a very modest way,
got a card for Prince Polonia's entertainment, and her
maid dressed her with unusual care, and she went to this
fine ball leaning on the arm of Major Loder, with whom
she happened to be travelling at the time--(the same
man who shot Prince Ravoli at Naples the next year, and
was caned by Sir John Buckskin for carrying four kings
in his hat besides those which he used in playing at
ecarte )--and this pair went into the rooms together,
and Becky saw a number of old faces which she
remembered in happier days, when she was not innocent,
but not found out. Major Loder knew a great number
of foreigners, keen-looking whiskered men with dirty
striped ribbons in their buttonholes, and a very small
display of linen; but his own countrymen, it might be
remarked, eschewed the Major. Becky, too, knew some
ladies here and there--French widows, dubious Italian
countesses, whose husbands had treated them ill--faugh
--what shall we say, we who have moved among
some of the finest company of Vanity Fair, of this refuse
and sediment of rascals? If we play, let it be with clean
cards, and not with this dirty pack. But every man who
has formed one of the innumerable army of travellers
has seen these marauding irregulars hanging on, like
Nym and Pistol, to the main force, wearing the king's
colours and boasting of his commission, but pillaging
for themselves, and occasionally gibbeted by the roadside.
Well, she was hanging on the arm of Major Loder,
and they went through the rooms together, and drank a
great quantity of champagne at the buffet, where the
people, and especially the Major's irregular corps,
struggled furiously for refreshments, of which when the
pair had had enough, they pushed on until they reached
the Duchess's own pink velvet saloon, at the end of the
suite of apartments (where the statue of the Venus is,
and the great Venice looking-glasses, framed in silver),
and where the princely family were entertaining their
most distinguished guests at a round table at supper. It
was just such a little select banquet as that of which
Becky recollected that she had partaken at Lord Steyne's
--and there he sat at Polonia's table, and she saw him.
The scar cut by the diamond on his white, bald,
shining forehead made a burning red mark; his red whiskers
were dyed of a purple hue, which made his pale face
look still paler. He wore his collar and orders, his blue
ribbon and garter. He was a greater Prince than any
there, though there was a reigning Duke and a Royal
Highness, with their princesses, and near his Lordship
was seated the beautiful Countess of Belladonna, nee
de Glandier, whose husband (the Count Paolo della
Belladonna), so well known for his brilliant entomological
collections, had been long absent on a mission to the
Emperor of Morocco.
When Becky beheld that familiar and illustrious face,
how vulgar all of a sudden did Major Loder appear to
her, and how that odious Captain Rook did smell of
tobacco! In one instant she reassumed her fine-ladyship
and tried to look and feel as if she were in May Fair
once more. "That woman looks stupid and ill-humoured,"
she thought; "I am sure she can't amuse him. No, he must
be bored by her--he never was by me." A hundred such
touching hopes, fears, and memories palpitated in her
little heart, as she looked with her brightest eyes (the
rouge which she wore up to her eyelids made them
twinkle) towards the great nobleman. Of a Star and Garter
night Lord Steyne used also to put on his grandest
manner and to look and speak like a great prince, as he was.
Becky admired him smiling sumptuously, easy, lofty, and
stately. Ah, bon Dieu, what a pleasant companion he
was, what a brilliant wit, what a rich fund of talk, what
a grand manner!--and she had exchanged this for Major
Loder, reeking of cigars and brandy-and-water, and
Captain Rook with his horsejockey jokes and prize-ring
slang, and their like. "I wonder whether he will know
me," she thought. Lord Steyne was talking and laughing
with a great and illustrious lady at his side, when he
looked up and saw Becky.
She was all over in a flutter as their eyes met, and she
put on the very best smile she could muster, and dropped
him a little, timid, imploring curtsey. He stared aghast
at her for a minute, as Macbeth might on beholding
Banquo's sudden appearance at his ball-supper, and remained
looking at her with open mouth, when that horrid Major
Loder pulled her away.
"Come away into the supper-room, Mrs. R.," was that
gentleman's remark: "seeing these nobs grubbing away
has made me peckish too. Let's go and try the old
governor's champagne." Becky thought the Major had had
a great deal too much already.
The day after she went to walk on the Pincian Hill--
the Hyde Park of the Roman idlers--possibly in hopes to
have another sight of Lord Steyne. But she met another
acquaintance there: it was Mr. Fiche, his lordship's
confidential man, who came up nodding to her rather
familiarly and putting a finger to his hat. "I knew that Madame
was here," he said; "I followed her from her hotel. I have
some advice to give Madame."
"From the Marquis of Steyne?" Becky asked, resuming
as much of her dignity as she could muster, and not
a little agitated by hope and expectation.
"No," said the valet; "it is from me. Rome is very
unwholesome."
"Not at this season, Monsieur Fiche--not till after
Easter."
"I tell Madame it is unwholesome now. There is always
malaria for some people. That cursed marsh wind kills
many at all seasons. Look, Madame Crawley, you were
always bon enfant, and I have an interest in you, parole
d'honneur. Be warned. Go away from Rome, I tell you--
or you will be ill and die."
Becky laughed, though in rage and fury. "What!
assassinate poor little me?" she said. "How romantic! Does
my lord carry bravos for couriers, and stilettos in the
fourgons? Bah! I will stay, if but to plague him. I have
those who will defend me whilst I am here."
It was Monsieur Fiche's turn to laugh now. "Defend
you," he said, "and who? The Major, the Captain, any
one of those gambling men whom Madame sees would
take her life for a hundred louis. We know things about
Major Loder (he is no more a Major than I am my Lord
the Marquis) which would send him to the galleys or
worse. We know everything and have friends everywhere.
We know whom you saw at Paris, and what relations you
found there. Yes, Madame may stare, but we do. How
was it that no minister on the Continent would receive
Madame? She has offended somebody: who never
forgives--whose rage redoubled when he saw you. He was
like a madman last night when he came home. Madame
de Belladonna made him a scene about you and fired off
in one of her furies."
"Oh, it was Madame de Belladonna, was it?" Becky
said, relieved a little, for the information she had just got
had scared her.
"No--she does not matter--she is always jealous. I
tell you it was Monseigneur. You did wrong to show
yourself to him. And if you stay here you will repent it. Mark
my words. Go. Here is my lord's carriage"--and seizing
Becky's arm, he rushed down an alley of the garden as
Lord Steyne's barouche, blazing with heraldic devices,
came whirling along the avenue, borne by the almost
priceless horses, and bearing Madame de Belladonna
lolling on the cushions, dark, sulky, and blooming, a King
Charles in her lap, a white parasol swaying over her
head, and old Steyne stretched at her side with a livid
face and ghastly eyes. Hate, or anger, or desire caused
them to brighten now and then still, but ordinarily, they
gave no light, and seemed tired of looking out on a world
of which almost all the pleasure and all the best beauty
had palled upon the worn-out wicked old man.
"Monseigneur has never recovered the shock of that
night, never," Monsieur Fiche whispered to Mrs. Crawley
as the carriage flashed by, and she peeped out at it
from behind the shrubs that hid her. "That was a
consolation at any rate," Becky thought.
Whether my lord really had murderous intentions
towards Mrs. Becky as Monsieur Fiche said (since
Monseigneur's death he has returned to his native country,
where he lives much respected, and has purchased from
his Prince the title of Baron Ficci), and the factotum
objected to have to do with assassination; or whether he
simply had a commission to frighten Mrs. Crawley out of
a city where his Lordship proposed to pass the winter,
and the sight of her would be eminently disagreeable to
the great nobleman, is a point which has never been
ascertained: but the threat had its effect upon the little
woman, and she sought no more to intrude herself upon
the presence of her old patron.
Everybody knows the melancholy end of that
nobleman, which befell at Naples two months after the French
Revolution of 1830; when the Most Honourable George
Gustavus, Marquis of Steyne, Earl of Gaunt and of Gaunt
Castle, in the Peerage of Ireland, Viscount Hellborough,
Baron Pitchley and Grillsby, a Knight of the Most Noble
Order of the Garter, of the Golden Fleece of Spain, of
the Russian Order of Saint Nicholas of the First Class, of
the Turkish Order of the Crescent, First Lord of the
Powder Closet and Groom of the Back Stairs, Colonel of
the Gaunt or Regent's Own Regiment of Militia, a Trustee
of the British Museum, an Elder Brother of the Trinity
House, a Governor of the White Friars, and D.C.L.--
died after a series of fits brought on, as the papers said,
by the shock occasioned to his lordship's sensibilities by
the downfall of the ancient French monarchy.
An eloquent catalogue appeared in a weekly print,
describing his virtues, his magnificence, his talents, and
his good actions. His sensibility, his attachment to the
illustrious House of Bourbon, with which he claimed an
alliance, were such that he could not survive the
misfortunes of his august kinsmen. His body was buried at
Naples, and his heart--that heart which always beat with
every generous and noble emotion was brought back to
Castle Gaunt in a silver urn. "In him," Mr. Wagg said,
"the poor and the Fine Arts have lost a beneficent patron,
society one of its most brilliant ornaments, and England
one of her loftiest patriots and statesmen," &c., &c.
His will was a good deal disputed, and an attempt was
made to force from Madame de Belladonna the
celebrated jewel called the "Jew's-eye" diamond, which his
lordship always wore on his forefinger, and which it was
said that she removed from it after his lamented demise.
But his confidential friend and attendant, Monsieur Fiche
proved that the ring had been presented to the said
Madame de Belladonna two days before the Marquis's
death, as were the bank-notes, jewels, Neapolitan and
French bonds, &c., found in his lordship's secretaire and
claimed by his heirs from that injured woman.
CHAPTER LXV
Full of Business and Pleasure
The day after the meeting at the play-table, Jos had
himself arrayed with unusual care and splendour, and
without thinking it necessary to say a word to any
member of his family regarding the occurrences of the previous
night, or asking for their company in his walk, he sallied
forth at an early hour, and was presently seen making
inquiries at the door of the Elephant Hotel. In consequence
of the fetes the house was full of company, the
tables in the street were already surrounded by persons
smoking and drinking the national small-beer, the public
rooms were in a cloud of smoke, and Mr. Jos having, in
his pompous way, and with his clumsy German, made
inquiries for the person of whom he was in search, was
directed to the very top of the house, above the first-floor
rooms where some travelling pedlars had lived, and were
exhibiting their jewellery and brocades; above the second-
floor apartments occupied by the etat major of the
gambling firm; above the third-floor rooms, tenanted by the
band of renowned Bohemian vaulters and tumblers; and
so on to the little cabins of the roof, where, among
students, bagmen, small tradesmen, and country-folks come
in for the festival, Becky had found a little nest--as dirty
a little refuge as ever beauty lay hid in.
Becky liked the life. She was at home with everybody
in the place, pedlars, punters, tumblers, students and all.
She was of a wild, roving nature, inherited from father
and mother, who were both Bohemians, by taste and
circumstance; if a lord was not by, she would talk to his
courier with the greatest pleasure; the din, the stir, the
drink, the smoke, the tattle of the Hebrew pedlars, the
solemn, braggart ways of the poor tumblers, the sournois
talk of the gambling-table officials, the songs and swagger
of the students, and the general buzz and hum of
the place had pleased and tickled the little woman, even
when her luck was down and she had not wherewithal to
pay her bill. How pleasant was all the bustle to her now
that her purse was full of the money which little Georgy
had won for her the night before!
As Jos came creaking and puffing up the final stairs,
and was speechless when he got to the landing, and began
to wipe his face and then to look for No. 92, the room
where he was directed to seek for the person he wanted,
the door of the opposite chamber, No. 90, was open,
and a student, in jack-boots and a dirty schlafrock, was
lying on the bed smoking a long pipe; whilst another
student in long yellow hair and a braided coat, exceeding
smart and dirty too, was actually on his knees at No. 92,
bawling through the keyhole supplications to the person
within.
"Go away," said a well-known voice, which made Jos
thrill, "I expect somebody; I expect my grandpapa. He
mustn't see you there."
"Angel Englanderinn!" bellowed the kneeling student
with the whity-brown ringlets and the large finger-ring,
"do take compassion upon us. Make an appointment.
Dine with me and Fritz at the inn in the park. We will
have roast pheasants and porter, plum-pudding and
French wine. We shall die if you don't."
"That we will," said the young nobleman on the bed;
and this colloquy Jos overheard, though he did not
comprehend it, for the reason that he had never studied
the language in which it was carried on.
"Newmero kattervang dooze, si vous plait," Jos said
in his grandest manner, when he was able to speak.
"Quater fang tooce!" said the student, starting up, and
he bounced into his own room, where he locked the door,
and where Jos heard him laughing with his comrade on
the bed.
The gentleman from Bengal was standing, disconcerted
by this incident, when the door of the 92 opened of
itself and Becky's little head peeped out full of archness
and mischief. She lighted on Jos. "It's you," she said,
coming out. "How I have been waiting for you! Stop!
not yet--in one minute you shall come in." In that instant
she put a rouge-pot, a brandy bottle, and a plate of broken
meat into the bed, gave one smooth to her hair, and
finally let in her visitor.
She had, by way of morning robe, a pink domino, a
trifle faded and soiled, and marked here and there with
pomaturn; but her arms shone out from the loose sleeves
of the dress very white and fair, and it was tied round
her little waist so as not ill to set off the trim little figure
of the wearer. She led Jos by the hand into her garret.
"Come in," she said. "Come and talk to me. Sit yonder
on the chair"; and she gave the civilian's hand a little
squeeze and laughingly placed him upon it. As for
herself, she placed herself on the bed--not on the bottle
and plate, you may be sure--on which Jos might have
reposed, had he chosen that seat; and so there she sat
and talked with her old admirer.
"How little years have changed you," she said with a
look of tender interest. "I should have known you
anywhere. What a comfort it is amongst strangers to see
once more the frank honest face of an old friend!"
The frank honest face, to tell the truth, at this
moment bore any expression but one of openness and
honesty: it was, on the contrary, much perturbed and
puzzled in look. Jos was surveying the queer little apartment
in which he found his old flame. One of her gowns hung
over the bed, another depending from a hook of the door;
her bonnet obscured half the looking-glass, on which,
too, lay the prettiest little pair of bronze boots; a French
novel was on the table by the bedside, with a candle, not
of wax. Becky thought of popping that into the bed too,
but she only put in the little paper night-cap with which
she had put the candle out on going to sleep.
"I should have known you anywhere," she continued;
"a woman never forgets some things. And you were the
first man I ever--I ever saw."
"Was I really?" said Jos. "God bless my soul, you--
you don't say so."
"When I came with your sister from Chiswick, I was
scarcely more than a child," Becky said. "How is that,
dear love? Oh, her husband was a sad wicked man, and
of course it was of me that the poor dear was jealous.
As if I cared about him, heigho! when there was
somebody--but no--don't let us talk of old times"; and she
passed her handkerchief with the tattered lace across
her eyelids.
"Is not this a strange place," she continued, "for a
woman, who has lived in a very different world too, to be
found in? I have had so many griefs and wrongs, Joseph
Sedley; I have been made to suffer so cruelly that I am
almost made mad sometimes. I can't stay still in any
place, but wander about always restless and unhappy.
All my friends have been false to me--all. There is no
such thing as an honest man in the world. I was the truest
wife that ever lived, though I married my husband out of
pique, because somebody else--but never mind that. I
was true, and he trampled upon me and deserted me. I
was the fondest mother. I had but one child, one darling,
one hope, one joy, which I held to my heart with a mother's
affection, which was my life, my prayer, my--my
blessing; and they--they tore it from me--tore it from
me"; and she put her hand to her heart with a passionate
gesture of despair, burying her face for a moment on the
bed.
The brandy-bottle inside clinked up against the plate
which held the cold sausage. Both were moved, no doubt,
by the exhibition of so much grief. Max and Fritz were at
the door, listening with wonder to Mrs. Becky's sobs and
cries. Jos, too, was a good deal frightened and affected at
seeing his old flame in this condition. And she began,
forthwith, to tell her story--a tale so neat, simple, and
artless that it was quite evident from hearing her that if
ever there was a white-robed angel escaped from heaven
to be subject to the infernal machinations and villainy of
fiends here below, that spotless being--that miserable
unsullied martyr, was present on the bed before Jos--on
the bed, sitting on the brandy-bottle.
They had a very long, amicable, and confidential talk
there, in the course of which Jos Sedley was somehow
made aware (but in a manner that did not in the least
scare or offend him) that Becky's heart had first learned
to beat at his enchanting presence; that George Osborne
had certainly paid an unjustifiable court to HER, which
might account for Amelia's jealousy and their little
rupture; but that Becky never gave the least encouragement
to the unfortunate officer, and that she had never ceased
to think about Jos from the very first day she had seen
him, though, of course, her duties as a married woman
were paramount--duties which she had always preserved,
and would, to her dying day, or until the proverbially bad
climate in which Colonel Crawley was living should
release her from a yoke which his cruelty had rendered
odious to her.
Jos went away, convinced that she was the most virtuous,
as she was one of the most fascinating of women,
and revolving in his mind all sorts of benevolent schemes
for her welfare. Her persecutions ought to be ended:
she ought to return to the society of which she was an
ornament. He would see what ought to be done. She
must quit that place and take a quiet lodging. Amelia
must come and see her and befriend her. He would go
and settle about it, and consult with the Major. She wept
tears of heart-felt gratitude as she parted from him, and
pressed his hand as the gallant stout gentleman stooped
down to kiss hers.
So Becky bowed Jos out of her little garret with as
much grace as if it was a palace of which she did the
honours; and that heavy gentleman having disappeared
down the stairs, Max and Fritz came out of their hole,
pipe in mouth, and she amused herself by mimicking Jos
to them as she munched her cold bread and sausage and
took draughts of her favourite brandy-and-water.
Jos walked over to Dobbin's lodgings with great
solemnity and there imparted to him the affecting history
with which he had just been made acquainted, without,
however, mentioning the play business of the night before.
And the two gentlemen were laying their heads together
and consulting as to the best means of being useful to
Mrs. Becky, while she was finishing her interrupted
dejeuner a la fourchette.
How was it that she had come to that little town?
How was it that she had no friends and was wandering
about alone? Little boys at school are taught in their
earliest Latin book that the path of Avernus is very easy
of descent. Let us skip over the interval in the history of
her downward progress. She was not worse now than she
had been in the days of her prosperity--only a little
down on her luck.
As for Mrs. Amelia, she was a woman of such a soft
and foolish disposition that when she heard of anybody
unhappy, her heart straightway melted towards the
sufferer; and as she had never thought or done anything
mortally guilty herself, she had not that abhorrence for
wickedness which distinguishes moralists much more
knowing. If she spoiled everybody who came near her
with kindness and compliments--if she begged pardon
of all her servants for troubling them to answer the bell
--if she apologized to a shopboy who showed her a piece
of silk, or made a curtsey to a street-sweeper with a
complimentary remark upon the elegant state of his crossing
--and she was almost capable of every one of these
follies--the notion that an old acquaintance was miserable
was sure to soften her heart; nor would she hear of
anybody's being deservedly unhappy. A world under such
legislation as hers would not be a very orderly place of
abode; but there are not many women, at least not of the
rulers, who are of her sort. This lady, I believe, would
have abolished all gaols, punishments, handcuffs,
whippings, poverty, sickness, hunger, in the world, and was
such a mean-spirited creature that--we are obliged to
confess it--she could even forget a mortal injury.
When the Major heard from Jos of the sentimental
adventure which had just befallen the latter, he was not,
it must be owned, nearly as much interested as the
gentleman from Bengal. On the contrary, his excitement was
quite the reverse from a pleasurable one; he made use of
a brief but improper expression regarding a poor woman
in distress, saying, in fact, "The little minx, has she
come to light again?" He never had had the slightest liking
for her, but had heartily mistrusted her from the very
first moment when her green eyes had looked at, and
turned away from, his own.
"That little devil brings mischief wherever she goes,"
the Major said disrespectfully. "Who knows what sort of
life she has been leading? And what business has she
here abroad and alone? Don't tell me about persecutors
and enemies; an honest woman always has friends and
never is separated from her family. Why has she left her
husband? He may have been disreputable and wicked, as
you say. He always was. I remember the confounded
blackleg and the way in which he used to cheat and
hoodwink poor George. Wasn't there a scandal about their
separation? I think I heard something," cried out Major
Dobbin, who did not care much about gossip, and whom
Jos tried in vain to convince that Mrs. Becky was in all
respects a most injured and virtuous female.
"Well, well; let's ask Mrs. George," said that arch-
diplomatist of a Major. "Only let us go and consult her.
I suppose you will allow that she is a good judge at any
rate, and knows what is right in such matters."
"Hm! Emmy is very well," said Jos, who did not
happen to be in love with his sister.
"Very well? By Gad, sir, she's the finest lady I ever
met in my life," bounced out the Major. "I say at once,
let us go and ask her if this woman ought to be visited
or not--I will be content with her verdict." Now this
odious, artful rogue of a Major was thinking in his own
mind that he was sure of his case. Emmy, he remembered,
was at one time cruelly and deservedly jealous of
Rebecca, never mentioned her name but with a shrinking
and terror--a jealous woman never forgives, thought
Dobbin: and so the pair went across the street to Mrs.
George's house, where she was contentedly warbling at
a music lesson with Madame Strumpff.
When that lady took her leave, Jos opened the business
with his usual pomp of words. "Amelia, my dear,"
said he, "I have just had the most extraordinary--yes--
God bless my soul! the most extraordinary adventure--
an old friend--yes, a most interesting old friend of
yours, and I may say in old times, has just arrived here,
and I should like you to see her."
"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