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.Iwas true, and he trampled upon me and deserted me.Iwas 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.
