"Her!" said Amelia, "who is it? Major Dobbin, if you please not to
break my scissors." The Major was twirling them round by the little
chain from which they sometimes hung to their lady's waist, and was
thereby endangering his own eye.
"It is a woman whom I dislike very much," said the Major, doggedly, "and
whom you have no cause to love."
"It is Rebecca, I'm sure it is Rebecca," Amelia said, blushing and
being very much agitated.
"You are right; you always are," Dobbin answered. Brussels, Waterloo,
old, old times, griefs, pangs, remembrances, rushed back into Amelia's
gentle heart and caused a cruel agitation there.
"Don't let me see her," Emmy continued. "I couldn't see her."
"I told you so," Dobbin said to Jos.
"She is very unhappy, and--and that sort of thing," Jos urged. "She is
very poor and unprotected, and has been ill--exceedingly ill--and that
scoundrel of a husband has deserted her."
"Ah!" said Amelia "She hasn't a friend in the world," Jos went on, not undexterously,
"and she said she thought she might trust in you. She's so miserable,
Emmy. She has been almost mad with grief. Her story quite affected
me--'pon my word and honour, it did--never was such a cruel persecution
borne so angelically, I may say. Her family has been most cruel to
her."
"Poor creature!" Amelia said.
"And if she can get no friend, she says she thinks she'll die," Jos
proceeded in a low tremulous voice. "God bless my soul! do you know
that she tried to kill herself? She carries laudanum with her--I saw
the bottle in her room--such a miserable little room--at a third-rate
house, the Elephant, up in the roof at the top of all. I went there."
This did not seem to affect Emmy. She even smiled a little. Perhaps
she figured Jos to herself panting up the stair.
"She's beside herself with grief," he resumed. "The agonies that woman
has endured are quite frightful to hear of. She had a little boy, of
the same age as Georgy."
"Yes, yes, I think I remember," Emmy remarked. "Well?"
"The most beautiful child ever seen," Jos said, who was very fat, and
easily moved, and had been touched by the story Becky told; "a perfect
angel, who adored his mother. The ruffians tore him shrieking out of
her arms, and have never allowed him to see her."
"Dear Joseph," Emmy cried out, starting up at once, "let us go and see
her this minute." And she ran into her adjoining bedchamber, tied on
her bonnet in a flutter, came out with her shawl on her arm, and
ordered Dobbin to follow.
He went and put her shawl--it was a white cashmere, consigned to her by
the Major himself from India--over her shoulders. He saw there was
nothing for it but to obey, and she put her hand into his arm, and they
went away.