Chapter: Amantium Irae

Frankness and kindness like Amelia's were likely to touch even such a
hardened little reprobate as Becky.  She returned Emmy's caresses and
kind speeches with something very like gratitude, and an emotion which,
if it was not lasting, for a moment was almost genuine.  That was a
lucky stroke of hers about the child "torn from her arms shrieking." It
was by that harrowing misfortune that Becky had won her friend back,
and it was one of the very first points, we may be certain, upon which
our poor simple little Emmy began to talk to her new-found acquaintance.

"And so they took your darling child from you?" our simpleton cried
out.  "Oh, Rebecca, my poor dear suffering friend, I know what it is to
lose a boy, and to feel for those who have lost one.  But please Heaven
yours will be restored to you, as a merciful merciful Providence has
brought me back mine."

"The child, my child? Oh, yes, my agonies were frightful," Becky owned,
not perhaps without a twinge of conscience. It jarred upon her to be
obliged to commence instantly to tell lies in reply to so much
confidence and simplicity.  But that is the misfortune of beginning
with this kind of forgery.  When one fib becomes due as it were, you
must forge another to take up the old acceptance; and so the stock of
your lies in circulation inevitably multiplies, and the danger of
detection increases every day.

"My agonies," Becky continued, "were terrible (I hope she won't sit
down on the bottle) when they took him away from me; I thought I should
die; but I fortunately had a brain fever, during which my doctor gave
me up, and--and I recovered, and--and here I am, poor and friendless."

"How old is he?" Emmy asked.

"Eleven," said Becky.

"Eleven!" cried the other.  "Why, he was born the same year with
Georgy, who is--"

"I know, I know," Becky cried out, who had in fact quite forgotten all
about little Rawdon's age.  "Grief has made me forget so many things,
dearest Amelia.  I am very much changed:  half-wild sometimes.  He was
eleven when they took him away from me.  Bless his sweet face; I have
never seen it again."

"Was he fair or dark?" went on that absurd little Emmy.  "Show me his
hair."

Becky almost laughed at her simplicity.  "Not to-day, love--some other
time, when my trunks arrive from Leipzig, whence I came to this
place--and a little drawing of him, which I made in happy days."

"Poor Becky, poor Becky!" said Emmy.  "How thankful, how thankful I
ought to be"; (though I doubt whether that practice of piety inculcated
upon us by our womankind in early youth, namely, to be thankful because
we are better off than somebody else, be a very rational religious
exercise) and then she began to think, as usual, how her son was the
handsomest, the best, and the cleverest boy in the whole world.

"You will see my Georgy," was the best thing Emmy could think of to
console Becky.  If anything could make her comfortable that would.

And so the two women continued talking for an hour or more, during
which Becky had the opportunity of giving her new friend a full and
complete version of her private history.  She showed how her marriage
with Rawdon Crawley had always been viewed by the family with feelings
of the utmost hostility; how her sister-in-law (an artful woman) had
poisoned her husband's mind against her; how he had formed odious
connections, which had estranged his affections from her:  how she had
borne everything--poverty, neglect, coldness from the being whom she
most loved--and all for the sake of her child; how, finally, and by the
most flagrant outrage, she had been driven into demanding a separation
from her husband, when the wretch did not scruple to ask that she
should sacrifice her own fair fame so that he might procure advancement
through the means of a very great and powerful but unprincipled
man--the Marquis of Steyne, indeed.  The atrocious monster!

This part of her eventful history Becky gave with the utmost feminine
delicacy and the most indignant virtue. Forced to fly her husband's
roof by this insult, the coward had pursued his revenge by taking her
child from her. And thus Becky said she was a wanderer, poor,
unprotected, friendless, and wretched.

Emmy received this story, which was told at some length, as those
persons who are acquainted with her character may imagine that she
would.  She quivered with indignation at the account of the conduct of
the miserable Rawdon and the unprincipled Steyne.  Her eyes made notes
of admiration for every one of the sentences in which Becky described
the persecutions of her aristocratic relatives and the falling away of
her husband. (Becky did not abuse him.  She spoke rather in sorrow than
in anger.  She had loved him only too fondly: and was he not the father
of her boy?) And as for the separation scene from the child, while
Becky was reciting it, Emmy retired altogether behind her
pocket-handkerchief, so that the consummate little tragedian must have
been charmed to see the effect which her performance produced on her
audience.

Whilst the ladies were carrying on their conversation, Amelia's
constant escort, the Major (who, of course, did not wish to interrupt
their conference, and found himself rather tired of creaking about the
narrow stair passage of which the roof brushed the nap from his hat)
descended to the ground-floor of the house and into the great room
common to all the frequenters of the Elephant, out of which the stair
led.  This apartment is always in a fume of smoke and liberally
sprinkled with beer.  On a dirty table stand scores of corresponding
brass candlesticks with tallow candles for the lodgers, whose keys hang
up in rows over the candles.  Emmy had passed blushing through the room
anon, where all sorts of people were collected; Tyrolese glove-sellers
and Danubian linen-merchants, with their packs; students recruiting
themselves with butterbrods and meat; idlers, playing cards or dominoes
on the sloppy, beery tables; tumblers refreshing during the cessation
of their performances--in a word, all the fumum and strepitus of a
German inn in fair time.  The waiter brought the Major a mug of beer,
as a matter of course, and he took out a cigar and amused himself with
that pernicious vegetable and a newspaper until his charge should come
down to claim him.

Max and Fritz came presently downstairs, their caps on one side, their
spurs jingling, their pipes splendid with coats of arms and full-blown
tassels, and they hung up the key of No. 90 on the board and called for
the ration of butterbrod and beer.  The pair sat down by the Major and
fell into a conversation of which he could not help hearing somewhat.
It was mainly about "Fuchs" and "Philister," and duels and
drinking-bouts at the neighbouring University of Schoppenhausen, from
which renowned seat of learning they had just come in the Eilwagen,
with Becky, as it appeared, by their side, and in order to be present
at the bridal fetes at Pumpernickel.

"The title Englanderinn seems to be en bays de gonnoisance," said Max,
who knew the French language, to Fritz, his comrade.  "After the fat
grandfather went away, there came a pretty little compatriot.  I heard
them chattering and whimpering together in the little woman's chamber."

"We must take the tickets for her concert," Fritz said. "Hast thou any
money, Max?"

"Bah," said the other, "the concert is a concert in nubibus.  Hans said
that she advertised one at Leipzig, and the Burschen took many tickets.
But she went off without singing.  She said in the coach yesterday that
her pianist had fallen ill at Dresden.  She cannot sing, it is my
belief: her voice is as cracked as thine, O thou beer-soaking Renowner!"

"It is cracked; I hear her trying out of her window a schrecklich
English ballad, called 'De Rose upon de Balgony.'"

"Saufen and singen go not together," observed Fritz with the red nose,
who evidently preferred the former amusement.  "No, thou shalt take
none of her tickets. She won money at the trente and quarante last
night.  I saw her:  she made a little English boy play for her. We will
spend thy money there or at the theatre, or we will treat her to French
wine or Cognac in the Aurelius Garden, but the tickets we will not buy.
What sayest thou? Yet, another mug of beer?" and one and another
successively having buried their blond whiskers in the mawkish draught,
curled them and swaggered off into the fair.

The Major, who had seen the key of No. 90 put up on its hook and had
heard the conversation of the two young University bloods, was not at a
loss to understand that their talk related to Becky.  "The little devil
is at her old tricks," he thought, and he smiled as he recalled old
days, when he had witnessed the desperate flirtation with Jos and the
ludicrous end of that adventure. He and George had often laughed over
it subsequently, and until a few weeks after George's marriage, when he
also was caught in the little Circe's toils, and had an understanding
with her which his comrade certainly suspected, but preferred to
ignore.  William was too much hurt or ashamed to ask to fathom that
disgraceful mystery, although once, and evidently with remorse on his
mind, George had alluded to it. It was on the morning of Waterloo, as
the young men stood together in front of their line, surveying the
black masses of Frenchmen who crowned the opposite heights, and as the
rain was coming down, "I have been mixing in a foolish intrigue with a
woman," George said. "I am glad we were marched away.  If I drop, I
hope Emmy will never know of that business.  I wish to God it had never
been begun!" And William was pleased to think, and had more than once
soothed poor George's widow with the narrative, that Osborne, after
quitting his wife, and after the action of Quatre Bras, on the first
day, spoke gravely and affectionately to his comrade of his father and
his wife.  On these facts, too, William had insisted very strongly in
his conversations with the elder Osborne, and had thus been the means
of reconciling the old gentleman to his son's memory, just at the close
of the elder man's life.

"And so this devil is still going on with her intrigues," thought
William.  "I wish she were a hundred miles from here.  She brings
mischief wherever she goes." And he was pursuing these forebodings and
this uncomfortable train of thought, with his head between his hands,
and the Pumpernickel Gazette of last week unread under his nose, when
somebody tapped his shoulder with a parasol, and he looked up and saw
Mrs. Amelia.

This woman had a way of tyrannizing over Major Dobbin (for the weakest
of all people will domineer over somebody), and she ordered him about,
and patted him, and made him fetch and carry just as if he was a great
Newfoundland dog.  He liked, so to speak, to jump into the water if she
said "High, Dobbin!" and to trot behind her with her reticule in his
mouth.  This history has been written to very little purpose if the
reader has not perceived that the Major was a spooney.

"Why did you not wait for me, sir, to escort me downstairs?" she said,
giving a little toss of her head and a most sarcastic curtsey.

"I couldn't stand up in the passage," he answered with a comical
deprecatory look; and, delighted to give her his arm and to take her
out of the horrid smoky place, he would have walked off without even so
much as remembering the waiter, had not the young fellow run after him
and stopped him on the threshold of the Elephant to make him pay for
the beer which he had not consumed.  Emmy laughed:  she called him a
naughty man, who wanted to run away in debt, and, in fact, made some
jokes suitable to the occasion and the small-beer. She was in high
spirits and good humour, and tripped across the market-place very
briskly.  She wanted to see Jos that instant.  The Major laughed at the
impetuous affection Mrs. Amelia exhibited; for, in truth, it was not
very often that she wanted her brother "that instant."  They found the
civilian in his saloon on the first-floor; he had been pacing the room,
and biting his nails, and looking over the market-place towards the
Elephant a hundred times at least during the past hour whilst Emmy was
closeted with her friend in the garret and the Major was beating the
tattoo on the sloppy tables of the public room below, and he was, on
his side too, very anxious to see Mrs. Osborne.

"Well?" said he.

"The poor dear creature, how she has suffered!" Emmy said.

"God bless my soul, yes," Jos said, wagging his head, so that his
cheeks quivered like jellies.

"She may have Payne's room, who can go upstairs," Emmy continued. Payne
was a staid English maid and personal attendant upon Mrs. Osborne, to
whom the courier, as in duty bound, paid court, and whom Georgy used to
"lark" dreadfully with accounts of German robbers and ghosts.  She
passed her time chiefly in grumbling, in ordering about her mistress,
and in stating her intention to return the next morning to her native
village of Clapham.  "She may have Payne's room," Emmy said.

"Why, you don't mean to say you are going to have that woman into the
house?" bounced out the Major, jumping up.

"Of course we are," said Amelia in the most innocent way in the world.
"Don't be angry and break the furniture, Major Dobbin.  Of course we
are going to have her here."

"Of course, my dear," Jos said.

"The poor creature, after all her sufferings," Emmy continued; "her
horrid banker broken and run away; her husband--wicked wretch--having
deserted her and taken her child away from her" (here she doubled her
two little fists and held them in a most menacing attitude before her,
so that the Major was charmed to see such a dauntless virago) "the poor
dear thing!  quite alone and absolutely forced to give lessons in
singing to get her bread--and not have her here!"

"Take lessons, my dear Mrs. George," cried the Major, "but don't have
her in the house.  I implore you don't."

"Pooh," said Jos.

"You who are always good and kind--always used to be at any rate--I'm
astonished at you, Major William," Amelia cried.  "Why, what is the
moment to help her but when she is so miserable? Now is the time to be
of service to her.  The oldest friend I ever had, and not--"

"She was not always your friend, Amelia," the Major said, for he was
quite angry.  This allusion was too much for Emmy, who, looking the
Major almost fiercely in the face, said, "For shame, Major Dobbin!" and
after having fired this shot, she walked out of the room with a most
majestic air and shut her own door briskly on herself and her outraged
dignity.

"To allude to THAT!" she said, when the door was closed.  "Oh, it was
cruel of him to remind me of it," and she looked up at George's
picture, which hung there as usual, with the portrait of the boy
underneath.  "It was cruel of him.  If I had forgiven it, ought he to
have spoken? No.  And it is from his own lips that I know how wicked
and groundless my jealousy was; and that you were pure--oh, yes, you
were pure, my saint in heaven!"

She paced the room, trembling and indignant.  She went and leaned on
the chest of drawers over which the picture hung, and gazed and gazed
at it.  Its eyes seemed to look down on her with a reproach that
deepened as she looked. The early dear, dear memories of that brief
prime of love rushed back upon her.  The wound which years had scarcely
cicatrized bled afresh, and oh, how bitterly!  She could not bear the
reproaches of the husband there before her.  It couldn't be.  Never,
never.

Poor Dobbin; poor old William!  That unlucky word had undone the work
of many a year--the long laborious edifice of a life of love and
constancy--raised too upon what secret and hidden foundations, wherein
lay buried passions, uncounted struggles, unknown sacrifices--a little
word was spoken, and down fell the fair palace of hope--one word, and
away flew the bird which he had been trying all his life to lure!

William, though he saw by Amelia's looks that a great crisis had come,
nevertheless continued to implore Sedley, in the most energetic terms,
to beware of Rebecca; and he eagerly, almost frantically, adjured Jos
not to receive her.  He besought Mr. Sedley to inquire at least
regarding her; told him how he had heard that she was in the company of
gamblers and people of ill repute; pointed out what evil she had done
in former days, how she and Crawley had misled poor George into ruin,
how she was now parted from her husband, by her own confession, and,
perhaps, for good reason.  What a dangerous companion she would be for
his sister, who knew nothing of the affairs of the world!  William
implored Jos, with all the eloquence which he could bring to bear, and
a great deal more energy than this quiet gentleman was ordinarily in
the habit of showing, to keep Rebecca out of his household.

Had he been less violent, or more dexterous, he might have succeeded in
his supplications to Jos; but the civilian was not a little jealous of
the airs of superiority which the Major constantly exhibited towards
him, as he fancied (indeed, he had imparted his opinions to Mr. Kirsch,
the courier, whose bills Major Dobbin checked on this journey, and who
sided with his master), and he began a blustering speech about his
competency to defend his own honour, his desire not to have his affairs
meddled with, his intention, in fine, to rebel against the Major, when
the colloquy--rather a long and stormy one--was put an end to in the
simplest way possible, namely, by the arrival of Mrs. Becky, with a
porter from the Elephant Hotel in charge of her very meagre baggage.

She greeted her host with affectionate respect and made a shrinking,
but amicable salutation to Major Dobbin, who, as her instinct assured
her at once, was her enemy, and had been speaking against her; and the
bustle and clatter consequent upon her arrival brought Amelia out of
her room.  Emmy went up and embraced her guest with the greatest
warmth, and took no notice of the Major, except to fling him an angry
look--the most unjust and scornful glance that had perhaps ever
appeared in that poor little woman's face since she was born.  But she
had private reasons of her own, and was bent upon being angry with him.
And Dobbin, indignant at the injustice, not at the defeat, went off,
making her a bow quite as haughty as the killing curtsey with which the
little woman chose to bid him farewell.

He being gone, Emmy was particularly lively and affectionate to
Rebecca, and bustled about the apartments and installed her guest in
her room with an eagerness and activity seldom exhibited by our placid
little friend.  But when an act of injustice is to be done, especially
by weak people, it is best that it should be done quickly, and Emmy
thought she was displaying a great deal of firmness and proper feeling
and veneration for the late Captain Osborne in her present behaviour.

Georgy came in from the fetes for dinner-time and found four covers
laid as usual; but one of the places was occupied by a lady, instead of
by Major Dobbin. "Hullo!  where's Dob?" the young gentleman asked with
his usual simplicity of language.  "Major Dobbin is dining out, I
suppose," his mother said, and, drawing the boy to her, kissed him a
great deal, and put his hair off his forehead, and introduced him to
Mrs. Crawley.  "This is my boy, Rebecca," Mrs. Osborne said--as much as
to say--can the world produce anything like that? Becky looked at him
with rapture and pressed his hand fondly. "Dear boy!" she said--"he is
just like my--" Emotion choked her further utterance, but Amelia
understood, as well as if she had spoken, that Becky was thinking of
her own blessed child.  However, the company of her friend consoled
Mrs. Crawley, and she ate a very good dinner.

During the repast, she had occasion to speak several times, when Georgy
eyed her and listened to her.  At the desert Emmy was gone out to
superintend further domestic arrangements; Jos was in his great chair
dozing over Galignani; Georgy and the new arrival sat close to each
other--he had continued to look at her knowingly more than once, and at
last he laid down the nutcrackers.

"I say," said Georgy.

"What do you say?" Becky said, laughing.

"You're the lady I saw in the mask at the Rouge et Noir."

"Hush!  you little sly creature," Becky said, taking up his hand and
kissing it.  "Your uncle was there too, and Mamma mustn't know."

"Oh, no--not by no means," answered the little fellow.

"You see we are quite good friends already," Becky said to Emmy, who
now re-entered; and it must be owned that Mrs. Osborne had introduced a
most judicious and amiable companion into her house.

William, in a state of great indignation, though still unaware of all
the treason that was in store for him, walked about the town wildly
until he fell upon the Secretary of Legation, Tapeworm, who invited him
to dinner.  As they were discussing that meal, he took occasion to ask
the Secretary whether he knew anything about a certain Mrs. Rawdon
Crawley, who had, he believed, made some noise in London; and then
Tapeworm, who of course knew all the London gossip, and was besides a
relative of Lady Gaunt, poured out into the astonished Major's ears
such a history about Becky and her husband as astonished the querist,
and supplied all the points of this narrative, for it was at that very
table years ago that the present writer had the pleasure of hearing the
tale.  Tufto, Steyne, the Crawleys, and their history--everything
connected with Becky and her previous life passed under the record of
the bitter diplomatist. He knew everything and a great deal besides,
about all the world--in a word, he made the most astounding revelations
to the simple-hearted Major.  When Dobbin said that Mrs. Osborne and
Mr. Sedley had taken her into their house, Tapeworm burst into a peal
of laughter which shocked the Major, and asked if they had not better
send into the prison and take in one or two of the gentlemen in shaved
heads and yellow jackets who swept the streets of Pumpernickel, chained
in pairs, to board and lodge, and act as tutor to that little
scapegrace Georgy.

This information astonished and horrified the Major not a little. It
had been agreed in the morning (before meeting with Rebecca) that
Amelia should go to the Court ball that night.  There would be the
place where he should tell her.  The Major went home, and dressed
himself in his uniform, and repaired to Court, in hopes to see Mrs.
Osborne.  She never came.  When he returned to his lodgings all the
lights in the Sedley tenement were put out.  He could not see her till
the morning.  I don't know what sort of a night's rest he had with this
frightful secret in bed with him.

At the earliest convenient hour in the morning he sent his servant
across the way with a note, saying that he wished very particularly to
speak with her.  A message came back to say that Mrs. Osborne was
exceedingly unwell and was keeping her room.

She, too, had been awake all that night.  She had been thinking of a
thing which had agitated her mind a hundred times before.  A hundred
times on the point of yielding, she had shrunk back from a sacrifice
which she felt was too much for her.  She couldn't, in spite of his
love and constancy and her own acknowledged regard, respect, and
gratitude.  What are benefits, what is constancy, or merit? One curl of
a girl's ringlet, one hair of a whisker, will turn the scale against
them all in a minute. They did not weigh with Emmy more than with other
women.  She had tried them; wanted to make them pass; could not; and
the pitiless little woman had found a pretext, and determined to be
free.

When at length, in the afternoon, the Major gained admission to Amelia,
instead of the cordial and affectionate greeting, to which he had been
accustomed now for many a long day, he received the salutation of a
curtsey, and of a little gloved hand, retracted the moment after it was
accorded to him.

Rebecca, too, was in the room, and advanced to meet him with a smile
and an extended hand.  Dobbin drew back rather confusedly, "I--I beg
your pardon, m'am," he said; "but I am bound to tell you that it is not
as your friend that I am come here now."

"Pooh!  damn; don't let us have this sort of thing!" Jos cried out,
alarmed, and anxious to get rid of a scene.

"I wonder what Major Dobbin has to say against Rebecca?" Amelia said in
a low, clear voice with a slight quiver in it, and a very determined
look about the eyes.

"I will not have this sort of thing in my house," Jos again interposed.
"I say I will not have it; and Dobbin, I beg, sir, you'll stop it." And
he looked round, trembling and turning very red, and gave a great puff,
and made for his door.

"Dear friend!" Rebecca said with angelic sweetness, "do hear what Major
Dobbin has to say against me."

"I will not hear it, I say," squeaked out Jos at the top of his voice,
and, gathering up his dressing-gown, he was gone.

"We are only two women," Amelia said.  "You can speak now, sir."

"This manner towards me is one which scarcely becomes you, Amelia," the
Major answered haughtily; "nor I believe am I guilty of habitual
harshness to women.  It is not a pleasure to me to do the duty which I
am come to do."

"Pray proceed with it quickly, if you please, Major Dobbin," said
Amelia, who was more and more in a pet.  The expression of Dobbin's
face, as she spoke in this imperious manner, was not pleasant.

"I came to say--and as you stay, Mrs. Crawley, I must say it in your
presence--that I think you--you ought not to form a member of the
family of my friends.  A lady who is separated from her husband, who
travels not under her own name, who frequents public gaming-tables--"

"It was to the ball I went," cried out Becky.

"--is not a fit companion for Mrs. Osborne and her son," Dobbin went
on:  "and I may add that there are people here who know you, and who
profess to know that regarding your conduct about which I don't even
wish to speak before--before Mrs. Osborne."

"Yours is a very modest and convenient sort of calumny, Major Dobbin,"
Rebecca said.  "You leave me under the weight of an accusation which,
after all, is unsaid. What is it? Is it unfaithfulness to my husband? I
scorn it and defy anybody to prove it--I defy you, I say.  My honour is
as untouched as that of the bitterest enemy who ever maligned me.  Is
it of being poor, forsaken, wretched, that you accuse me? Yes, I am
guilty of those faults, and punished for them every day.  Let me go,
Emmy.  It is only to suppose that I have not met you, and I am no worse
to-day than I was yesterday.  It is only to suppose that the night is
over and the poor wanderer is on her way.  Don't you remember the song
we used to sing in old, dear old days? I have been wandering ever since
then--a poor castaway, scorned for being miserable, and insulted
because I am alone.  Let me go:  my stay here interferes with the plans
of this gentleman."

"Indeed it does, madam," said the Major.  "If I have any authority in
this house--"

"Authority, none!" broke out Amelia "Rebecca, you stay with me.  I
won't desert you because you have been persecuted, or insult you
because--because Major Dobbin chooses to do so.  Come away, dear." And
the two women made towards the door.

William opened it.  As they were going out, however, he took Amelia's
hand and said--"Will you stay a moment and speak to me?"

"He wishes to speak to you away from me," said Becky, looking like a
martyr.  Amelia gripped her hand in reply.

"Upon my honour it is not about you that I am going to speak," Dobbin
said.  "Come back, Amelia," and she came.  Dobbin bowed to Mrs.
Crawley, as he shut the door upon her.  Amelia looked at him, leaning
against the glass:  her face and her lips were quite white.

"I was confused when I spoke just now," the Major said after a pause,
"and I misused the word authority."

"You did," said Amelia with her teeth chattering.

"At least I have claims to be heard," Dobbin continued.

"It is generous to remind me of our obligations to you," the woman
answered.

"The claims I mean are those left me by George's father," William said.

"Yes, and you insulted his memory.  You did yesterday. You know you
did.  And I will never forgive you.  Never!" said Amelia.  She shot out
each little sentence in a tremor of anger and emotion.

"You don't mean that, Amelia?" William said sadly. "You don't mean that
these words, uttered in a hurried moment, are to weigh against a whole
life's devotion? I think that George's memory has not been injured by
the way in which I have dealt with it, and if we are come to bandying
reproaches, I at least merit none from his widow and the mother of his
son.  Reflect, afterwards when--when you are at leisure, and your
conscience will withdraw this accusation.  It does even now." Amelia
held down her head.

"It is not that speech of yesterday," he continued, "which moves you.
That is but the pretext, Amelia, or I have loved you and watched you
for fifteen years in vain. Have I not learned in that time to read all
your feelings and look into your thoughts? I know what your heart is
capable of:  it can cling faithfully to a recollection and cherish a
fancy, but it can't feel such an attachment as mine deserves to mate
with, and such as I would have won from a woman more generous than you.
No, you are not worthy of the love which I have devoted to you. I knew
all along that the prize I had set my life on was not worth the
winning; that I was a fool, with fond fancies, too, bartering away my
all of truth and ardour against your little feeble remnant of love.  I
will bargain no more:  I withdraw.  I find no fault with you.  You are
very good-natured, and have done your best, but you couldn't--you
couldn't reach up to the height of the attachment which I bore you, and
which a loftier soul than yours might have been proud to share.
Good-bye, Amelia! I have watched your struggle.  Let it end.  We are
both weary of it."

Amelia stood scared and silent as William thus suddenly broke the chain
by which she held him and declared his independence and superiority.
He had placed himself at her feet so long that the poor little woman
had been accustomed to trample upon him.  She didn't wish to marry him,
but she wished to keep him.  She wished to give him nothing, but that
he should give her all.  It is a bargain not unfrequently levied in
love.

William's sally had quite broken and cast her down. HER assault was
long since over and beaten back.

"Am I to understand then, that you are going--away, William?" she said.

He gave a sad laugh.  "I went once before," he said, "and came back
after twelve years.  We were young then, Amelia.  Good-bye.  I have
spent enough of my life at this play."

Whilst they had been talking, the door into Mrs. Osborne's room had
opened ever so little; indeed, Becky had kept a hold of the handle and
had turned it on the instant when Dobbin quitted it, and she heard
every word of the conversation that had passed between these two. "What
a noble heart that man has," she thought, "and how shamefully that
woman plays with it!" She admired Dobbin; she bore him no rancour for
the part he had taken against her.  It was an open move in the game,
and played fairly.  "Ah!" she thought, "if I could have had such a
husband as that--a man with a heart and brains too!  I would not have
minded his large feet"; and running into her room, she absolutely
bethought herself of something, and wrote him a note, beseeching him to
stop for a few days--not to think of going--and that she could serve
him with A.

The parting was over.  Once more poor William walked to the door and
was gone; and the little widow, the author of all this work, had her
will, and had won her victory, and was left to enjoy it as she best
might.  Let the ladies envy her triumph.

At the romantic hour of dinner, Mr. Georgy made his appearance and
again remarked the absence of "Old Dob." The meal was eaten in silence
by the party.  Jos's appetite not being diminished, but Emmy taking
nothing at all.

After the meal, Georgy was lolling in the cushions of the old window, a
large window, with three sides of glass abutting from the gable, and
commanding on one side the market-place, where the Elephant is, his
mother being busy hard by, when he remarked symptoms of movement at the
Major's house on the other side of the street.

"Hullo!" said he, "there's Dob's trap--they are bringing it out of the
court-yard." The "trap" in question was a carriage which the Major had
bought for six pounds sterling, and about which they used to rally him
a good deal.

Emmy gave a little start, but said nothing.

"Hullo!" Georgy continued, "there's Francis coming out with the
portmanteaus, and Kunz, the one-eyed postilion, coming down the market
with three schimmels. Look at his boots and yellow jacket--ain't he a
rum one? Why--they're putting the horses to Dob's carriage. Is he going
anywhere?"

"Yes," said Emmy, "he is going on a journey."

"Going on a journey; and when is he coming back?"

"He is--not coming back," answered Emmy.

"Not coming back!" cried out Georgy, jumping up. "Stay here, sir,"
roared out Jos.  "Stay, Georgy," said his mother with a very sad face.
The boy stopped, kicked about the room, jumped up and down from the
window-seat with his knees, and showed every symptom of uneasiness and
curiosity.

The horses were put to.  The baggage was strapped on.  Francis came out
with his master's sword, cane, and umbrella tied up together, and laid
them in the well, and his desk and old tin cocked-hat case, which he
placed under the seat.  Francis brought out the stained old blue cloak
lined with red camlet, which had wrapped the owner up any time these
fifteen years, and had manchen Sturm erlebt, as a favourite song of
those days said.  It had been new for the campaign of Waterloo and had
covered George and William after the night of Quatre Bras.

Old Burcke, the landlord of the lodgings, came out, then Francis, with
more packages--final packages--then Major William--Burcke wanted to
kiss him.  The Major was adored by all people with whom he had to do.
It was with difficulty he could escape from this demonstration of
attachment.

"By Jove, I will go!" screamed out George.  "Give him this," said
Becky, quite interested, and put a paper into the boy's hand.  He had
rushed down the stairs and flung across the street in a minute--the
yellow postilion was cracking his whip gently.

William had got into the carriage, released from the embraces of his
landlord.  George bounded in afterwards, and flung his arms round the
Major's neck (as they saw from the window), and began asking him
multiplied questions.  Then he felt in his waistcoat pocket and gave
him a note.  William seized at it rather eagerly, he opened it
trembling, but instantly his countenance changed, and he tore the paper
in two and dropped it out of the carriage.  He kissed Georgy on the
head, and the boy got out, doubling his fists into his eyes, and with
the aid of Francis.  He lingered with his hand on the panel.  Fort,
Schwager!  The yellow postilion cracked his whip prodigiously, up
sprang Francis to the box, away went the schimmels, and Dobbin with his
head on his breast.  He never looked up as they passed under Amelia's
window, and Georgy, left alone in the street, burst out crying in the
face of all the crowd.

Emmy's maid heard him howling again during the night and brought him
some preserved apricots to console him.  She mingled her lamentations
with his.  All the poor, all the humble, all honest folks, all good men
who knew him, loved that kind-hearted and simple gentleman.

As for Emmy, had she not done her duty? She had her picture of George
for a consolation.

 Becky is actually quite moved by Amelia's PDA. She feels sort of bad about having to pretend that she's tormented about Rawdon Jr., but there's no way around it now. Amelia immediately falls for Becky's version of the events surrounding her marriage and separation, especially since Becky is clever enough not to speak with anger about Rawdon, but only wistfulness. Meanwhile Dobbin is hanging out downstairs in the hotel and overhears two students talking about Becky. Their conversation makes it clear that she is planning on putting on a concert of some sort , and that she likes to have a drink or two . Dobbin reminisces about the old days then remembers how George half-confessed wanting to have an affair with Becky two months into his marriage. In any case, he is as much against Becky as ever. Amelia comes back to Jos and the two of them decide to let Becky stay at their house. Dobbin is totally outraged. He huffs and puffs, then makes an ill-timed allusion to Becky's behavior with George. Now it's Amelia's turn to be outraged. She basically kicks Dobbin out of the house and all the bits of love she had been kind of feeling towards him seem to dissipate. Man, that guy just never gets a break! Just as he's leaving, Becky arrives with her few belongings. She tells them that most of her luggage is still in a different city, waiting to be forwarded. They have dinner without Dobbin, and George Jr. wonders where he is. Afterwards George Jr. recognizes Becky as the woman he met at the gambling rooms, and she tells him not to tell anyone. He agrees. The same night, Dobbin goes to dinner with Tapeworm, the British ambassador. This guy knows everything about everyone, and he tells Dobbin the real deal about Becky, Steyne, and the whole sad mess. Poor, innocent Dobbin is beyond shocked. The next morning he goes over to Amelia and Jos's house. He wants to talk them out of letting Becky stay there, but when he walks in, Becky is with Amelia. Amelia is still pretty angry, and she pulls the old "anything you say to me can be said in front of my friend" thing. Which is fine to say, but not actually true, of course. Dobbin is a real gentleman and can't repeat the things Tapeworm said to him with Becky there. He tries to say she's no good, but Becky is a much better talker and she lawyers around his arguments. Amelia isn't having any of this anyway, and she tells him she will never forgive him for making a reference to George's near-affair. Dobbin is totally crushed by the situation. He asks to have a word alone with Amelia and tells her it's over. He has loved her forever, and she isn't really worth the sacrifice. He tells her he is going away again. She is all, "What?" Which is to say that maybe she does actually have feelings for him after all.... Oh, the drama! But seriously, she really isn't worth it, is she? At dinner that night, George Jr. sees Dobbin's carriage being set up and freaks out when Amelia tells him Dobbin is going on a long trip and never coming back. George Jr. runs into the street, hugs Dobbin good-bye, and then stands in the middle of the road crying as Dobbin drives away. Awww. He loves his almost-stepdad.

