Vanity Fair William Makepeace Thackeray (portable ebook reader .txt) 📖

will be time enough to cry out when we are hurt,” Dobbin said. “And if anything happens, you know, George, I have got a little, and I am not a marrying man, and I shall not forget my godson in my will,” he added, with a smile. Whereupon the dispute ended⁠—as many scores of such conversations between Osborne and his friend had concluded previously⁠—by the former declaring there was no possibility of being angry with Dobbin long, and forgiving him very generously after abusing him without cause.

“I say, Becky,” cried Rawdon Crawley out of his dressing-room, to his lady, who was attiring herself for dinner in her own chamber.

“What?” said Becky’s shrill voice. She was looking over her shoulder in the glass. She had put on the neatest and freshest white frock imaginable, and with bare shoulders and a little necklace, and a light blue sash, she looked the image of youthful innocence and girlish happiness.

“I say, what’ll Mrs. O. do, when O. goes out with the regiment?” Crawley said coming into the room, performing a duet on his head with two huge hairbrushes, and looking out from under his hair with admiration on his pretty little wife.

“I suppose she’ll cry her eyes out,” Becky answered. “She has been whimpering half a dozen times, at the very notion of it, already to me.”

“You don’t care, I suppose?” Rawdon said, half angry at his wife’s want of feeling.

“You wretch! don’t you know that I intend to go with you,” Becky replied. “Besides, you’re different. You go as General Tufto’s aide-de-camp. We don’t belong to the line,” Mrs. Crawley said, throwing up her head with an air that so enchanted her husband that he stooped down and kissed it.

“Rawdon dear⁠—don’t you think⁠—you’d better get that⁠—money from Cupid, before he goes?” Becky continued, fixing on a killing bow. She called George Osborne, Cupid. She had flattered him about his good looks a score of times already. She watched over him kindly at écarté of a night when he would drop in to Rawdon’s quarters for a half-hour before bedtime.

She had often called him a horrid dissipated wretch, and threatened to tell Emmy of his wicked ways and naughty extravagant habits. She brought his cigar and lighted it for him; she knew the effect of that manoeuvre, having practised it in former days upon Rawdon Crawley. He thought her gay, brisk, arch, distingué, delightful. In their little drives and dinners, Becky, of course, quite outshone poor Emmy, who remained very mute and timid while Mrs. Crawley and her husband rattled away together, and Captain Crawley (and Jos after he joined the young married people) gobbled in silence.

Emmy’s mind somehow misgave her about her friend. Rebecca’s wit, spirits, and accomplishments troubled her with a rueful disquiet. They were only a week married, and here was George already suffering ennui, and eager for others’ society! She trembled for the future. How shall I be a companion for him, she thought⁠—so clever and so brilliant, and I such a humble foolish creature? How noble it was of him to marry me⁠—to give up everything and stoop down to me! I ought to have refused him, only I had not the heart. I ought to have stopped at home and taken care of poor Papa. And her neglect of her parents (and indeed there was some foundation for this charge which the poor child’s uneasy conscience brought against her) was now remembered for the first time, and caused her to blush with humiliation. Oh! thought she, I have been very wicked and selfish⁠—selfish in forgetting them in their sorrows⁠—selfish in forcing George to marry me. I know I’m not worthy of him⁠—I know he would have been happy without me⁠—and yet⁠—I tried, I tried to give him up.

It is hard when, before seven days of marriage are over, such thoughts and confessions as these force themselves on a little bride’s mind. But so it was, and the night before Dobbin came to join these young people⁠—on a fine brilliant moonlight night of May⁠—so warm and balmy that the windows were flung open to the balcony, from which George and Mrs. Crawley were gazing upon the calm ocean spread shining before them, while Rawdon and Jos were engaged at backgammon within⁠—Amelia couched in a great chair quite neglected, and watching both these parties, felt a despair and remorse such as were bitter companions for that tender lonely soul. Scarce a week was past, and it was come to this! The future, had she regarded it, offered a dismal prospect; but Emmy was too shy, so to speak, to look to that, and embark alone on that wide sea, and unfit to navigate it without a guide and protector. I know Miss Smith has a mean opinion of her. But how many, my dear Madam, are endowed with your prodigious strength of mind?

“Gad, what a fine night, and how bright the moon is!” George said, with a puff of his cigar, which went soaring up skywards.

“How delicious they smell in the open air! I adore them. Who’d think the moon was two hundred and thirty-six thousand eight hundred and forty-seven miles off?” Becky added, gazing at that orb with a smile. “Isn’t it clever of me to remember that? Pooh! we learned it all at Miss Pinkerton’s! How calm the sea is, and how clear everything. I declare I can almost see the coast of France!” and her bright green eyes streamed out, and shot into the night as if they could see through it.

“Do you know what I intend to do one morning?” she said; “I find I can swim beautifully, and some day, when my Aunt Crawley’s companion⁠—old Briggs, you know⁠—you remember her⁠—that hook-nosed woman, with the long wisps of hair⁠—when Briggs goes out to bathe, I intend to dive under her awning, and insist on a reconciliation in the water. Isn’t that a stratagem?”

George burst out laughing at the idea of this aquatic meeting. “What’s the row