She was a child when first she played on it, and her parents gave it her.
It had been given to her again since, as the reader may remember, when her father's house was gone to ruin and the instrument was recovered out of the wreck.
Major Dobbin was exceedingly pleased when, as he was superintending the arrangements of Jos's new house--which the Major insisted should be very handsome and comfortable--the cart arrived from Brompton, bringing the trunks and bandboxes of the emigrants from that village, and with them the old piano.
Amelia would have it up in her sitting-room, a neat little apartment on the second floor, adjoining her father's chamber, and where the old gentleman sat commonly of evenings.
When the men appeared then bearing this old music-box, and Amelia gave orders that it should be placed in the chamber aforesaid, Dobbin was quite elated.
"I'm glad you've kept it," he said in a very sentimental manner.
"I was afraid you didn't care about it."
"I value it more than anything I have in the world," said Amelia.
"Do you, Amelia?" cried the Major.
The fact was, as he had bought it himself, though he never said anything about it, it never entered into his head to suppose that Emmy should think anybody else was the purchaser, and as a matter of course he fancied that she knew the gift came from him.
"Do you, Amelia?" he said; and the question, the great question of all, was trembling on his lips, when Emmy replied--
"Can I do otherwise?--did not he give it me?"
"I did not know," said poor old Dob, and his countenance fell.
Emmy did not note the circumstance at the time, nor take immediate heed of the very dismal expression which honest Dobbin's countenance assumed, but she thought of it afterwards.
And then it struck her, with inexpressible pain and mortification too, that it was William who was the giver of the piano, and not George, as she had fancied.
It was not George's gift; the only one which she had received from her lover, as she thought--the thing she had cherished beyond all others--her dearest relic and prize.
She had spoken to it about George; played his favourite airs upon it; sat for long evening hours, touching, to the best of her simple art, melancholy harmonies on the keys, and weeping over them in silence.
It was not George's relic.
It was valueless now.
The next time that old Sedley asked her to play, she said it was shockingly out of tune, that she had a headache, that she couldn't play.
Then, according to her custom, she rebuked herself for her pettishness and ingratitude and determined to make a reparation to honest William for the slight she had not expressed to him, but had felt for his piano.
A few days afterwards, as they were seated in the drawing-room, where Jos had fallen asleep with great comfort after dinner, Amelia said with rather a faltering voice to Major Dobbin--
"I have to beg your pardon for something."
"About what?" said he.
"About--about that little square piano.
I never thanked you for it when you gave it me, many, many years ago, before I was married.
I thought somebody else had given it.
Thank you, William."
She held out her hand, but the poor little woman's heart was bleeding; and as for her eyes, of course they were at their work.
But William could hold no more.
"Amelia, Amelia," he said,
"I did buy it for you.
I loved you then as I do now.
I must tell you.
I think I loved you from the first minute that I saw you, when George brought me to your house, to show me the Amelia whom he was engaged to.
You were but a girl, in white, with large ringlets; you came down singing--do you remember?--and we went to Vauxhall.
Since then I have thought of but one woman in the world, and that was you.
I think there is no hour in the day has passed for twelve years that I haven't thought of you.
I came to tell you this before I went to India, but you did not care, and I hadn't the heart to speak.
You did not care whether I stayed or went."
"I was very ungrateful," Amelia said.
"No, only indifferent," Dobbin continued desperately.
"I have nothing to make a woman to be otherwise.
I know what you are feeling now.
You are hurt in your heart at the discovery about the piano, and that it came from me and not from George.
I forgot, or I should never have spoken of it so.
It is for me to ask your pardon for being a fool for a moment, and thinking that years of constancy and devotion might have pleaded with you."
"It is you who are cruel now," Amelia said with some spirit.
"George is my husband, here and in heaven.
How could I love any other but him?