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.
"It is number 92, up four pair of stairs," Jos said, perhaps not very willing to ascend the steps again; but he placed himself in the window of his drawing-room, which commands the place on which the Elephant stands, and saw the pair marching through the market.
It was as well that Becky saw them too from her garret, for she and the two students were chattering and laughing there; they had been joking about the appearance of Becky's grandpapa--whose arrival and departure they had witnessed--but she had time to dismiss them, and have her little room clear before the landlord of the Elephant, who knew that Mrs. Osborne was a great favourite at the Serene Court, and respected her accordingly, led the way up the stairs to the roof story, encouraging Miladi and the Herr Major as they achieved the ascent.
"Gracious lady, gracious lady!" said the landlord, knocking at Becky's door; he had called her Madame the day before, and was by no means courteous to her.
"Who is it?" Becky said, putting out her head, and she gave a little scream.
There stood Emmy in a tremble, and Dobbin, the tall Major, with his cane.
He stood still watching, and very much interested at the scene; but Emmy sprang forward with open arms towards Rebecca, and forgave her at that moment, and embraced her and kissed her with all her heart.
Ah, poor wretch, when was your lip pressed before by such pure kisses?
CHAPTER LXVI
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.