Vanity Fair (illustrated)

Becky liked the life. She was at home with everybody in the place, pedlars, punters, tumblers, students and all. She was of a wild, roving nature, inherited from father and mother, who were both Bohemians, by taste and circumstance; if a lord was not by, she would talk to his courier with the greatest pleasure; the din, the stir, the drink, the smoke, the tattle of the Hebrew pedlars, the solemn, braggart ways of the poor tumblers, the sournois talk of the gambling-table officials, the songs and swagger of the students, and the general buzz and hum of the place had pleased and tickled the little woman, even when her luck was down and she had not wherewithal to pay her bill. How pleasant was all the bustle to her now that her purse was full of the money which little Georgy had won for her the night before!

As Jos came creaking and puffing up the final stairs, and was speechless when he got to the landing, and began to wipe his face and then to look for No. 92, the room where he was directed to seek for the person he wanted, the door of the opposite chamber, No. 90, was open, and a student, in jack-boots and a dirty schlafrock, was lying on the bed smoking a long pipe; whilst another student in long yellow hair and a braided coat, exceeding smart and dirty too, was actually on his knees at No. 92, bawling through the keyhole supplications to the person within.

“Go away,” said a well-known voice, which made Jos thrill, “I expect somebody; I expect my grandpapa. He mustn’t see you there.”

“Angel Englanderinn!” bellowed the kneeling student with the whity-brown ringlets and the large finger-ring, “do take compassion upon us. Make an appointment. Dine with me and Fritz at the inn in the park. We will have roast pheasants and porter, plum-pudding and French wine. We shall die if you don’t.”

“That we will,” said the young nobleman on the bed; and this colloquy Jos overheard, though he did not comprehend it, for the reason that he had never studied the language in which it was carried on.

“Newmero kattervang dooze, si vous plait,” Jos said in his grandest manner, when he was able to speak.

“Quater fang tooce!” said the student, starting up, and he bounced into his own room, where he locked the door, and where Jos heard him laughing with his comrade on the bed.

The gentleman from Bengal was standing, disconcerted by this incident, when the door of the 92 opened of itself and Becky’s little head peeped out full of archness and mischief. She lighted on Jos. “It’s you,” she said, coming out. “How I have been waiting for you! Stop! not yet - in one minute you shall come in.” In that instant she put a rouge-pot, a brandy bottle, and a plate of broken meat into the bed, gave one smooth to her hair, and finally let in her visitor.

She had, by way of morning robe, a pink domino, a trifle faded and soiled, and marked here and there with pomaturn; but her arms shone out from the loose sleeves of the dress very white and fair, and it was tied round her little waist so as not ill to set off the trim little figure of the wearer. She led Jos by the hand into her garret. “Come in,” she said. “Come and talk to me. Sit yonder on the chair”; and she gave the civilian’s hand a little squeeze and laughingly placed him upon it. As for herself, she placed herself on the bed - not on the bottle and plate, you may be sure - on which Jos might have reposed, had he chosen that seat; and so there she sat and talked with her old admirer. “How little years have changed you,” she said with a look of tender interest. “I should have known you anywhere. What a comfort it is amongst strangers to see once more the frank honest face of an old friend!”

The frank honest face, to tell the truth, at this moment bore any expression but one of openness and honesty: it was, on the contrary, much perturbed and puzzled in look. Jos was surveying the queer little apartment in which he found his old flame. One of her gowns hung over the bed, another depending from a hook of the door; her bonnet obscured half the looking-glass, on which, too, lay the prettiest little pair of bronze boots; a French novel was on the table by the bedside, with a candle, not of wax. Becky thought of popping that into the bed too, but she only put in the little paper night-cap with which she had put the candle out on going to sleep.

“I should have known you anywhere,” she continued; “a woman never forgets some things. And you were the first man I ever - I ever saw.”

“Was I really?” said Jos. “God bless my soul, you - you don’t say so.”

“When I came with your sister from Chiswick, I was scarcely more than a child,” Becky said. “How is that, dear love? Oh, her husband was a sad wicked man, and of course it was of me that the poor dear was jealous. As if I cared about him, heigho! when there was somebody - but no - don’t let us talk of old times”; and she passed her handkerchief with the tattered lace across her eyelids.