He remembered George pacing up and down the room, and biting his nails,
and swearing that the Governor must come round, and that if he didn't,
he didn't care a straw, on the day before he was married. He could
fancy him walking in, banging the door of Dobbin's room, and his own
hard by-"You ain't got young," John said, calmly surveying his friend of former
days.
Dobbin laughed. "Ten years and a fever don't make a man young, John,"
he said. "It is you that are always young--no, you are always old."
"What became of Captain Osborne's widow?" John said. "Fine young
fellow that. Lord, how he used to spend his money. He never came back
after that day he was marched from here. He owes me three pound at
this minute. Look here, I have it in my book. 'April 10, 1815,
Captain Osborne: '3 pounds.' I wonder whether his father would pay
me," and so saying, John of the Slaughters' pulled out the very morocco
pocket-book in which he had noted his loan to the Captain, upon a
greasy faded page still extant, with many other scrawled memoranda
regarding the bygone frequenters of the house.
Having inducted his customer into the room, John retired with perfect
calmness; and Major Dobbin, not without a blush and a grin at his own
absurdity, chose out of his kit the very smartest and most becoming
civil costume he possessed, and laughed at his own tanned face and grey
hair, as he surveyed them in the dreary little toilet-glass on the
dressing-table.
"I'm glad old John didn't forget me," he thought. "She'll know me, too,
I hope." And he sallied out of the inn, bending his steps once more in
the direction of Brompton.
Every minute incident of his last meeting with Amelia was present to
the constant man's mind as he walked towards her house. The arch and
the Achilles statue were up since he had last been in Piccadilly; a
hundred changes had occurred which his eye and mind vaguely noted. He
began to tremble as he walked up the lane from Brompton, that
well-remembered lane leading to the street where she lived. Was she
going to be married or not? If he were to meet her with the little
boy--Good God, what should he do? He saw a woman coming to him with a
child of five years old--was that she? He began to shake at the mere
possibility. When he came up to the row of houses, at last, where she
lived, and to the gate, he caught hold of it and paused. He might have
heard the thumping of his own heart. "May God Almighty bless her,
whatever has happened," he thought to himself. "Psha! she may be gone
from here," he said and went in through the gate.