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The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2

W >> William Makepeace Thackeray >> The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2




Wagg said, "It's a bailiff come down to nab the major;" but nobody
laughed at the pleasantry.

"Hullo! What's the matter, Pendennis?" cried Lord Steyne, with his
strident voice; "any thing wrong?"

"It's--it's my boy that's _dead_," said the major, and burst into a
sob--the old man was quite overcome.

"Not dead, my lord; but very ill when I left London," Mr. Bows said,
in a low voice.

A britzka came up at this moment as the three men were speaking. The
peer looked at his watch. "You've twenty minutes to catch the
mail-train. Jump in, Pendennis; and drive like h--, sir, do
you hear?"

The carriage drove off swiftly with Pendennis and his companions, and
let us trust that the oath will be pardoned to the Marquis of Steyne.

The major drove rapidly from the station to the Temple, and found a
traveling carriage already before him, and blocking up the narrow
Temple Lane. Two ladies got out of it, and were asking their way of
the porters; the major looked by chance at the panel of the carriage,
and saw the worn-out crest of the eagle looking at the sun, and the
motto, "nec tenui pennâ," painted beneath. It was his brother's old
carriage, built many, many years ago. It was Helen and Laura that were
asking their way to poor Pen's room.

He ran up to them; hastily clasped his sister's arm and kissed her
hand; and the three entered into Lamb-court, and mounted the long,
gloomy stair.

They knocked very gently at the door, on which Arthur's name was
written, and it was opened by Fanny Bolton.





CHAPTER XIV.

A CRITICAL CHAPTER.


As Fanny saw the two ladies and the anxious countenance of the elder,
who regarded her with a look of inscrutable alarm and terror, the poor
girl at once knew that Pen's mother was before her; there was a
resemblance between the widow's haggard eyes and Arthur's as he tossed
in his bed in fever. Fanny looked wistfully at Mrs. Pendennis and at
Laura afterward; there was no more expression in the latter's face
than if it had been a mass of stone. Hard-heartedness and gloom dwelt
on the figures of both the new comers; neither showed any the faintest
gleam of mercy or sympathy for Fanny. She looked desperately from them
to the major behind them. Old Pendennis dropped his eyelids, looking
up ever so stealthily from under them at Arthur's poor little nurse.

[Illustration]

"I--I wrote to you yesterday, if you please, ma'am," Fanny said,
trembling in every limb as she spoke; and as pale as Laura, whose sad
menacing face looked over Mrs. Pendennis's shoulder.

"Did you, madam?" Mrs. Pendennis said, "I suppose I may now relieve
you from nursing my son. I am his mother, you understand."

"Yes, ma'am. I--this is the way to his--O, wait a minute," cried out
Fanny. "I must prepare you for his--"

The widow, whose face had been hopelessly cruel and ruthless, here
started back with a gasp and a little cry, which she speedily
stifled. "He's been so since yesterday," Fanny said, trembling very
much, and with chattering teeth.

A horrid shriek of laughter came out of Pen's room, whereof the door
was open; and, after several shouts, the poor wretch began to sing a
college drinking song, and then to hurra and to shout as if he was in
the midst of a wine party, and to thump with his fist against the
wainscot. He was quite delirious.

"He does not know me, ma'am," Fanny said.

"Indeed. Perhaps he will know his mother; let me pass, if you please,
and go into him." And the widow hastily pushed by little Fanny, and
through the dark passage which led into Pen's sitting-room.

Laura sailed by Fanny, too, without a word; and Major Pendennis
followed them. Fanny sat down on a bench in the passage, and cried,
and prayed as well as she could. She would have died for him; and they
hated her. They had not a word of thanks or kindness for her, the fine
ladies. She sate there in the passage, she did not know how long. They
never came out to speak to her. She sate there until doctor Goodenough
came to pay his second visit that day; he found the poor little thing
at the door.

"What, nurse? How's your patient?" asked the good-natured doctor. "Has
he had any rest?"

"Go and ask them. They're inside," Fanny answered.

"Who? his mother?"

Fanny nodded her head and didn't speak.

"You must go to bed yourself, my poor little maid," said the doctor.
"You will be ill too, if you don't."

"O, mayn't I come and see him: mayn't I come and see him! I--I--love
him so," the little girl said; and as she spoke she fell down on her
knees and clasped hold of the doctor's hand in such an agony that to
see her melted the kind physician's heart, and caused a mist to come
over his spectacles.

"Pooh, pooh! Nonsense! Nurse, has he taken his draught? Has he had any
rest? Of course you must come and see him. So must I."

"They'll let me sit here, won't they, sir? I'll never make no noise. I
only ask to stop here," Fanny said. On which the doctor called her a
stupid little thing; put her down upon the bench where Pen's printer's
devil used to sit so many hours; tapped her pale cheek with his
finger, and bustled into the further room.

Mrs. Pendennis was ensconced, pale and solemn, in a great chair by
Pen's bed-side. Her watch was on the bed-table by Pen's medicines. Her
bonnet and cloaks were laid in the window. She had her Bible in her
lap, without which she never traveled. Her first movement, after
seeing her son, had been to take Fanny's shawl and bonnet which were
on his drawers, and bring them out and drop them down upon his
study-table. She had closed the door upon Major Pendennis, and Laura
too; and taken possession of her son.

She had had a great doubt and terror lest Arthur should not know her;
but that pang was spared to her, in part at least. Pen knew his mother
quite well, and familiarly smiled and nodded at her. When she came in,
he instantly fancied that they were at home at Fairoaks; and began to
talk and chatter and laugh in a rambling wild way. Laura could hear
him outside. His laughter shot shafts of poison into her heart. It was
true then. He had been guilty--and with _that_ creature!--an intrigue
with a servant maid; and she had loved him--and he was dying most
likely--raving and unrepentant. The major now and then hummed out a
word of remark or consolation, which Laura scarce heard. A dismal
sitting it was for all parties; and when Goodenough appeared, he came
like an angel into the room.

It is not only for the sick man, it is for the sick man's friends that
the doctor comes. His presence is often as good for them as for the
patient, and they long for him yet more eagerly. How we have all
watched after him! what an emotion the thrill of his carriage-wheels
in the street, and at length at the door, has made us feel! how we
hang upon his words, and what a comfort we get from a smile or two, if
he can vouchsafe that sunshine to lighten our darkness! Who hasn't
seen the mother praying into his face, to know if there is hope for
the sick infant that can not speak, and that lies yonder, its little
frame battling with fever? Ah, how she looks into his eyes! What
thanks if there is light there; what grief and pain if he casts them
down, and dares not say "hope!" Or it is the house-father who is
stricken. The terrified wife looks on, while the physician feels his
patient's wrist, smothering her agonies, as the children have been
called upon to stay their plays and their talk. Over the patient in
the fever, the wife expectant, the children unconscious, the doctor
stands as if he were Fate, the dispenser of life and death: he _must_
let the patient off this time; the woman prays so for his respite! One
can fancy how awful the responsibility must be to a conscientious man:
how cruel the feeling that he has given the wrong remedy, or that it
might have been possible to do better: how harassing the sympathy with
survivors, if the case is unfortunate--how immense the delight
of victory!

Having passed through a hasty ceremony of introduction to the new
comers, of whose arrival he had been made aware by the heart-broken
little nurse in waiting without, the doctor proceeded to examine the
patient, about whose condition of high fever there could be no
mistake, and on whom he thought it necessary to exercise the strongest
antiphlogistic remedies in his power. He consoled the unfortunate
mother as best he might; and giving her the most comfortable
assurances on which he could venture, that there was no reason to
despair yet, that every thing might still be hoped from his youth, the
strength of his constitution, and so forth, and having done his utmost
to allay the horrors of the alarmed matron, he took the elder
Pendennis aside into the vacant room (Warrington's bed-room), for the
purpose of holding a little consultation.

The case was very critical. The fever, if not stopped, might and would
carry off the young fellow: he must be bled forthwith: the mother
must be informed of this necessity. Why was that other young lady
brought with her? She was out of place in a sick room.

"And there was another woman still, be hanged to it!" the major said,
"the--the little person who opened the door." His sister-in-law had
brought the poor little devil's bonnet and shawl out, and flung them
upon the study-table. Did Goodenough know any thing about the--the
little person? "I just caught a glimpse of her as we passed in," the
major said, "and begad she was uncommonly nice-looking." The doctor
looked queer: the doctor smiled--in the very gravest moments, with
life and death pending, such strange contrasts and occasions of humor
will arise, and such smiles will pass, to satirize the gloom, as it
were, and to make it more gloomy!

[Illustration]

"I have it," at last he said, re-entering the study;
and he wrote a couple of notes hastily at the table there, and sealed
one of them. Then, taking up poor Fanny's shawl and bonnet, and the
notes, he went out in the passage to that poor little messenger, and
said, "Quick, nurse; you must carry this to the surgeon, and bid him
come instantly: and then go to my house, and ask for my servant,
Harbottle, and tell him to get this prescription prepared; and wait
until I--until it is ready. It may take a little time in preparation."

So poor Fanny trudged away with her two notes, and found the
apothecary, who lived in the Strand hard by, and who came straightway,
his lancet in his pocket, to operate on his patient; and then Fanny
made for the doctor's house, in Hanover-square.

The doctor was at home again before the prescription was made up,
which took Harbottle, his servant, such a long time in compounding:
and, during the remainder of Arthur's illness, poor Fanny never made
her appearance in the quality of nurse at his chambers any more. But
for that day and the next, a little figure might be seen lurking about
Pen's staircase--a sad, sad little face looked at and interrogated the
apothecary and the apothecary's boy, and the laundress, and the kind
physician himself, as they passed out of the chambers of the sick man.
And on the third day, the kind doctor's chariot stopped at Shepherd's
Inn, and the good, and honest, and benevolent man went into the
Porter's Lodge, and tended a little patient he had there, for whom the
best remedy he found was on the day when he was enabled to tell Fanny
Bolton that the crisis was over, and that there was at length every
hope for Arthur Pendennis.

J. Costigan, Esquire, late of her Majesty's service, saw the doctor's
carriage, and criticised its horses and appointments. "Green liveries,
bedad!" the general said, "and as foin a pair of high-stepping bee
horses as ever a gentleman need sit behoind, let alone a docthor.
There's no ind to the proide and ar'gance of them docthors
nowadays--not but that is a good one, and a scoientific cyarkter, and
a roight good fellow, bedad; and he's brought the poor little girl
well troo her faver, Bows, me boy;" and so pleased was Mr. Costigan
with the doctor's behavior and skill, that, whenever he met Dr.
Goodenough's carriage in future, he made a point of saluting it and
the physician inside, in as courteous and magnificent a manner, as if
Dr. Goodenough had been the Lord Liftenant himself, and Captain
Costigan had been in his glory in Phaynix Park.

The widow's gratitude to the physician knew no bounds--or scarcely any
bounds, at least. The kind gentleman laughed at the idea of taking a
fee from a literary man, or the widow of a brother practitioner; and she
determined when she got back to Fairoaks that she would send
Goodenough the silver-gilt vase, the jewel of the house, and the glory
of the late John Pendennis, preserved in green baize, and presented to
him at Bath, by the Lady Elizabeth Firebrace, on the recovery of her
son, the late Sir Anthony Firebrace, from the scarlet fever.
Hippocrates, Hygeia, King Bladud, and a wreath of serpents surmount
the cup to this day; which was executed in their finest manner, by
Messrs. Abednego, of Milsom-street; and the inscription was by Mr.
Birch tutor to the young baronet.

This priceless gem of art the widow determined to devote to Goodenough,
the preserver of her son; and there was scarcely any other
favor which her gratitude would not have conferred upon him, except
one, which he desired most, and which was that she should think a
little charitably and kindly of poor Fanny, of whose artless, sad
story, he had got something during his interviews with her, and of
whom he was induced to think very kindly--not being disposed, indeed,
to give much credit to Pen for his conduct in the affair, or not
knowing what that conduct had been. He knew, enough, however, to be
aware that the poor infatuated little girl was without stain as yet;
that while she had been in Pen's room it was to see the last of him,
as she thought, and that Arthur was scarcely aware of her presence; and
that she suffered under the deepest and most pitiful grief, at the
idea of losing him, dead or living.

But on the one or two occasions when Goodenough alluded to Fanny, the
widow's countenance, always soft and gentle, assumed an expression so
cruel and inexorable, that the doctor saw it was in vain to ask her
for justice or pity, and he broke off all entreaties, and ceased
making any further allusions regarding his little client. There is a
complaint which neither poppy, nor mandragora, nor all the drowsy
syrups of the East could allay, in the men in his time, as we are
informed by a popular poet of the days of Elizabeth; and which, when
exhibited in women, no medical discoveries or practice subsequent
--neither homoeopathy, nor hydropathy, nor mesmerism, nor Dr.
Simpson, nor Dr. Locock can cure, and that is--we won't call it
jealousy, but rather gently denominate rivalry and emulation,
in ladies.

Some of those mischievious and prosaic people who carp and calculate
at every detail of the romancer, and want to know, for instance, how
when the characters "in the Critic" are at a dead lock with their
daggers at each other's throats, they are to be got out of that
murderous complication of circumstances, may be induced to ask how it
was possible in a set of chambers in the Temple, consisting of three
rooms, two cupboards, a passage, and a coal-box, Arthur a sick
gentleman, Helen his mother, Laura her adopted daughter, Martha their
country attendant, Mrs. Wheezer a nurse from St. Bartholomew's
Hospital, Mrs. Flanagan an Irish laundress, Major Pendennis a retired
military officer, Morgan his valet, Pidgeon Mr. Arthur Pendennis's
boy, and others could be accommodated--the answer is given at once,
that almost every body in the Temple was out of town, and that there
was scarcely a single occupant of Pen's house in Lamb Court except
those who were occupied round the sick bed of the sick gentleman,
about whose fever we have not given a lengthy account, neither shall
we enlarge very much upon the more cheerful theme of his recovery.

Every body we have said was out of town, and of course such a
fashionable man as young Mr. Sibwright, who occupied chambers on the
second floor in Pen's staircase, could not be supposed to remain in
London. Mrs. Flanagan, Mr. Pendennis's laundress, was acquainted with
Mrs. Rouncy who did for Mr. Sibwright, and that gentleman's bedroom
was got ready for Miss Bell, or Mrs. Pendennis, when the latter should
be inclined to leave her son's sick room, to try and seek for a little
rest for herself.

If that young buck and flower of Baker-street, Percy Sibwright could
have known who was the occupant of his bedroom, how proud he would
have been of that apartment: what poems he would have written about
Laura! (several of his things have appeared in the annuals, and in
manuscript in the nobility's albums)--he was a Camford man and very
nearly got the English Prize Poem, it was said--Sibwright, however,
was absent and his bed given up to Miss Bell. It was the prettiest
little brass bed in the world, with chintz curtains lined with
pink--he had a mignonette box in his bedroom window, and the mere
sight of his little exhibition of shiny boots, arranged in trim rows
over his wardrobe, was a gratification to the beholder. He had a
museum of scent, pomatum, and bears' grease pots, quite curious to
examine, too; and a choice selection of portraits of females almost
always in sadness and generally in disguise or dishabille, glittered
round the neat walls of his elegant little bower of repose. Medora
with disheveled hair was consoling herself over her banjo for the
absence of her Conrad--the Princesse Fleur de Marie (of Rudolstein and
the Mystères de Paris) was sadly ogling out of the bars of her convent
cage, in which, poor prisoned bird, she was moulting away--Dorothea of
Don Quixote was washing her eternal feet:--in fine, it was such an
elegant gallery as became a gallant lover of the sex. And in
Sibwright's sitting-room, while there was quite an infantine law
library clad in skins of fresh new born calf, there was a tolerably
large collection of classical books which he could not read, and of
English and French works of poetry and fiction which he read a great
deal too much. His invitation cards of the past season still decorated
his looking glass: and scarce any thing told of the lawyer but the
wig-box beside the Venus upon the middle shelf of the bookcase, on
which the name of P. Sibwright, Esquire, was gilded.

With Sibwright in chambers was Mr. Bangham. Mr. Bangham was a sporting
man married to a rich widow. Mr. Bangham had no practice--did not come
to chambers thrice in a term: went a circuit for those mysterious
reasons which make men go circuit--and his room served as a great
convenience to Sibwright when that young gentleman gave his little
dinners. It must be confessed that these two gentlemen have nothing to
do with our history, will never appear in it again probably, but we
can not help glancing through their doors as they happen to be open to
us, and as we pass to Pen's rooms; as in the pursuit of our own
business in life through the Strand, at the Club, nay at Church
itself, we can not help peeping at the shops on the way, or at our
neighbor's dinner, or at the faces under the bonnets in the next pew.

Very many years after the circumstances about which we are at present
occupied, Laura with a blush and a laugh showing much humor owned to
having read a French novel once much in vogue, and when her husband
asked her, wondering where on earth she could have got such a volume,
she owned that it was in the Temple, when she lived in Mr. Percy
Sibwright's chambers.

"And, also, I never confessed," she said, "on that same occasion, what
I must now own to; that I opened the japanned box, and took out that
strange-looking wig inside it, and put it on and looked at myself in
the glass in it."

Suppose Percy Sibwright had come in at such a moment as that? What
would he have said--the enraptured rogue? What would have been all the
pictures of disguised beauties in his room compared to that living
one? Ah, we are speaking of old times, when Sibwright was a bachelor
and before he got a county court--when people were young--when _most_
people were young. Other people are young now; but we no more.

When Miss Laura played this prank with the wig, you can't suppose that
Pen could have been very ill up-stairs; otherwise, though she had
grown to care for him ever so little, common sense of feeling and
decorum would have prevented her from performing any tricks or trying
any disguises.

But all sorts of events had occurred in the course of the last few
days which had contributed to increase or account for her gayety, and
a little colony of the reader's old friends and acquaintances was by
this time established in Lamb Court, Temple, and round Pen's sick bed
there. First, Martha, Mrs. Pendennis's servant, had arrived from
Fairoaks, being summoned thence by the major, who justly thought her
presence would be comfortable and useful to her mistress and her young
master, for neither of whom the constant neighborhood of Mrs. Flanagan
(who during Pen's illness required more spirituous consolation than
ever to support her) could be pleasant. Martha then made her
appearance in due season to wait upon Mrs. Pendennis, nor did that
lady go once to bed until the faithful servant had reached her, when,
with a heart full of maternal thankfulness, she went and lay down upon
Warrington's straw mattress, and among his mathematical books as has
been already described.

It is true ere that day a great and delightful alteration in Pen's
condition had taken place. The fever, subjugated by Dr. Goodenough's
blisters, potions, and lancet, had left the young man, or only
returned at intervals of feeble intermittance; his wandering senses
had settled in his weakened brain: he had had time to kiss and bless
his mother for coming to him, and calling for Laura and his uncle (who
were both affected according to their different natures by his wan
appearance, his lean shrunken hands, his hollow eyes and voice, his
thin bearded face) to press their hands and thank them affectionately;
and after this greeting, and after they had been turned out of the
room by his affectionate nurse, he had sunk into a fine sleep which
had lasted for about sixteen hours, at the end of which period he
awoke calling out that he was very hungry. If it is hard to be ill and
to loathe food, oh, how pleasant to be getting well and to be
feeling hungry--_how_ hungry! Alas, the joys of convalescence become
feebler with increasing years, as other joys do--and then--and then
comes that illness when one does not convalesce at all.

On the day of this happy event, too, came another arrival in
Lambcourt. This was introduced into the Pen-Warrington sitting-room by
large puffs of tobacco smoke--the puffs of smoke were followed by an
individual with a cigar in his mouth, and a carpet bag under his arm--
this was Warrington, who had run back from Norfolk, when Mr. Bows
thoughtfully wrote to inform him of his friend's calamity. But he had
been from home when Bows's letter had reached his brother's house--
the Eastern Counties did not then boast of a railway (for we beg the
reader to understand that we only commit anachronisms when we choose,
and when by a daring violation of those natural laws some great
ethical truth is to be advanced)--in fine, Warrington only appeared
with the rest of the good luck upon the lucky day after Pen's
convalescence may have been said to have begun.

His surprise was, after all, not very great when he found the chambers
of his sick friend occupied, and his old acquaintance the major seated
demurely in an easy chair, (Warrington had let himself into the rooms
with his own pass-key), listening, or pretending to listen, to a young
lady who was reading to him a play of Shakspeare in a low sweet voice.
The lady stopped and started, and laid down her book, at the
apparition of the tall traveler with the cigar and the carpet-bag. He
blushed, he flung the cigar into the passage: he took off his hat, and
dropped that too, and going up to the major, seized that old
gentleman's hand, and asked questions about Arthur.

The major answered in a tremulous, though cheery voice--it was curious
how emotion seemed to olden him--and returning Warrington's pressure
with a shaking hand, told him the news--of Arthur's happy crisis, of
his mother's arrival--with her young charge--with Miss--

"You need not tell me her name," Mr. Warrington said with great
animation, for he was affected and elated with the thought of his
friend's recovery--"you need not tell me your name. I knew at once it
was Laura." And he held out his hand and took hers. Immense kindness
and tenderness gleamed from under his rough eyebrows, and shook his
voice as he gazed at her and spoke to her. "And this is Laura !" his
looks seemed to say. "And this is Warrington," the generous girl's
heart beat back. "Arthur's hero--the brave and the kind--he has come
hundreds of miles to succor him, when he heard of his friend's
misfortune!"

"Thank you, Mr. Warrington," was all that Laura said, however; and as
she returned the pressure of his kind hand, she blushed so, that she
was glad the lamp was behind her to conceal her flushing face.

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