As Fanny saw the two ladies and the anxious countenance of the eider, 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 afterwards; 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.
“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 — Oh, 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 hurray 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 in to 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.”
“Oh, 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 farther room.
Mrs. Pendennis was ensconced pale and solemn in a great chair by Pen’s bedside. 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 travelled. 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 prying into his face, to know if there is hope for the sick infant that cannot 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 heartbroken 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 everything 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 bedroom), 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-inlaw had brought the poor little devil’s bonnet and shawl out, flung them upon the study-table. Did Goodenough know anything 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 humour will arise, and such smiles will pass, to satirise the gloom, as it were, and to make it more gloomy!
“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 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 whom he had there, for 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 behaviour 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 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 favour 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 mos............