Young Pen saw by his uncle's face that something had happened at home. "Is there anything the matter with—my mother?" he said. He could hardly speak for emotion and the tears which were ready to start.
"No," said the Major, "but your father's very ill. Go and pack your trunk directly; I have got a post-chaise at the gate."
Pen went off quickly to his boarding-house to do as his uncle bade him; and the Doctor, now left alone in the schoolroom, came out to shake hands with the Major.
"There is nothing serious, I hope," said the Doctor. "It is a pity to take the boy otherwise. He is a good boy, rather idle and unenergetic, but an honest, gentleman-like little fellow, though I can't get him to construe as I wish. Won't you come in and have some luncheon? My wife will be very happy to see you."
But Major Pendennis declined the luncheon. He said his brother was very ill, and had had a fit the day before, and it was a great question if they should see him alive.
"There's no other son, is there?" said the Doctor. The Major answered "No."
"And there's a good eh—a good eh—property, I believe?" asked the other in an off-hand way.
"H'm—so-so," said the Major. Whereupon this colloquy came to an end. And Arthur Pendennis got into a post-chaise with his uncle, never to come back to school any more.
As the chaise drove through Clavering, the ostler standing whistling under the archway of the Clavering Arms winked to the postilion ominously, as much as to say all was over. The gardener's wife came and opened the lodge-gates and let the travellers through with a silent shake of the head. All the blinds were down at Fair-Oaks; and the face of the old footman was as blank when he let them in. Arthur's face was white, too, with terror more than with grief. Whatever of warmth and love the deceased man might have had, and he adored his wife, and loved and admired his son with all his heart, he had shut them up within himself; nor had the boy ever been able to penetrate that frigid outward barrier.
A little girl, who was Mrs. Pendennis's adopted daughter, the child of a dear old friend, peered for a moment under the blinds as the chaise came up, opened the door from the stairs into the hall, and there taking Arthur's hand silently as he stooped down to kiss her, led him upstairs to his mother. What passed between that lady and the boy is not of import; a veil should be thrown over those sacred emotions of love and grief.