"I have had much to annoy me, mother," Pen said with a throbbing breast: and as he spoke Helen's heart began to beat so, that she sate almost dead and speechless with terror.
Warrington, Laura, and Major Pendennis, all remained breathless, aware that a storm was about to break.
"I have had letters from London," Arthur continued, "and one that has given me more pain than I ever had in my life. It tells me that former letters of mine have been intercepted and purloined away from me; that—that a young creature who has shown the greatest love and care for me, has been most cruelly used by—by you, mother."
"For God's sake stop," cried out Warrington. "She's ill—don't you see she is ill?"
"Let him go on," said the widow faintly.
"Let him go on and kill her," said Laura, rushing up to her mother's side. "Speak on, sir, and see her die."
"It is you who are cruel," cried Pen, more exasperated and more savage, because his own heart, naturally soft and weak, revolted indignantly at the injustice of the very suffering which was laid at his door. "It is you that are cruel, who attribute all this pain to me: it is you who are cruel with your wicked reproaches, your wicked doubts of me, your wicked persecutions of those who love me—yes, those who love me, and who brave every thing for me, and whom you despise and trample upon because they are of lower degree than you. Shall I tell you what I will do—what I am resolved to do, now that I know what your conduct has been? I will, go back to this poor girl whom you turned out of my doors, and ask her to come back and share my home with me. I'll defy the pride which persecutes her, and the pitiless suspicion which insults her and me."
"Do you mean, Pen, that you—" here the widow, with eager eyes and out-stretched hands, was breaking out, but Laura stopped her; "Silence, hush, dear mother," she cried and the widow hushed. Savagely as Pen spoke, she was only too eager to hear what more he had to say, "Go on, Arthur, go on, Arthur," was all she said, almost swooning away as she spoke.
"By Gad, I say he shan't go on, or I won't hear him, by Gad," the major said, trembling too in his wrath. "If you choose, sir, after all we've done for you, after all I've done for you myself, to insult your mother and disgrace your name, by allying yourself with a low-born kitchen-girl, go and do it, by Gad, but let us, ma'am have no more to do with him. I wash my hands of you, sir—I wash my hands of you. I'm an old fellow—I ain't long for this world. I come of as ancient and honorable a family as any in England, by Gad, and I did hope, before I went off the hooks, by Gad, that the fellow that I'd liked, and brought up, and nursed through life, by Jove, would do something to show me that our name—yes, the name of Pendennis, by Gad, was left undishonored behind us, but if he won't, dammy, I say, amen. By G—, both my father and my brother Jack were the proudest men in England, and I never would have thought that there would come this disgrace to my name—never—and—and I'm ashamed that it's Arthur Pendennis." The old fellow's voice here broke off into a sob: it was a second time that Arthur had brought tears from those wrinkled lids.
The sound of his breaking voice stayed Pen's anger instantly, and he stopped pacing the room, as he had been doing until that moment. Laura was by Helen's sofa; and Warrington had remained hitherto an almost silent, but not uninterested spectator of the family storm. As the parties were talking, it had grown almost dark; and after the lull which succeeded the passionate outbreak of the major, George's deep voice, as it here broke trembling into the twilight room, was heard with no small emotion by all.