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 travelling 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 penna,” 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 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 LIII.
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 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.