“I should be very glad, indeed, if Mr. Warrington would come,” remarked Laura to the teaspoon.
“Would you?” said George.
She looked up and said, “Yes.” Their eyes met. “I will go anywhere you ask me, or do anything,” said George, lowly, and forcing out the words as if they gave him pain.
Old Pendennis was delighted; the affectionate old creature clapped his hands and cried “Bravo! bravo! It’s a bargain—a bargain, begad! Shake hands on it, young people!” And Laura, with a look full of tender brightness, put out her hand to Warrington. He took hers; his face indicated a strange agitation. He seemed to be about to speak, when from Pen’s neighbouring room Helen entered, looking at them as the candle which she held lighted her pale frightened face.
Laura blushed more red than ever and withdrew her hand.
“What is it?” Helen asked.
“It’s a bargain we have been making, my dear creature,” said the Major in his most caressing voice. “We have just bound over Mr. Warrington in a promise to come abroad with us.”
“Indeed!” Helen said.
CHAPTER LVI.
In which Fanny engages a new Medical Man
Could Helen have suspected that, with Pen’s returning strength, his unhappy partiality for little Fanny would also reawaken? Though she never spoke a word regarding that young person, after her conversation with the Major, and though, to all appearances, she utterly ignored Fanny’s existence, yet Mrs. Pendennis kept a particularly close watch upon all Master Arthur’s actions; on the plea of ill-health would scarcely let him out of her sight; and was especially anxious that he should be spared the trouble of all correspondence for the present at least. Very likely Arthur looked at his own letters with some tremor; very likely, as he received them at the family table, feeling his mother’s watch upon him (though the good soul’s eye seemed fixed upon her teacup or her book), he expected daily to see a little handwriting, which he would have known, though he had never seen it yet, and his heart beat as he received the letters to his address. Was he more pleased or annoyed, that, day after day, his expectations were not realised; and was his mind relieved, that there came no letter from Fanny? Though, no doubt, in these matters, when Lovelace is tired of Clarissa (or the contrary) it is best for both parties to break at once, and each, after the failure of the attempt at union, to go his own way, and pursue his course through life solitary; yet our self-love, or our pity, or our sense of decency, does not like that sudden bankruptcy. Before we announce to the world that our firm of Lovelace and Co. can’t meet its engagements, we try to make compromises: we have mournful meetings of partners: we delay the putting up of the shutters, and the dreary announcement of the failure. It must come: but we pawn our jewels to keep things going a little longer. On the whole, I dare say, Pen was rather annoyed that he had no remonstrances from Fanny. What! could she part from him, and never so much as once look round? could she sink, and never once hold a little hand out, or cry, “Help, Arthur?” Well, well: they don’t all go down who venture on that voyage. Some few drown when the vessel founders; but most are only ducked, and scramble to shore. And the reader’s experience of A. Pendennis, Esquire, of the Upper Temple, will enable him to state whether that gentleman belonged to the class of persons who were likely to sink or to swim.