“I will go to him this very day, Mr. Pendennis! I will go to my dear, dear uncle. I cannot bear to think of him in that place,” cried the young lady, the tears starting into her honest eyes. “It was the will of Heaven. Oh, God be thanked for it! Had we found my grandmamma’s letter earlier, Barnes would have paid the legacy immediately, and the money would have gone in that dreadful bankruptcy. I will go to Barnes to-day. Will you come with me? Won’t you come to your old friends? We may be at his—at Clive’s house this evening; and oh, praise be to God! there need be no more want in his family.”
“My dear friend, I will go with you round the world on such an errand,” I said, kissing her hand. How beautiful she looked; the generous colour rose in her face, her voice thrilled with happiness. The music of Christmas church bells leaped up at this moment with joyful gratulations; the face of the old house, before which we stood talking, shone out in the morning sun.
“You will come I thank you! I must run and tell Madame de Florac,” cried the happy young lady, and we entered the house together. “How came you to be kissing Ethel’s hand, sir; and what is the meaning of this early visit?” asks Mrs. Laura, as soon as I had returned to my own apartments.
“Martha, get me a carpet-bag! I am going to London in an hour,” cries Mr. Pendennis. If I had kissed Ethel’s hand just now, delighted at the news which she brought to me, was not one a thousand times dearer to me, as happy as her friend? I know who prayed with a thankful heart that day as we sped, in the almost solitary train, towards London.
CHAPTER LXXVIII.
In which the Author goes on a Pleasant Errand
Before I parted with Miss Newcome at the station, she made me promise to see her on the morrow at an early hour at her brother’s house; and having bidden her farewell and repaired to my own solitary residence, which presented but a dreary aspect on that festive day, I thought I would pay Howland Street a visit; and, if invited, eat my Christmas dinner with Clive.
I found my friend at home, and at work still, in spite of the day. He had promised a pair of pictures to a dealer for the morrow. “He pays me pretty well, and I want all the money he will give me, Pen,” the painter said, rubbing on at his canvas. “I am pretty easy in my mind since I have become acquainted with a virtuous dealer. I sell myself to him, body and soul, for some half-dozen pounds a week. I know I can get my money, and he is regularly supplied with his pictures. But for Rosey’s illness we might carry on well enough.”
Rosey’s illness? I was sorry to hear of that: and poor Clive, entering into particulars, told me how he had spent upon doctors rather more than a fourth of his year’s earnings. “There is a solemn fellow, to whom the women have taken a fancy, who lives but a few doors off in Gower Street; and who, for his last sixteen visits, has taken sixteen pounds sixteen shillings out of my pocket, and as if guineas grew there, with the most admirable gravity. He talks the fashions to my mother-in-law. My poor wife hangs on every word he says. Look! There is his carriage coming up now! and there is his fee, confound him!” says Clive, casting a rueful look towards a little packet lying upon the mantelpiece, by the side of that skinned figure in plaster of Paris which we have seen in most studios.
I looked out of window and saw a certain Fashionable Doctor tripping out of his chariot; that Ladies’ Delight, who has subsequently migrated from Bloomsbury to Belgravia; and who has his polite foot now in a thousand nurseries and boudoirs. What Confessors were in old times, Quackenboss and his like are in our Protestant country. What secrets they know! into what mystic chambers do they not enter! I suppose the Campaigner made a special toilette to receive her fashionable friend, for that lady attired in considerable splendour, and with the precious jewel on her head, which I remembered at Boulogne, came into the studio two minutes after the Doctor’s visit was announced, and made him a low curtsey. I cannot describe the overpowering civilities of that woman.
Clive was very gracious and humble to her. He adopted a lively air in addressing her—“Must work, you know, Christmas Day and all—for the owner of the pictures will call for them in the morning. Bring me a good report about Rosey, Mrs. Mackenzie, please—and if you will have the kindness to look by the écorché there, you will see that little packet which I have left for you.” Mrs. Mack, advancing, took the money. “I thought that plaster of Paris figure was not the only écorché in the room.”