The vow which Clive had uttered, never to share bread with his mother-in-law, or sleep under the same roof with her, was broken on the very next day. A stronger will than the young man’s intervened, and he had to confess the impotence of his wrath before that superior power. In the forenoon of the day following that unlucky dinner, I went with my friend to the banking-house whither Mr. Luce’s letter directed us, and carried away with me the principal sum, in which the Campaigner said Colonel Newcome was indebted to her, with the interest accurately computed and reimbursed. Clive went off with a pocketful of money to the dear old Poor Brother of Grey Friars; and he promised to return with his father, and dine with my wife in Queen Square. I had received a letter from Laura by the morning’s post, announcing her return by the express train from Newcome, and desiring that a spare bedroom should be got ready for a friend who accompanied her.
On reaching Howland Street, Clive’s door was opened, rather to my surprise, by the rebellious maid-servant who had received her dismissal on the previous night; and the doctor’s carriage drove up as she was still speaking to me. The polite practitioner sped upstairs to Mrs. Newcome’s apartment. Mrs. Mackenzie, in a robe-de-chambre and cap very different from yesterday’s, came out eagerly to meet the physician on the landing. Ere they had been a quarter of an hour together, arrived a cab, which discharged an elderly person with her bandbox and bundles; I had no difficulty in recognising a professional nurse in the new-comer. She too disappeared into the sick-room, and left me sitting in the neighbouring chamber, the scene of the last night’s quarrel.
Hither presently came to me Maria, the maid. She said she had not the heart to go away now she was wanted; that they had passed a sad night, and that no one had been to bed. Master Tommy was below, and the landlady taking care of him: the landlord had gone out for the nurse. Mrs. Clive had been taken bad after Mr. Clive went away the night before. Mrs. Mackenzie had gone to the poor young thing, and there she went on, crying, and screaming, and stamping, as she used to do in her tantrums, which was most cruel of her, and made Mrs. Clive so ill. And presently the young lady began: my informant told me. She came screaming into the sitting-room, her hair over her shoulders, calling out she was deserted, deserted, and would like to die. She was like a mad woman for some time. She had fit after fit of hysterics: and there was her mother, kneeling, and crying, and calling out to her darling child to calm herself;—which it was all her own doing, and she had much better have held her own tongue, remarked the resolute Maria. I understood only too well from the girl’s account what had happened, and that Clive, if resolved to part with his mother-in-law, should not have left her, even for twelve hours, in possession of his house. The wretched woman, whose Self was always predominant, and who, though she loved her daughter after her own fashion, never forgot her own vanity or passion, had improved the occasion of Clive’s absence: worked upon her child’s weakness, jealousy, ill-health, and driven her, no doubt, into the fever which yonder physician was called to quell.
The doctor presently enters to write a prescription, followed by Clive’s mother-in-law, who had cast Rosa’s fine Cashmere shawl over her shoulders, to hide her disarray. “You here still, Mr. Pendennis!” she exclaims. She knew I was there. Had not she changed her dress in order to receive me?
“I have to speak to you for two minutes on important business, and then I shall go,” I replied gravely.
“Oh, sir! to what a scene you have come! To what a state has Clive’s conduct last night driven my darling child!”
As the odious woman spoke so, the doctor’s keen eyes, looking up from the prescription, caught mine. “I declare before Heaven, madam,” I said hotly, “I believe you yourself are the cause of your daughter’s present illness, as you have been of the misery of my friends.”
“Is this, sir,” she was breaking out, “is this language to be used to——?”
“Madam, will you be silent?” I said. “I am come to bid you farewell on the part of those whom your temper has driven into infernal torture. I am come to pay you every halfpenny of the sum which my friends do not owe you, but which they restore. Here is the account, and here is the money to settle it. And I take this gentleman to witness, to whom, no doubt, you have imparted what you call your wrongs” (the doctor smiled, and shrugged his shoulders) “that now you are paid.”
“A widow—a poor, lonely, insulted widow!” cries the Campaigner, with trembling hands taking possession of the notes.