Fenwick's Career

by Mrs. Humphry Ward

CHAPTER V

It was Christmas Eve, and the dark had fallen. The train from Euston had just drawn up in Windermere Station, and John Fenwick, carrying his bag, was making his way among the vehicles outside the station, inquiring whether any one was going in the direction of Great Langdale, who could give him a lift. He presently found a farmer's cart bound for a village on the road, and made a bargain with the lad driving it to carry him to his destination.

They set off in bitter weather. The driver was a farmer's son who had come to the station to fetch his small brother. Fenwick and he took the little school-boy between them, to protect him as best they could from the wind and sleet. They piled some empty sacks, from the back of the cart, on their knees and shoulders; and the old grey horse set forward cautiously, feeling its way down the many hills of the Ambleside road.

The night was not yet wholly in possession. The limestone road shone dimly white, the forms of the leafless trees passed them in a windy procession, and afar on the horizon, beyond the dark gulf of the lake, there was visible at intervals a persistent dimness, something less black than the sky above and the veiled earth below, which Fenwick knew must be the snowy tops of the mountains. But it was a twilight more mournful than a total darkness; the damp air was nipping cold, and every few minutes gusts of sleet drove in their faces.

The two brothers talked to each other sometimes, in a broad Westmoreland speech. To Fenwick the dialect of his childhood was already strange and disagreeable. So, too, was the wild roughness of the Northern night, the length of the road, the sense of increasing distance from all that most held his mind. He longed, indeed, to see Phoebe and the child, but it was as though he had wilfully set up some barrier between himself and them, which spoiled his natural pleasure. Moreover, he was afraid of Phoebe, of her quick jealous love, and of certain passionate possibilities in her character that he had long ago discerned. If she discovered that he had made a mystery of his marriage—that he had passed in London as unmarried? It was an ugly and uncomfortable 'if.' Did he shrink from the possible blow to her—or the possible trouble to himself? Well, she must not find it out! It had been a wretched sort of accident, and before it could do any harm it should be amended.

Suddenly, a sound of angry water. They were close on the lake, and waves driven by the wind were plashing on the shore. Across the lake, a light in a house-window shone through the storm, the only reminder of human life amid a dark wilderness of mountains. Wild sounds crashed through the trees; and accompanying the tumult of water came the rattle of a bitter rain lashing the road, the cart, and their bent shoulders.

'There'll not be a dry stitch on us soon,' said Fenwick, presently, to the young man beside him.

'Aye, it's dampish,' said his companion, cheerfully.

The caution of the adjective set Fenwick grinning. The North found and gripped him; these are not the ways of the South.

And in a moment the sense of contrast, thus provoked, had carried him far—out of the Westmoreland night, back to London, and his shabby studio in Bernard Street. There, throned on a low platform, sat Madame de Pastourelles; and to her right, himself, sitting crouched before his easel, working with all his eyes and all his mind. The memory of her was, as it were, physically stamped upon his sight, his hands; such an intensity of study had he given to every detail of her face and form. Did he like her? He didn't know. There were a number of curious resentments in his mind with regard to her. Several times in the course of their acquaintance she had cheapened or humiliated him in his own eyes; and the sensation had been of a sharpness as yet unknown to him.

Of course, there was in it, one way or another, an aristocratic insolence! There must be: to move so delicately and immaculately through life, with such superfine perceptions, must mean that you were brought up to scorn the common way, and those who walk in it. 'The poor in a lump are bad'—coarse and ill-mannered at any rate—that must be the real meaning of her soft dignity, so friendly yet so remote, her impossibly ethereal standards, her light words that so often abashed a man for no reasonable cause.

She had been sitting to him, off and on, for about six weeks. Originally she had meant him to make a three-hour sketch of her. He triumphed in the remembrance that she and Lord Findon had found the sketch so remarkable that, when he had timidly proposed a portrait in oils, Lord Findon himself had persuaded her to sit. Since that moment his work on the portrait, immediately begun, had absorbed him to such a degree that the 'Genius Loci,' still unfinished, had been put aside, and must have its last touches when he returned to town.

But in the middle of the sittings, Madame de Pastourelles being away, and he in a mood to destroy all that he had done, he had suddenly spent a stray earning on a railway ticket to Paris.

There—excitement!—illumination!—and a whole fresh growth of ambition! Some of the mid-century portraits in the Luxembourg, and in a loan exhibition then open in the Rue Royale, excited him so that he lost sleep and appetite. The work of Bastien-Lepage was also to be seen; and the air rang with the cries of Impressionism. But the beautiful surface of the older men held him. How to combine the breadth of the new with the keeping, the sheer pleasure of the old! He rushed home—aflame!—and fell to work again.

And now he found himself a little more able to cope with his sitter. He was in possession, at any rate, of fresh topics—need not feel himself so tongue-tied in the presence of this cosmopolitan culture of hers, which she did her feminine best to disguise—which nevertheless made the atmosphere of her personality. She had lived some six years in Paris, it appeared; and had known most of the chief artists and men of letters. Fenwick writhed under his ignorance of the French language; it was a disadvantage not to be made up.

However, he talked much, and sometimes arrogantly; he gave his views, compared one man with another; if he felt any diffidence, he showed little. And indeed she led him on. Upon his art he had a right to speak, and the keen intellectual interest she betrayed in his impressions—the three days impressions of a painter—stirred and flattered him.

But he made a great many rather ludicrous mistakes, inevitable to one who had just taken a first canter through the vast field of French art; mistakes in names and dates, in the order of men and generations. And when he made a blunder he was apt to stick to it absurdly, or excuse it elaborately. She soon gave up correcting him, even in the gentle, hesitating way she at first made use of. She said nothing; but there was sometimes mischief, perhaps mockery, in her eyes. Fenwick knew it; and would either make fresh plunges, or paint on in a sulky silence.

How on earth had she guessed the authorship of those articles in the Mirror? He supposed he must have talked the same kind of stuff to her. At any rate, she had made him feel in some intangible way that it seemed to her a dishonourable thing to be writing anonymous attacks upon a body from whom you were asking, or intending to ask, exhibition space for your pictures and the chance of selling your work. His authorship was never avowed between them. Nevertheless this criticism annoyed and pricked him. He said to himself that it was just like a woman—who always took the personal view. But he had not yet begun on his last two articles, which were overdue.

On one occasion, encouraged perhaps by some kindness of expression on her part, he had ventured an indirect question or two, meant to procure him some information about her past history and present way of life. She had rebuffed him at once; and he had said to himself fiercely that it was of course because he was a man of the people and she one of 'the upper ten.' He might paint her; but he must not presume to know her!

On the other hand, his mind was still warm with memories of her encouragement, her praise. Sometimes in their talks he would put the portrait aside, and fall to sketching for her—either to illustrate his memories of pictures, or things noticed in French life and landscapes. And as the charcoal worked; as he forgot himself in hurried speech, and those remarks fell from him which are the natural outcome of a painter's experience, vivacious also and touched with literature; then her brown eyes would lighten and soften, and for once his mind would feel exultant that it moved with hers on equal terms—nay, that he was teacher and she taught. Whenever there emerged in him the signs of that demonic something that makes greatness she would be receptive, eager, humble even. But again his commoner, coarser side, his mere lack of breeding, would reappear; and she would fall back on her cold or gentle defensiveness. Thus protected by what his wrath called 'airs,' she was a mystery to him, yet a mystery that tamed and curbed him. He had never dreamt that such women existed. His own views of women were those of the shopkeeping middle class, practical, selfish, or sensual. But he had been a reader of books; and through Madame de Pastourelles certain sublimities or delicacies of poetry began to seem to him either less fantastic or more real.

All the same:—he was not sure that he liked her, and while one hour he was all restlessness to resume his task, the next it was a relief to be temporarily quit of it. As for Lord Findon, except for a certain teasing vagueness on the business side of things, he had shown himself a good friend. Several times since the first variegated evening had Fenwick dined with them, mostly en famille. Lady Findon, indeed, had been away, nursing an invalid father; Madame de Pastourelles filled her place. The old fellow would talk freely—politics, connoisseurship, art. Fenwick too was allowed his head, and said his say; though always surrounded and sometimes chafing under that discipline of good society which is its only or its best justification. It flattered his vanity enormously, however, to be thus within touch of the inner circle in politics and art; for the Findons had relations and friends in all the foremost groups of both; and incidentally Fenwick, who had the grudges and some of the dreams of the democrat, was beginning to have a glimpse of the hidden springs and powers of English society—to his no small bewilderment often!

Great luck—he admitted—all this—for a nameless artist of the people, only six months in London. He owed it to Cuningham, and believed himself grateful. Cuningham was often at the Findons, made a point, indeed, of going. Was it to maintain his place with them, and to keep Fenwick under observation? Fenwick triumphantly believed that Lord Findon greatly preferred his work—and even, by now, his conversation—to Cuningham's. But he was still envious of Cuningham's smooth tact, and agreeable, serviceable ways.

As to Welby and his place in the Findon circle, that was another matter altogether. He came and went as he pleased, on brotherly terms with the son and the younger daughters, clearly an object of great affection to Lord Findon, and often made use of by her ladyship. What was the degree of friendship between him and Madame de Pastourelles?—that had been already the subject of many meditations on Fenwick's part.

The cart deposited the school-boy in Brathay and started again for
Langdale.

'Yo couldna get at Langdale for t' snaw lasst week,' said the young farmer, as they turned a corner into the Skelwith Valley. 'T' roads were fair choked wi't.'

'It's been an early winter,' said Fenwick.

'Aye, and t' Langdales get t' brunt o't. It's wild livin there, soomtimes, i' winter.'

They began to climb the first steep hill of the old road to Langdale. The snow lay piled on either side of the road, the rain beat down, and the trees clashed and moaned overhead. Not a house, not a light, upon their path—only swirling darkness, opening now and then on that high glimmer of the snow. Fresh from London streets, where winter, even if it attack in force, is so soon tamed and conquered, Fenwick was for the first time conscious of the harsher, wilder aspects of his native land. Poor Phoebe! Had she been a bit lonesome in the snow and rain?

The steep lane to the cottage was still deep in snow. The cart could not attempt it. Fenwick made his way up, fighting the eddying sleet. As he let fall the latch of the outer gate, the cottage door opened, and Phoebe, with the child in her arms, stood on the threshold.

'John!'

'Yes! God bless my soul, what a night!' He reached the door, put down his umbrella with difficulty, and dragged his bag into the passage. Then, in a moment, his coat was off and he had thrown his arm round her and the child. It seemed to him that she was curiously quiet and restrained. But she kissed him in return, drew him further within the little passage, and shut the outer door, shivering.

'The kitchen's warm,' she said, at last.

She led him in, and he found the low-ceiled room bright with fire and lamp, the table spread, and his chair beside the blaze. Kneeling down, she tried to unlace his wet boots.

'No, no!' he said, holding her away—'I'll do that, Phoebe. What's wrong with you?—you look so—so queer!'

She straightened herself, and with a laugh put back her fair hair. Her face was very pale—a greyish pallor—and her wonderful eyes stared from it in an odd, strained way.

'Oh, I'm all right,' she said; and she turned away from him to the fire, opening the oven-door to see whether the meat-pie was done.

'How have you kept in this weather?' he said, watching her. 'I'd no notion you'd had it so bad.'

'Oh, I don't know. I suppose I've had a chill or something. It's been rather weariful.'

'You didn't tell me anything about your chill.'

'Didn't I? It seems hardly worth while telling such things, from such a distance. Will you have supper at once?'

He drew up to the table, and she fed him and hovered round him, asking the while about his work, in a rather perfunctory way, about his rooms and the price of them, inquiring after the state of his clothes. But her tone and manner were unlike herself, and there was in his mind a protesting consciousness that she had not welcomed him as a young wife should after a long separation. Her manner too was extraordinarily nervous; her hand shook as she touched a plate; her movements were full of starts, and checks, as though, often, she intended a thing and then forgot it.

They avoided talking about money, and he did not mention the name of Madame de Pastourelles; though of course his letters had reported the external history of the portrait. But Phoebe presently inquired after it.

'Have you nearly done painting that lady, John?—I don't know how to say her name.'

As she spoke, she lifted a bit of bread-and-butter to her mouth and put it down untasted. In the same way she had tried to drink some tea, and had not apparently succeeded. Fenwick rose and went over to her.

'Look here, Phoebe,' he said, putting his hand on her beautiful hair and turning her face to him—'what's the matter?'

Her eyelids closed, and a quiver went through the face.

'I don't know. I—I had a fright a few days ago—at night—and I suppose I haven't got over it.'

'A fright?'

'Yes. There was a tramp one night came to the door. I half-opened it—and his face was so horrible I tried to shut it again at once. And he struggled with me, but I was strongest. Then he tried to get in at the window, but luckily I had fastened the iron bar across the shutter—and the back door. But it all held, mercifully. He couldn't get in. Then he abused me through the door, and said he would have killed me and the child, if he could have got in—and some day he would come again.' She shuddered.

Fenwick had turned pale. With his painter's imagination he saw the thing—the bestial man outside, the winter night, the slender form within pressing against the door and the bolt—

'Look here,' he said, abruptly. 'We can't have this. Somebody must sleep here. Did you tell the police?'

'Yes, I wrote—to Ambleside. They sent a man over to see me. But they couldn't catch him. He's probably left the country. I got a bell'—she opened her eyes, and pointed to it. 'If I rang it, they might hear it down at Brow Farm. They might—if the wind was that way.'

There was silence a moment. Then Fenwick stooped and kissed her.

'Poor old girl!' he said, softly. She made but slight response. He returned to his place, repeating with a frowning energy—'You must have some one to sleep here.'

'Daisy would come—if I'd pay her.'

Daisy was their little servant of the summer, the daughter of a quarryman near by.

'Well, pay her!'

She drew herself up sharply. 'I haven't got the money—and you always say, when you write, you haven't any either.'

'I'll find some for that. I can't have you scared like this.'

But, though his tone was vehement, it was not particularly affectionate. He was horribly discomposed indeed, could not get the terrible image out of his mind. But as he went on with his supper, the shock of it mingled with a good many critical or reproachful thoughts. Why had she persisted in staying on in Langdale, instead of going to her father? All that foolish dislike of her stepmother! It had been open to her to stay in her father's farm, with plenty of company. If she wouldn't, was he to blame if the cottage was lonesome?

But as though she divined this secret debate she presently said:

'I went to Keswick last week.'

He looked up, startled. 'Well?'

'Father's ill—he's got a bad chest, and the doctor says he may be going into a consumption.'

'Doctors'll say anything!' cried Fenwick, wrathfully. 'If ever there was a strong man, it's your father. Don't you believe any croaking of that sort, Phoebe.'

She shook her head.

'He looks so changed,' she said; and began drawing with her finger on the tablecloth. He saw that her lips were trembling. A strong impulse worked in him, bidding him go to her again, kiss away her tears, and say—'Hang everything! Come with me to London, and let's sink or swim together.'

Instead of which some perverse cross-current hurried him into the words:

'He'd be all right if you'd go and nurse him, Phoebe.'

'No, not at all. They didn't want me—and Mrs. Gibson, poor creature, was real glad when I said I was going. She was jealous of me all the time.'

'I expect you imagined that.'

Phoebe's face flushed angrily.

'I didn't!' she said, shortly. 'Everybody in the house knew it.'

The meal went on rather silently. Fenwick's conscience said to him, 'Take her back with you!—whatever happens, take her to London—she's moping her life out here.' And an inner voice clamoured in reply—'Take her to those rooms?—in the very middle of the struggle with those two pictures?—go through all the agitation and discomfort of explanations with Lord Findon and Madame de Pastourelles?—run the risk of estranging them, and of distracting your own mind from your work at this critical moment?—the further risk, moreover, of Phoebe's jealousy?'

For in her present nervous and fidgety state she would very likely be jealous of his sitter, and of the way in which Madame de Pastourelles' portrait possessed his mind. No, it really couldn't be done!—it really couldn't! He must finish the two pictures—persuade Lord Findon to buy the 'Genius Loci,' and make the portrait such a success that he must needs buy that too. Then let discovery come on; it should find him steeled.

Meanwhile, Phoebe must have a servant, and not any mere slip of a girl, but some one who would be a companion and comfort. He began to talk of it, eagerly, only to find that Phoebe took but a languid interest in the idea.

She could think of no one—wanted no one, but Daisy. Again his secret ill-humour waxed and justified itself. It was unreasonable and selfish that she should not be able to think for herself and the child better; after all, he was slaving for her as much as for himself.

Meanwhile, Carrie sat very silent beside her father, observing him, and every now and then applying her pink lips to some morsel he held out to her on his fork. He had kissed her, and tossed her, and she was now sitting in his pocket. But after these eight months the child of four was shy and timid with this unfamiliar father. He on his side saw that she was prettier than before; his eye delighted in some of the rarer and lovelier lines of her little face; and he felt a fatherly pride. He must make some fresh studies of her; the child in the 'Genius Loci' might be improved.

After supper, Phoebe seemed to him so pale and tottering that he made her rest beside the fire, while he himself cleared the supper-things away. She lay back in her chair, laughing at his awkwardness, or starting up when china clashed.

Meanwhile, as in their farewell talk beside the ghyll eight months before, her mood gradually and insensibly changed. Whatever unloving thoughts or resentments had held her in the first hour of their meeting, however strong had been the wish to show him that she had been lonely and suffering, she could not resist what to her was the magic of his presence. As he moved about in the low, firelit room, and she watched him, her whole nature melted; and he knew it.

Presently she took the child upstairs. He waited for her, hanging over the fire—listening to the storm outside—and thinking, thinking—

When she reappeared, and he, looking round, saw her standing in the doorway, so tall and slender, her pale face and hair coloured by the glow of the fire, passion and youth spoke in him once more.

He sprang up and caught her in his arms. Presently, sitting in the old armchair beside the blaze, he had gathered her on his knee, and she had clasped her hands round his neck, and buried her face against him. All things were forgotten, save that they were man and wife together, within this 'wind-warm space'—ringed by night, and pattering sleet, and gusts that rushed in vain upon the roof that sheltered them.

But next morning, within the little cottage—beating rain on the windows, and a cheerless storm-light in the tiny rooms—the hard facts of the situation resumed their sway. In the first place money questions had to be faced. Fenwick made the most of his expectations; but at best they were no more, and how to live till they became certainties was the problem. If Lord Findon had commissioned the portrait, or definitely said he would purchase the 'Genius Loci,' some advance might have been asked for. As it was, how could money be mentioned yet a while? Phoebe had a fine and costly piece of embroidery on hand, commissioned through an 'Art Industry' started at Windermere the summer before; but it could not be finished for some weeks, possibly months, and the money Fenwick proposed to earn during his fortnight in the North by some illustrations long overdue had been already largely forestalled. He gloomily made up his mind to appeal to an old cousin in Kendal, the widow of a grocer, said to be richly left, who had once in his boyhood given him five shillings. With much distaste he wrote the letter and walked to Elterwater in the rain to post it. Then he tried to work; but little Carrie, fractious from confinement indoors, was troublesome and disturbed him. Phoebe, too, would make remarks on his drawing which seemed to him inept. In old days he would have laughed at her for pretending to know, and turned it off with a kiss. Now what she said set him on edge. The talk he had been living amongst had spoilt him for silly criticisms. Moreover, for the first time he detected in her a slight tone of the 'schoolmarm'—didactic and self-satisfied, without knowledge. The measure Madame de Pastourelles had dealt out to him, he in some sort avenged on Phoebe.

At the same time there were much more serious causes of difference. Each had a secret from the other. Fenwick's secret was that he had foolishly passed in London as an unmarried man, and that he could not take Phoebe back with him, because of the discomforts and risks in which a too early avowal of her would involve him. He was morbidly conscious of this; brooded over it, and magnified it.

She on the other hand was tormented by a fixed idea—already in existence at the time of their first parting, but much strengthened by loneliness and fretting—that he was tired of her and not unwilling to be without her. The joy of their meeting banished it for a time, but it soon came back. She had never acquiesced in the wisdom of their separation; and to question it was to resent it more and more deeply—to feel his persistence in it a more cruel offence, month by month. Her pride prevented her from talking of it; but the soreness of her grievance invaded their whole relation. And in her moral unrest she showed faults which had been scarcely visible in their early married years—impatience, temper, suspicion, a readiness to magnify small troubles whether of health or circumstance.

During her months alone she had been reading many novels of an indifferent sort, which the carrier brought her from the lending library at Windermere. She talked excitedly of some of them, had 'cried her eyes out' over this or that. Fenwick picked up one or two, and threw them away for 'trash.' He scornfully thought that they had done her harm, made her more nervous and difficult. But at night, when he had done his work, he never took any trouble to read to her, or to talk to her about other than household things. He smoked or drew in silence; and she sat over her embroidery, lost in morbid reverie.

One morning he discovered amongst her books a paper-covered 'Life of
Romney'—a short compilation issued by a local bookseller.

'Why, whatever did you get this for, Phoebe?' he said, holding it up.

She looked up from her mending, and coloured. 'I wanted to read it.'

'But why?'

'Well'—she hesitated—'I thought it was like you.'

'Like me?—you little goose!'

'I don't know,' she said, doggedly, looking hard at her work—'there was the hundred pounds that he got to go to London with—and then, marrying a wife in Kendal—and'—she looked up with a half-defiant smile—'and leaving her behind!'

'Oh! so you think that's like me?' he said, seating himself again at his drawing.

'It's rather like.'

'You suppose you're going to be left here for thirty years?' He laughed as he spoke.

She laughed too, but not gaily—with a kind of defiance.

'Well, it wouldn't be quite as easy now, would it?—with trains, and all that. There were only coaches then, I suppose. Now, London's so near.'

'I wish you'd always think so!' he cried. 'Why, of course it's near. I'm only seven hours away. What's that, in these days? And in three months' time, things will be all right and square again.'

'I dare say,' she said, sighing.

'Why can't you wait cheerfully?' he asked, rather exasperated—'instead of being so down.'

'Because'—she broke out—'I don't see the reason of it—there! No, I don't!—However!'—she pressed back her hair from her eyes and drew herself together. 'You've never shown me your studies of that—that lady—John; you said you would.'

Relieved at the change of subject, he took a sketch-book out of his pocket and gave it to her. It contained a number of 'notes' for his portrait of Madame de Pastourelles—sketches of various poses, aspects of the head and face, arrangements of the hands, and so forth. Phoebe pondered it in silence.

'She's pretty—I think,' she said, at last, doubtfully.

'I'm not sure that she is,' said Fenwick. 'She's very pale.'

'That doesn't matter. The shape of her face is awfully pretty—and her eyes. Is her hair like mine?'

'No, not nearly so good.'

'Ah, if I could only do it as prettily as she does!' said Phoebe, faintly smiling. 'I suppose, John, she's very smart and fashionable?'

'Well, she's Lord Findon's daughter—that tells you. They're pretty well at the top.'

Phoebe asked various other questions, then fell silent, still pondering the sketches. After a while she put down her work and came to sit on a stool beside Fenwick, sometimes laying her golden head against his knee, or stretching out her hand to touch his. He responded affectionately enough; but as the winter twilight deepened in the little room, Phoebe's eyes, fixed upon the fire, resumed their melancholy discontent. She was less necessary to him even than before; she knew by a thousand small signs that the forces which possessed his mind—perhaps his heart!—were not now much concerned with her.

She tried to control, to school herself. But the flame within was not to be quenched—was, indeed, perpetually finding fresh fuel. How quietly he had taken the story of the tramp's attack upon her!—which still, whenever she thought of it, thrilled her own veins with horror. No doubt he had been over to Ambleside to speak to the police; and he had arranged that the little servant, Daisy, should come to her when he left. But if he had merely caught her to him with one shuddering cry of love and rage—that would have been worth all his precautions!—would have effaced the nightmare, and filled her heart.

As to his intellectual life, she was now much more conscious of her exclusion from it than she ever had been in their old life together.

For it was a consciousness quickened by jealousy. Little as Fenwick talked about Madame de Pastourelles, Phoebe understood perfectly that she was a woman of high education and refinement, and that her stored and subtle mind was at once an attraction and a cause of humiliation to John. And through his rare stories of the Findon household and the Findon dinner-parties, the wife dimly perceived a formidable world, bristling with strange acquirements and accomplishments, in which he, perhaps, was beginning to find a place, thanks to his art; while she, his obscure and ignorant wife, must resign herself to being for ever shut out from it—to knowing it from his report only. How could she ever hold her own with such people? He would talk with them, paint them, dine with them, while she sat at home—Carrie's nurse, and the domestic drudge.

And yet she was of that type which represents perhaps the most ambitious element in the lower middle class. It had been a great matter that she, a small farmer's daughter, should pass her examinations and rise to be a teacher in Miss Mason's school. She had had her triumphs and conceits; had been accustomed to think herself clever and successful, to hold her head high amongst her schoolmates. Whereas now, if she tried to talk of art or books, she was hotly aware that everything she said was, in John's eyes, pretentious or absurd. He was comparing her with others all the time, with men and women—women especially—in whose presence he felt himself as diffident as she did in his. He was thinking of ladies in velvet dresses and diamonds, who could talk wittily of pictures and theatres and books, who could amuse him and distract him. And meanwhile she went about in her old stuff dress, her cotton apron and rolled-up sleeves, cooking and washing and cleaning—for her child and for him. She felt through every nerve that he was constantly aware of details of dress or ménage that jarred upon him; she suspected miserably that all her little personal ways and habits seemed to him ugly and common; and the suspicion showed itself in pride or brusquerie.

Meanwhile, if she had been restful, if he could only have forgotten his cares in her mere youth and prettiness, Fenwick would have been easily master of his discontents. For he was naturally of a warm, sensuous temper. Had the woman understood her own arts, she could have held him.

But she was not restful, she was exacting and self-conscious; and, moreover, a certain new growth of Puritanism in her repelled him. While he had been passing under the transforming influences of an all-questioning thought and culture, she had been turning to Evangelical religion for consolation. There was a new minister in a Baptist chapel a mile or two away, of whom she talked, whose services she attended. The very mention of him presently became a boredom to Fenwick. The new influence had no effect upon her jealousies and discontents; but it re-enforced a natural asceticism, and weakened whatever power she possessed of playing on a husband's passion. Meanwhile, Fenwick was partly aware of her state of mind, and far from happy himself. His conscience pricked him; but such prickings are small help to love. Often he found himself guiltily brooding over Lord Findon's tirades against the early marriages of artists. There was a horrid truth in them. No doubt an artist should wait till his circumstances were worthy of his gifts; and then marry a woman who could understand and help him on.

Nor was even the child a binding influence. Fenwick in this visit became for the first time a fond father. A certain magic in the little Carrie flattered his vanity and excited his hopes. He drew her many times, and prophesied confidently that she would be a beauty. But, in his secret opinion, she was spoilt and mismanaged; and he talked a good deal to Phoebe about her bringing-up, theorising and haranguing in his usual way. Phoebe listened generally with impatience, resenting interference with her special domain. And often, when she saw the father and child together, a fresh and ugly misery would raise its head. Would he in time set even Carrie against her—teach the child to look down upon its mother?

One day he returned from Ambleside, pale and excited—bringing a
Manchester paper.

'Phoebe!' he called, from the gate.

Startled by something in his voice, Phoebe ran out to him.

'Phoebe, an awful thing's happened! Old Morrison's—dead! Look here!'

And he showed her a paragraph headed 'Defalcations and suicide.' It described how Mr. James Morrison, the chief cashier of the Bartonbury Bank, had committed suicide immediately after the discovery by the bank authorities of large falsifications in the bank accounts. Mr. Morrison had shot himself, leaving a statement acknowledging a long course of fraudulent dealings with the funds entrusted to him, and pleading with his employers for his wife and daughter. 'Great sympathy,' said the Guardian reporter, 'is felt in Bartonbury with Mrs. Morrison, whose character has always been highly respected. But, indeed, the whole family occupied a high position, and the shock to the locality has been great.' On which followed particulars of the frauds and a long report of the inquest.

Phoebe was struck with horror. She lingered over the paper, commenting, exclaiming; while Fenwick sat staring into the fire, his hands on his knees.

Presently she came to him and said in a low voice:

'And what about the money, John—the loan?'

'I am not obliged to return it in money,' he said, sharply.

'Well, the pictures?'

'That'll be all right. I must think about it. There'll be no hurry.'

'Did Mrs. Morrison know—about the loan?'

'I dare say. I never heard.'

'I suppose she and the daughter'll have nothing?'

'That doesn't follow at all. Very likely he'd settled something on them, which can't be touched. A man like that generally does.'

'Poor things!' she said, shuddering. 'But, John—you'll pay it back to
Mrs. Morrison?'

'Of course I shall,' he said, impatiently—'in due time. But please remember, Phoebe, that's my affair. Don't you talk of it—to any one.'

He looked up to emphasise his words.

Phoebe flushed.

'I wasn't going to talk of it to any one,' she said, proudly, as she moved away.

Presently he took up his hat again and went out, that he might be alone with his thoughts. The rain had vanished; and a frosty sunshine sparkled on the fells, on the red bracken and the foaming becks. He took the mountain-path which led past the ghyll, up to the ridge which separates Langdale from Grasmere and Easedale. Morrison's finely wrinkled face, with its blue, complacent eyes and thin nose, hovered before him—now as he remembered it in life, and now as he imagined it in death. Hard fate! There had been an adventurous, poetic element in Morrison—something beyond the ken of the ordinary Philistine—and it had come to this. Fenwick remembered him among the drawings he had collected. Real taste—real sense of beauty—combined no doubt with the bargaining instinct and a natural love of chicanery. Moreover, Fenwick believed that, so far as a grasping temper would allow, there had been a genuine wish to help undiscovered talent. He thought of the hand which had given him the check, and had a vision of it holding the revolver—of the ghastly, solitary end. And no one had guessed—unless, indeed, it were his wife? Perhaps that look of hers—as of a creature hunted by secret fears—was now explained.

How common such things are!—and probably, so ran his thoughts, will always be. We are all acting. Each man or woman carries this potentiality of a double life—it is only a question of less or more.

Suddenly he coloured, as he saw himself thus writ double—first as he appeared to Madame de Pastourelles, and then as he appeared to Phoebe. Masquerading was easy, it seemed; and conscience made little fuss! Instantly, however, the inner man rebelled against the implied comparison of himself with Morrison. An accidental concealment, acquiesced in temporarily, for business reasons—what had that in common with villainy like Morrison's? An awkward affair, no doubt; and he had been a fool to slip into it. But in a few weeks he would put it right—come what would.

As to the debt—he tried to fight against a feeling of deliverance—but clearly he need be in no hurry to pay it. He had been living in dread of Morrison's appearing in Bernard Street to claim his bond—revealing Phoebe's existence perhaps to ears unprepared—and laying greedy hands upon the 'Genius Loci.' It would have been hard to keep him off it—unless Lord Findon had promptly come forward—and it would have been odious to yield it to him. 'Now I shall take my time.' Of course, ultimately, he would repay the money to Mrs. Morrison and Bella. But better, even in their interests, to wait a while, till there could be no question of any other claim to it.

So from horror he passed to a personal relief, of which he was rather ashamed, and then again to a real uneasy pity for the wife and for the vulgar daughter who had so bitterly resented his handling of her charms. He remembered the note in which she had acknowledged the final delivery of her portrait. In obedience to Morrison's suggestion, he had kept it by him a few days; and then, either unable or proudly unwilling to alter it, he had returned it to its owner. Whereupon a furious note from Miss Bella, which—knowing that her father took no account of her tempers—Fenwick had torn up with a laugh. It was clear that she had heard of her father's invitation to him to 'beautify' it, and when the picture reappeared unaltered she took it as a direct and personal insult—a sign that he disliked her and meant to humiliate her. It was an odd variety of the spretae injuria formae. Fenwick had never been in the least penitent for his behaviour. The picture was true, clever—and the best he could do. It was no painter's business to endow Miss Bella with beauty, if she did not possess it. As a piece of paint, the picture had beauty—if she had only eyes to find it out.

Poor girl!—what husband now would venture on such a termagant wife?—penniless too, and disgraced! He would like to help her, and her mother—for Morrison's sake. Stirred by a fleeting impulse, he began to scheme how he might become their benefactor, as Morrison had been his.

Then, as he raised his eyes from the path—with a rush of delight he noticed the flood of afternoon sunlight pouring on the steep fell-side, the sharp black shadows thrown by wall and tree, the brilliance of the snow along the topmost ridge. He raced along, casting the Morrisons out of his thoughts, forgetting everything but the joy of atmosphere and light—the pleasure of his physical strength. Near one of the highest crags he came upon a shepherd-boy and his dog collecting some sheep. The collie ran hither and thither with the marvellous shrewdness of his breed, circling, heading, driving; the stampede of the sheep, as they fled before him, could be heard along the fell. The sun played upon the flock, turning its dirty grey to white, caught the little figure of the shepherd-boy, as he stood shouting and waving, or glittered on the foaming stream beside him. Purple shadows bathed the fell beyond—and on its bosom the rustic scene emerged—a winter idyl.

Fenwick sat down upon a rock, ransacked his pockets for sketch-book and paints, and began to sketch. When he had made his 'note,' he sat lost a while in the pleasure of his own growing skill and sharpening perceptions, and dreaming of future 'subjects.' A series of 'Westmoreland months,' illustrating the seasons among the fells and the life of the dalesmen, ran through his mind. Nature appeared to his exultant sense as a vast treasure-house stored for him only—a mine inexhaustible offered to his craftsman's hand. For him the sweeping hues, the intricate broideries—green or russet, red or purple—of this winter world!—for him the delicacy of the snow, the pale azure of the sky, the cloud-shadows, the white becks, the winding river in the valley floor, the purple crags, the lovely accents of light and shade, the hints of composition that wooed his eager eye. Who was it that said 'Composition is the art of preserving the accidental look'? Clever fellow!—there was the right thing said, for once! And so he slipped into a reverie, which was really one of those moments—plastic and fruitful—by which the artist makes good his kinship with 'the great of old,' his right to his own place in the unending chain.

Strange!—from that poverty of feeling in which he had considered the Morrison tragedy—from his growing barrenness of heart towards Phoebe—he had sprung at a bound into this ecstasy, this expansion of the whole man. It brought with it a vivid memory of the pictures he was engaged upon. By the time he turned homeward, and the light was failing, he was counting the days till he could return to London—and to work.

* * * * *

There was still, however, another week of his holiday to run. He wrote to Mrs. Morrison a letter which cost him much pains, expressing a sympathy that he really felt. He got on with his illustration work, and extracted a further advance upon it. And the old cousin in Kendal proved unexpectedly generous. She wrote him a long Scriptural letter, rating him for disobedience to his father, and warning him against debt; but she lent him twenty pounds, so that, for the present, Phoebe could be left in comparative comfort, and he had something in his pocket.

Yet with this easing of circumstance, the relation between husband and wife did not improve. During this last week, indeed, Phoebe teased him to make a sketch of himself to leave with her. He began it unwillingly, then got interested, and finally made a vigorous sketch, as ample as their largest looking-glass would allow, with which he was extremely pleased. Phoebe delighted in it, hung it up proudly in the parlour, and repaid him with smiles and kisses.

Yet the very next day, under the cloud of his impending departure, she went about pale and woe-begone, on the verge of tears or temper. He was provoked into various harsh speeches, and Phoebe felt that despair which weak and loving women know, when parting is near, and they foresee the hour beyond parting—when each unkind word and look, too well remembered, will gnaw and creep about the heart.

But she could not restrain herself. Nervous tension, doubt of her husband, and condemnation of herself drove her on. The very last night there was a quarrel—about the child—whom Fenwick had punished for some small offence. Phoebe hotly defended her—first with tears, then with passion. For the first time these two people found themselves looking into each other's eyes with rage, almost with hate. Then they kissed and made up, terrified at the abyss which had yawned between them; and when the moment came, Phoebe went through the parting bravely.

But when Fenwick had gone, and the young wife sat alone beside the cottage fire, the January darkness outside seemed to her the natural symbol of her own bitter foreboding. Why had he left her? There was no reason in it, as she had said. But there must be some reason behind it. And slowly, in the firelight, she fell to brooding over the image of that pale classical face, as she had seen it in the sketch-book. John had talked quite frankly about Madame de Pastourelles—not like a man beguiled; making no mystery of her at all, answering all questions. But his restlessness to get back to London had been extraordinary. Was it merely the restlessness of the artist?

This was Tuesday. To-morrow Madame de Pastourelles was to come to a sitting. Phoebe sat picturing it; while the curtain of rain descended once more upon the cottage, blotting out the pikes, and washing down the sodden fields.