Fenwick's Career

by Mrs. Humphry Ward

CHAPTER VI

'I must alter that fold over the arm,' murmured Fenwick, stepping back, with a frown, and gazing hard at the picture on his easel—'it's too strong.'

Madame de Pastourelles gave a little shiver.

The big bare room, with its Northern aspect and its smouldering fire, had been of a polar temperature this March afternoon. She had been sitting for an hour and a half. Her hands and feet were frozen, and the fur cloak which she wore over her white dress had to be thrown back for the convenience of the painter, who was at work on the velvet folds.

Meanwhile, on the further side of the room sat 'propriety'—also shivering—an elderly governess of the Findon family, busily knitting.

'The dress is coming!' said Fenwick, after another minute or two.
'Yes, it's coming.'

And with a flushed face and dishevelled hair he stood back again, staring first at his canvas and then at his sitter.

Madame de Pastourelles sat as still as she could, her thin, numbed fingers lightly crossed on her lap. Her wonderful velvet dress, of ivory-white, fell about her austerely in long folds, which, as they bent or overlapped, made beautiful convolutions, firm yet subtle, on the side turned towards the painter, and over her feet. The classical head, with its small ear, the pale yet shining face, combined with the dress to suggest a study in ivory, wrought to a great delicacy and purity. Only the eyes, much darker than the hair, and the rich brown of the sable cloak where it touched the white, gave accent and force to the ethereal pallor, the supreme refinement, of the rest—face, dress, hands. Nothing but civilisation in its most complex workings could have produced such a type; that was what prevailed dimly in Fenwick's mind as he wrestled with his picture. Sometimes his day's work left him exultant, sometimes in a hell of despair.

'I went to see Mr. Welby's studio yesterday,' he said, hastily, after another minute or two, seeing her droop with fatigue.

Her face changed and lit up.

'Well, what did you see?'

'The two Academy pictures—several portraits—and a lot of studies.'

'Isn't it fine—the "Polyxena"?'

Fenwick twisted his mouth in a trick he had.

'Yes,' he said, perfunctorily.

She coloured slightly, as though in antagonism.

'That means that you don't admire it at all?'

'Well, it doesn't say anything to me,' said Fenwick, after a pause.

'What do you dislike?'

'Why doesn't he paint flesh?' he said, abruptly—'not coloured wax.'

'Of course there is a decorative convention in his painting'—her tone was a little stiff—'but so there is in all painting.'

Fenwick shrugged his shoulders.

'Go and look at Rubens—or Velasquez.'

[Illustration: Eugénie]

'Why not at Leonardo—and Raphael?'

'Because they are not moderns—and we can't get back into their skins. Rubens and Velasquez are moderns,' he protested, stoutly.

'What is a "modern"?' she asked, laughing.

It was on the tip of his tongue to say, 'You are—and it is only fashion—or something else—that makes you like this archaistic stuff!' But he restrained himself, and they fell into a skirmish, in which, as usual, he came off badly. As soon as he perceived it, he became rather heated and noisy, trying to talk her down. Whereupon she sprang up, came down from her pedestal to look at the picture, called mademoiselle to see—praised—laughed—and all was calm again. Only Fenwick was left once more reflecting that she was Welby's champion through thick and thin. And this ruffled him.

'Did Mr. Welby study mostly in Italy?' he asked her presently, as he fetched a hand-glass, in which to examine his morning's work.

'Mostly—but also in Vienna.'

And, to keep the ball rolling, she described a travel-year—apparently before her marriage—which she, Lord Findon, a girl friend of hers, and Welby had spent abroad together—mainly in Rome, Munich, and Vienna—for the purpose, it seemed, of Welby's studies. The experiences she described roused a kind of secret exasperation in Fenwick. And what was really resentment against the meagreness of his own lot showed itself, as usual, in jealousy. He said something contemptuous of this foreign training for an artist—so much concerned with galleries and Old Masters. Much better that he should use his eyes upon his own country and its types; that had been enough for all the best men.

Madame de Pastourelles politely disagreed with him; then, to change the subject, she talked of some of the humours and incidents of their stay in Vienna—the types of Viennese society—the Emperor, the beautiful mad Empress, the Archdukes, the priests—and also of some hurried visits to Hungarian country houses in winter, of the cosmopolitan luxury and refinement to be found there, ringed by forests and barbarism.

Fenwick listened greedily, and presently inquired whether Mr. Welby had shared in all these amusements.

'Oh yes. He was generally the life and soul of them.'

'I suppose he made lots of friends—and got on with everybody?'

Madame de Pastourelles assented—cautiously.

'That's all a question of manners,' said Fenwick, with sudden roughness.

She gave a vague 'Perhaps'—and he straightened himself aggressively.

'I don't think manners very important, do you?'

'Very!' She said it, with a gay firmness.

'Well, then, some of us will never get any,' his tone was surly—'we weren't taught young enough.'

'Our mothers teach us generally—all that's wanted!'

He shook his head.

'It's not as simple as that. Besides—one may lose one's mother.'

'Ah, yes!' she said, with quick feeling.

And presently a little tact, a few questions on her part had brought out some of his own early history—his mother's death—his years of struggle with his father. As he talked on—disjointedly—painting hard all the time, she had a vision of the Kendal shop and its customers—of the shrewd old father, moulded by the business, the avarice, the religion of an English country town, with a Calvinist contempt for art and artists—and trying vainly to coerce his sulky and rebellious son.

'Has your father seen these pictures?' She pointed to the 'Genius
Loci' on its further easel—and to the portrait.

'My father! I haven't spoken to him or seen him for years.'

'Years!' She opened her eyes. 'Is it as bad as that?'

'Aye, that's North-Country. If you've once committed yourself, you stick to it—like death.'

She declared that it might be North-Country, but was none the less barbarous. However, of course it would all come right. All the interesting tales of one's childhood began that way—with a cruel father, and a rebellious son. But they came to magnificent ends, notwithstanding—with sacks of gold and a princess. Diffident, yet smiling, she drew conclusions. 'So, you see, you'll make money—you'll be an R.A.—you'll marry—and Mr. Fenwick will nurse the grandchildren. I assure you—that's the fairy-tale way.'

Fenwick, who had flushed hotly, turned away and occupied himself in replenishing his palette.

'Papa, of course, would say—Don't marry till you're a hundred and two!' she resumed. 'But pray, don't listen to him.'

'I dare say he's right,' said Fenwick, returning to his easel, his face bent over it.

'Not at all. People should have their youth together.'

'That's all very well. But many men don't know at twenty what they'll want at thirty,' said Fenwick, painting fast.

Madame de Pastourelles laughed.

'The doctors say nowadays—it is papa's latest craze—that it doesn't matter what you eat—or how little—if you only chew it properly. I wonder if that applies to matrimony?'

'What's the chewing?'

'Manners,' she said, laughing—'that you think so little of. Whether the food's agreeable or not, manners help it down.'

'Manners!—between husband and wife?' he said, scornfully.

'But certainly!' She lifted her beautiful brows for emphasis. 'Show me any persons, please, that want them more!'

'The people I've been living among,' said Fenwick, with sharp persistence, 'haven't got time for fussing about manners—in the sense you mean. Life's too hard.'

A flush of bright colour sprang into her face. But she held her ground.

'What do you suppose I mean? I don't meant court trains and courtesies—I really don't.'

Fenwick was silent a moment, and then said—aggressively—' We can't all of us have the same chances—as Mr. Welby, for instance.'

Madame de Pastourelles looked at him in astonishment. What an extraordinary obsession! They seemed not to be able to escape from Arthur Welby's name: yet it never cropped up without producing some sign of irritation in this strange young man. Poor Arthur!—who had always shown himself so ready to make friends, whenever the two men met—as they often did—in the St. James's Square drawing-room. Fenwick's antagonism, indeed, had been plain to her for some time. It was natural, she supposed; he was clearly very sensitive on the subject of his own humble origin and bringing-up; but she sighed that a perverse youth should so mismanage his opportunities.

As to 'chances,' she declared rather tartly that they had nothing to do with it. It was natural to Arthur Welby to make himself agreeable.

'Yes—like all other kinds of aristocrats,' said Fenwick, grimly.

Madame de Pastourelles frowned.

'Of all the words in the dictionary—that word is the most detestable!' she declared. 'It ought to be banished. Well, thank goodness, it is generally banished.'

'That's only because we all like to hide our heads in the sand—you who possess the privileges—and we who envy them!'

'I vow I don't possess any privileges at all,' she said, with defiance.

'You say so, because you breathe them—live in them—like the air—without knowing it,' said Fenwick, also trying to speak lightly. Then he added, suddenly putting down his palette and brushes, while his black eyes lightened—'And so does Mr. Welby. You can see from his pictures that he doesn't know anything about common, coarse people—real people—who make up the world. He paints wax, and calls it life; and you—'

'Go on!—please go on!'

'I shall only make a fool of myself,' he said, taking up his brushes again.

'Not at all. And I praise humbug?—and call it manners?'

He paused, then blurted out—'I wouldn't say anything rude to you for the world!'

She smiled—a smile that turned all the delicate severity of her face to sweetness. 'That's very nice of you. But if you knew Mr. Welby better, you'd never want to say anything rude to him either!'

Fenwick was silent. Madame de Pastourelles, feeling that for the moment she also had come to the end of her tether, fell into a reverie, from which she was presently roused by finding Fenwick standing before her, palette in hand.

'I don't want you to think me an envious brute,' he said, stammering.
'Of course, I know the "Polyxena" is a fine thing—a very fine thing.'

She looked a little surprised—as though he offered her moods to which she had no key. 'Shall I show you something I like much better?' she said, with quick resource. And drawing towards her a small portfolio she had brought with her, she took out a drawing and handed it to him. 'I am taking it to be framed. Isn't it beautiful?'

It was a drawing, in silver-point, of an orange-tree in mingled fruit and bloom—an exquisite piece of work, of a Japanese truth, intricacy, and perfection. Fenwick looked at it in silence. These silver-point drawings of Welby's were already famous. In the preceding May there had been an exhibition of them at an artistic club. At the top of the drawing was an inscription in a minute handwriting—'Sorrento: Christmas Day,' with the monogram 'A.W.' and a date three years old.

As Madame de Pastourelles perceived that his eyes had caught the inscription, she rather hastily withdrew the sketch and returned it to the portfolio.

'I watched him draw it,' she explained—'in a Sorrento garden. My father and I were there for the winter. Mr. Welby was in a villa near ours, and I used to watch him at work.'

It seemed to Fenwick that her tone had grown rather hurried and reserved, as though she regretted the impulse which had made her show him the drawing. He praised it as intelligently as he could; but his mind was guessing all the time at the relation which lay behind the drawing. According to Cuningham's information, it was now three years since a separation had been arranged between Madame de Pastourelles and her husband, Comte Albert de Pastourelles, owing to the Comte's outrageous misconduct. Lord Findon had no doubt taken her abroad after the catastrophe. And, besides her father, Welby had also been near, apparently—watching over her?

He returned to his work upon the hands, silent, but full of speculation. The evident bond between these two people had excited his imagination and piqued his curiosity from the first moment of his acquaintance with them. They were both of a rare and fine quality; and the signs of an affection between them, equally rare and fine, had not been lost on those subtler perceptions in Fenwick which belonged perhaps to his heritage as an artist. If he gave the matter an innocent interpretation, and did not merely say to himself, 'She has lost a husband and found a lover,' it was because the woman herself had awakened in him fresh sources of judgement. His thoughts simply did not dare besmirch her.

* * * * *

The clock struck five; and thereupon a sound of voices on the stairs outside.

'Papa!' said Madame de Pastourelles, jumping up—in very evident relief—her teeth chattering.

The door opened and Lord Findon put in a reconnoitring head.

'May I—or we—come in?'

And behind him, on the landing, Fenwick with a start perceived the smiling face of Arthur Welby.

'I've come to carry off my daughter,' said Findon, with a friendly nod to the artist. 'But don't let us in if you don't want to.'

'Turn me out, please, at once, if I'm in the way,' said Welby. 'Lord
Findon made me come up.'

It was the first time that Welby had visited the Bernard Street studio. Fenwick's conceit had sometimes resented the fact. Yet now that Welby was there he was unwilling to show his work. He muttered something about there being 'more to see in a day or two.'

'There's a great deal to see already,' said Lord Findon. 'But, of course, do as you like. Eugénie, are you ready?'

'Please!—may I be exhibited?' said Madame de Pastourelles to Fenwick, with a smiling appeal.

He gave way, dragged the easel into the best light, and fell back while the two men examined the portrait.

'Stay where you are, Eugénie,' said Lord Findon, holding up his hand.
'Let Arthur see the pose.'

She sat down obediently. Fenwick heard an exclamation from Welby, and a murmured remark to Lord Findon; then Welby turned to the painter, his face aglow.

'I say, I do congratulate you! You are making a success of it! The whole scheme's delightful. You've got the head admirably.'

'I'm glad you like it,' said Fenwick, rather shortly, ready at once to suspect a note of patronage in the other's effusion. Welby—a little checked—returned to the picture, studying it closely, and making a number of shrewd, or generous comments upon it, gradually quenched, however, by Fenwick's touchy or ungracious silence. Of course the picture was good. Fenwick wanted no one to tell him that.

Meanwhile, Lord Findon—though in Fenwick's studio he always behaved himself with a certain jauntiness, as a man should who has discovered a genius—was a little discontented.

'It's a fine thing, Eugénie,' he was saying to her, as he helped her put on her furs, 'but I'm not altogether satisfied. It wants animation. It's too—too—'

'Too sad?' she asked, quietly.

'Too grave, my dear—too grave. I want your smile.'

Madame de Pastourelles shook her head.

'What do you mean?' he asked.

'I can't go smiling to posterity!' she said; first gaily—then suddenly her lip quivered.

'Eugénie, darling—for God's sake—'

'I'm all right,' she said, recovering herself instantly. 'Mr. Arthur, are you coming?'

'One moment,' said Welby; then, turning to Fenwick as the others approached them, he said, 'Might I make two small criticisms?'

'Of course.'

'The right hand seems to me too large—and the chin wants fining.
Look!' He took a little ivory paper-cutter from his pocket, and
pointed to the line of the chin, with a motion of the head towards
Madame de Pastourelles.

Fenwick looked—and said nothing.

'By George, I think he's right,' said Lord Findon, putting on spectacles. 'That right hand's certainly too big.'

'In my opinion, it's not big enough,' said Fenwick, doggedly.

Welby withdrew instantly from the picture, and took up his hat. Lord Findon looked at the artist—half angry, half amused. 'You don't buy her gloves, sir—I do.'

Eugénie's eyes meanwhile had begun to sparkle, as she stood in her sable cap and cloak, waiting for her companions. Fenwick approached her.

'Will you sit to-morrow?'

'I think not—I have some engagements.'

'Next day?'

'I will let you know.'

Fenwick's colour rose.

'There is a good deal to do still—and I must work at my other picture.'

'Yes, I know. I will write.'

And with a little dry nod of farewell she slipped her hand into her father's arm and led him away. Welby also saluted pleasantly, and followed the others.

* * * * *

Fenwick was left to pace his room in a tempest, denouncing himself as a 'damned fool,' bent on destroying all his own chances in life. Why was it that Welby's presence always had this effect upon him:—setting him on edge, and making a bear of him? No!—it was not allowed to be so handsome, so able, so ingratiating. Yet he knew very well that Welby made no enemies, and that in his grudging jealousy of a delightful artist he, Fenwick, stood alone.

He walked to the window. Yes, there they were, all three—Mademoiselle Barras seemed to have gone her ways separately—just disappearing into Russell Square. He saw that Welby had possessed himself of the fair lady's portfolio, and was carrying her shawl. He watched their intimate, laughing ways—how different from the stiffness she had just shown him—from the friendly, yet distant relations she always maintained between herself and her painter! A fierce and irritable ambition swept through him—rebellion against the hampering conditions of birth and poverty, which he felt as so many chains upon body and soul. Why was he born the son of a small country tradesman, narrow, ignorant, and tyrannical?—harassed by penury, denied opportunities—while a man like Welby found life from the beginning a broad road, as it were, down a widening valley, to a land of abundance and delight?

But the question led immediately to an answering outburst of vanity. He paced up and down, turning from the injustice of the past to challenge the future. A few more years, and the world would know where to place him—with regard to the men now in the running—men with half his power—Welby and the like. A mad arrogance, a boundless confidence in himself, flamed through all his veins. Let him paint, paint, paint—think of nothing, care for nothing but the maturing of his gift!

How long he lost himself in this passion of egotism and defiance he hardly knew. He was roused from it by the servant bringing a lamp; and as she set it down, the light fell upon a memorandum scrawled on the edge of a sketch which was lying on the table: 'Feb. 21—10 o'clock.'

His mood collapsed. He sat down by the dying fire, brooding and miserable. How on earth was he going to get through the next few weeks? Abominable!—thoughtlessly cruel!—that neither Lord Findon nor Madame de Pastourelles should ever yet have spoken to him of money! These months of work on the portrait—this constant assumption on the part of the Findon circle that both the portrait and the 'Genius Loci' were to become Findon possessions—and yet no sum named—no clear agreement even—nothing, as it seemed to Fenwick's suspicious temper, in either case, that really bound Lord Findon. 'Write to the old boy'—so Cuningham had advised again and again—'get something definite out of him.' But Fenwick had once or twice torn up a letter of the kind in morbid pride and despair. Suppose he were rebuffed? That would be an end of the Findon connexion, and he could not bring himself to face it. He must keep his entrée to the house; above all, he clung to the portrait and the sittings.

But the immediate outlook was pretty dark. He was beginning to be pestered with debts and duns—the appointment on the morrow was with an old frame-maker who had lent him twenty pounds before Christmas, and was now begging piteously for his money. There was nothing to pay him with—nothing to send Phoebe, in spite of a constant labour at paying jobs in black-and-white that often kept him up till three or four in the morning. He wondered whether Watson would help him with a loan. According to Cuningham, the queer fellow had private means.

The fact was he was overstrained—he knew it. The year had been the hardest of his life, and now that he was approaching the time of crisis—the completion of his two pictures, the judgement of the Academy and the public, his nerve seemed to be giving way. As he thought of all that success or failure might mean, he plunged into a melancholy no less extravagant than the passion of self-confidence from which he had emerged. Suppose that he fell ill before the pictures were finished—what would become of Phoebe and the child?

As he thought of Phoebe, suddenly his heart melted within him. Was she, too, hating the hours? As he bowed his head on his arms a few hot, unwilling tears forced themselves into his eyes. Had he been unkind and harsh to her?—his poor little Phoebe! An imperious impulse seemed to sweep him back into her arms. She was his own, his very own; one flesh with him; of the same clay, the same class, the same customs and ideals. Let him only recover her, and his child—and live his own life as he pleased. No more dependence on the moods of fine people. He hated them all! Clearly he had offended Madame de Pastourelles. Perhaps she would not sit again—the portrait would be thrown on his hands—because he had not behaved with proper deference to her spoilt and petted favourite.

Involuntarily he looked up. The lamp-light fell on the portrait.

There she sat, the delicate, ethereal being, her gentle brow bent forward, her eyes fixed upon him. He perceived, as though for the first time, what an image of melancholy grace it was which he had built up there. He had done it, as it were, without knowing—had painted something infinitely pathetic and noble without realising it in the doing.

As he looked, his irritation died away, and something wholly contradictory took its place. He felt a rush of self-pity, and then of trust. What if he called on her to help him—unveiled himself to this kind and charming woman—confessed to her his remorse about Phoebe—his secret miseries and anxieties—the bitterness of his envies and ambitions? Would she not rain balm upon him—quiet him—guide him?

He yearned towards her, as he sat there in the semi-darkness—seeking the ewig-weibliche in the sweetness of her face—without a touch of passion—as a Catholic might yearn towards his Madonna. Her slight and haughty farewell showed that he had tried her patience—had behaved like an ungenerous cur. But he must and would propitiate her—win her friendship for himself and Phoebe. The weakness of the man threw itself strangely, instinctively, on the moral strength of the woman; as though in this still young and winning creature he might recover something of what he had lost in childhood, when his mother died. He mocked at his own paradox, but it held him. That very night would he write to her; not yet about Phoebe—not yet!—but letting her understand, at least, that he was not ungrateful, that he valued her sympathy and good-will. Already the phrases of the letter, warm and eloquent, yet restrained, began to flow through his mind. It might be an unusual thing to do; but she was no silly conventional woman; she would understand.

By Jove! Welby was perfectly right. The hand was too big. It should be altered at the next sitting. Then he sprang up, found pen and paper, and began to write to Phoebe—still in the same softened and agitated state. He wrote in haste and at length, satisfying some hungry instinct in himself by the phrases of endearment which he scattered plentifully through the letter.

* * * * *

That letter found Phoebe on a mid-March morning, when the thrushes were beginning to sing, when the larches were reddening, and only in the topmost hollows of the pikes did any snow remain, to catch the strengthening sunlight.

As she opened it, she looked at its length with astonishment. Then the tone of it brought the rushing colour to her cheek, and when it was finished she kissed it and hid it in her dress. After weeks of barrenness, of stray post-cards and perfunctory notes, these ample pages, with their rhetorical and sentimental effusion, brought new life to the fretting, lonely woman. She went about in penitence. Surely she had done injustice to her John; and she dreaded lest any inkling of those foolish or morbid thoughts she had been harbouring should ever reach him.

She wrote back with passion—like one throwing herself on his breast. The letter was long and incoherent, written at night beside Carrie's bed—and borrowing much, unconsciously, from the phraseology of the novels she still got from Bowness. Alack! it is to be feared that John Fenwick—already at another point in spiritual space when the letter reached him—gave it but a hasty reading.

But, for the time, it was an untold relief to the writer. Afterwards, she settled down to wait again, working meanwhile night and day at her beautiful embroidery that John had designed for her. Miss Anna came to see her, exclaimed at her frail looks, wanted to lend her money. Phoebe in a new exaltation, counting the weeks, and having still three or four sovereigns in the drawer, refused—would say nothing about their straits. John, she declared, was on the eve of an enormous success. It would be all right presently.

* * * * *

Weeks passed. The joy of that one golden letter faded; and gradually the shadows re-closed about her. Fenwick's letters dwindled again to post-cards, and then almost ceased. When the hurried lines came, the strain and harass expressed in them left no room for affection. Something wrong with the 'Genius Loci'!—some bad paints—hours of work needed to get the beastly thing right—the portrait still far from complete—but the dress would be a marvel!—without quenching the head in the least. And not a loving word!—scarcely an inquiry after the child.

April came. The little shop in the neighbouring village gave Mrs. Fenwick credit—but Phoebe, brought up in frugal ways, to loathe the least stain of debt, hated to claim it, and went there in the dusk, that she might not be seen.

Meanwhile not a line from John to tell her that his pictures had gone in to the Academy. She saw a paragraph, however, in the local papers describing 'Show Sunday.' Had John been entertaining smart people to tea, and showing his pictures, with the rest? If so, couldn't he find ten minutes in which to send her news of it? It was unkind! All her suspicions and despair revived.

As she carried her child back from the village, tottering often under the weight, gusts of mingled weakness and passion would sweep over her. She would not be treated so—John should see! She would get her money for her work and go to London—whether he liked it or no—tax him with his indifference to her—find out what he was really doing.

The capacity for these moments of violence was something new in her—probably depending, if the truth were known, on some obscure physical misery. She felt that they degraded her, yet could not curb them.

And, in this state, the obsession of the winter seized her again. She brooded perpetually over the doleful Romney story—the tale of a great painter, born, like her John, in this Northern air, and reared in Kendal streets, deserting his peasant wife—enslaved by Emma Hamilton through many a passionate year—and coming back at last that the drudge of his youth might nurse him through his decrepit old age. She remembered going with John in their sweetheart days to see the house where Romney died, imbecile and paralysed, with Mary Romney beside him.

'I would never have done it—never!' she said to herself in a mad recoil. 'He had chosen—he should have paid!'

She sat closer and closer at her work, in a feverish eagerness to finish it, sleeping little and eating little. When she wrote to her husband it was in a bitter, reproachful tone she had never yet employed to him. 'I have had one nice letter from you this winter, and only one. As you can't take the trouble to write any more, you'll hardly wonder if I think you sent that one to keep me quiet.' She wrote too often in this style. But, whether in this style or another, John made no answer—had apparently ceased to write.

One afternoon towards the end of April she was sitting at her work in the parlour, with the window open to the lengthening day, when she heard the gate open and shut. A woman in black came up the pathway, and, seeing Phoebe at the window, stopped short. Phoebe rose, and, as the visitor threw back her veil, recognised the face of Mr. Morrison's daughter, Bella.

She gave a slight cry; then, full of pity and emotion, she hastened to open the door.

'Oh, Miss Morrison!' She held out her hand; her attitude, her beautiful eyes, breathed compassion, and also embarrassment. The thought of the debt rushed into her mind. Had Miss Morrison come to press for it? It was within a fortnight of twelve months since the loan was granted. She felt a vague terror.

The visitor just touched her hand, then looked at her with an expression which stirred increasing alarm in the woman before her. It was so hard and cold; it threatened, without speech.

'I came to return you something I don't want any more,' said the girl, with a defiant air; and Phoebe noticed, as she spoke, that she carried in her left hand a large, paper-covered roll. In her deep black she was more startling than ever, with spots of flame-colour on either cheek, the eyes fixed and staring, the lips wine-red. It might have been a face taken from one of those groups of crudely painted wood or terra-cotta, in which northern Italy—as at Orta or Varallo—has expressed the scenes of the Passion. The Magdalen in one of the ruder groups might have looked so.

'Will you please to come in?' said Phoebe, leading the way to the parlour, which smelled musty and damp for lack of fire, and was still littered with old canvases, studies, casts, and other gear of the painter who had once used it as his studio.

Bella Morrison came in, but she refused a chair.

'There's no call for me to stay,' she said, sharply. 'You won't like what I came to do—I know that.'

Phoebe looked at her, bewildered.

'I've brought back that picture of me your husband painted,' said the girl, putting down her parcel on the table. 'It's in there.'

'What have you done that for?' said Phoebe, wondering.

'Because I loathe it—and all my friends loathe it, too. Papa—'

'Oh! do tell me—how is Mrs. Morrison?' cried Phoebe, stepping forward, her whole aspect quivering with painful pity.

'She's all right,' said Bella, looking away. 'We're going to live in Guernsey. We're selling this house. It's hers, of course. Papa settled it on her, years before—'

She stopped—then drew herself together.

'So, you see, I got that picture out of mother. I've never forgiven Mr. Fenwick for taking it home, saying he'd improve it, and then sending it back as bad as ever. I knew he'd done that to spite me—he'd disliked me from the first.'

'John never painted a portrait to spite anybody in his life,' cried
Phoebe. 'I never heard such nonsense.'

'Well, anyway, he can take it back,' said the girl. 'Mother wouldn't let me destroy it, but she said I might give it back; so there it is. We kept the frame—that's decent—that might do for something else.'

Phoebe's eyes flashed.

'Thank you, Miss Morrison. It would, indeed, be a great pity to waste my husband's work on some one who couldn't appreciate it.' She took the roll and stood with her hand upon it, protecting it. 'I'll tell him what you've done.'

'Oh, then, you do know where he is!' said Bella, with a laugh.

'What do you mean?'

'What I say.' The eyes of the two women met across the table. A flash of cruelty showed itself in those of the girl. 'I thought, perhaps, you mightn't—as he's been passing in London for an unmarried man.'

There was a pause—a moment's dead silence.

'That, of course, is a lie!' said Phoebe at last, drawing in her breath—and then, restraining herself, 'or else a silly mistake.'

'It's no mistake at all,' said Bella, with a toss of the head. 'I thought you ought to know, and mother agreed with me. The men are all alike. There's a letter I got the other day from a friend of mine.'

She drew a letter from a stringbag on her wrist, and handed it to
Phoebe.

Phoebe made no motion to take it. She stood rigid, her fierce, still look fixed on her visitor.

'You'd better,' said Bella; 'I declare you'd better. If my husband had been behaving like this, I should want to know the truth—and pay him out.'

Phoebe took the letter, opened it with steady fingers, and read it. While she was reading it the baby Carrie, escaped from the little servant's tutelage, ran in and hid her face in her mother's skirts, peering sometimes at the stranger.

When she had finished the letter, Phoebe handed it back to its owner.

'Who wrote that?'

'A friend of mine who's working at South Kensington. You can see—she knows a lot about artists.'

'And what she doesn't know she makes up,' said Phoebe, with slow contempt. 'You tell her, Miss Morrison, from me, she might be better employed than writing nasty, lying gossip about people she never saw.'

She caught up her child, who flung her arms round her mother's neck, nestling on her shoulder.

'Oh, well, if you're going to take it like that—' said the other, with a laugh.

'I am taking it like that, you see,' said Phoebe, walking to the door and throwing it wide. 'You'd better go, Miss Morrison. I am sure I can't imagine why you came. I should have thought you'd have had sorrow enough of your own, without trying to make it for other people.'

The other winced.

'Well, of course, if you don't want to know the truth, you needn't.'

Phoebe laughed.

'It isn't truth,' she said. 'But if it was—Did you want to know the truth about your father?' Her white face, encircled by the child's arms, quivered as she spoke.

'Don't you abuse my father,' cried Bella, furiously.

Phoebe's eyes wavered and fell.

'I wasn't going to abuse him,' she said, in a choked voice. 'I was sorry for him—and for your mother. But you've got a hard, wicked heart—and I hope I'll never see you again, Miss Morrison. I'll thank you, please, to leave my house.'

The other drew down her veil with an affected smile and shrug. 'Good-bye, Mrs. Fenwick. Perhaps you'll find out before long that my friend wasn't such a fool to write that letter—and I wasn't such a beast to tell you—as you think now. Good-bye!'

Phoebe said nothing. The girl passed her insolently, and left the house.

Phoebe put the child to bed, sat without touching a morsel while Daisy supped, and then shut herself into the parlour, saying that she was going to sit up over her work, to which only a few last touches were wanting. It had been her intention to go with the carrier to Windermere the following day in order to hand it over to the shop that had got her the commission, and ask for payment.

But as soon as she was alone in the room, with her lamp and her work, she swept its silken, many-coloured mass aside, found a sheet of paper, and began to write.

She was trying to write down, as nearly as she could remember, the words of the letter which Bella had shown her.

'Didn't you tell me about a man called John Fenwick, who painted your portrait?—a beastly thing you couldn't abide? Well, they say he's going to be awfully famous soon, and make a pile of money. I don't know him, but I have a friend who knows one of the two men who used to lodge in the same house with him—I believe they've just moved to Chelsea. He says that Mr. Fenwick will have two ripping pictures in the Academy, and is sure to get his name up. And, besides that, there is some lord or other who's wild about him—and means to buy everything he can paint. But I thought you said your man was married?—do you remember I chaffed you about him when he began, and you said, "No fear—he is married to a school-teacher," or something of that sort? Well, I asked about the wife, and my friend says, "Nonsense! he isn't married—nothing of the sort—or, at any rate, if he is, he makes everybody believe he isn't—and there must be something wrong somewhere." By the way, one of the pictures he's sending in is a wonderful portrait. An awfully beautiful woman—with a white velvet dress, my dear—and they say the painting of the dress is marvellous. She's the daughter of the Lord Somebody who's taken him up. They've introduced him to all sorts of smart people, and, as I said before, he's going to have a tremendous success. Some people have luck, haven't they?'

She reproduced it as accurately as she could, read it through again, and then pushed it aside. With set lips she resumed her work, and by midnight she had put in the last stitch and fastened the last thread. That she should do so was essential to the plan she had in her mind. For she had already determined what to do. Within forty-eight hours she would be in London. If he had really disowned and betrayed her—or if he had merely grown tired of her and wished to be quit of her—in either case she would soon discover what it behoved her to know.

When at last, in the utter silence of midnight, she took up her candle to go to bed, its light fell, as she moved towards the door, on the portrait of himself that Fenwick had left with her at Christmas. She looked at it long, dry-eyed. It was as though it began already to be the face of a stranger.