Fenwick's Career

by Mrs. Humphry Ward

CHAPTER XII

A fortnight later Dick Watson died. Fenwick saw him several times before the end, and was present at his last moments. The funeral was managed by Cuningham; so were the obituary notices; and Fenwick attended the funeral and read the notices, with that curious mixture of sore grief and jealous irritation into which our human nature is so often betrayed at similar moments.

Then he found himself absorbed by the later rehearsals of The Queen's Necklace; by the completion of his pictures for the May exhibition; and by the perpetual and ignominious hunt for money. As to this last, it seemed to him that each day was a battle in which he was for ever worsted. He was still trying in vain to sell his house at Chelsea, the house planned at the height of his brief prosperity, built and finely furnished on borrowed money, and now apparently unsaleable, because of certain peculiarities in it, which suited its contriver, and no one else. And meanwhile the bank from which he had borrowed most of his building money was pressing inexorably for repayment; the solicitor in Bedford Row could do nothing, and was manifestly averse to running up a longer bill on his own account; so that, instead of painting, Fenwick often spent his miserable days in rushing about London, trying to raise money by one shift after another, in an agony to get a bill accepted or postponed, borrowing from this person and that, and with every succeeding week losing more self-respect and self-control.

The situation would have been instantly changed if only his artistic power had recovered itself. And if Eugénie had been within his reach it might have done so. She had the secret of stimulating in him what was poetic, and repressing what was merely extravagant or violent. But she was far away: and as he worked at the completion of his series of 'Months,' or at various portraits which the kindness or compassion of old friends had procured for him, he fell headlong into all his worst faults.

His handling, once so distinguished through all its inequalities, grew steadily more careless and perfunctory; his drawing lost force and grip; his composition, so rich, interesting, and intelligent in his early days, now meant nothing, said nothing. The few friends who still haunted his studio during these dark months were often struck with pity; criticism or argument was useless; and some of them believed that he was suffering from defects of sight, and was no longer capable of judging his own work.

The portrait commissions, in particular, led more than once to disaster. His angry vanity suspected that while he was now thought incapable of the poetic or imaginative work in which he had once excelled, he was still considered—'like any fool'—good enough for portraits. This alone was enough to make him loathe the business. On two or three occasions he ended by quarrelling with the sitter. Then for hours he would walk restlessly about his room, smoking enormously, drinking—sometimes excessively—out of a kind of excitement and désoeuvrement—his strong, grizzled hair bristling about his head, his black eyes staring and bloodshot, and that wild gypsyish look of his youth more noticeable than ever in these surroundings of what promised soon to be a decadent middle age.

One habit of his youth had quite disappeared. The queer tendency to call on Heaven for practical aid in any practical difficulty—to make of prayer a system of 'begging-letters to the Almighty'—which had of ten quieted or distracted him in his early years of struggle, affected him no longer. His inner life seemed to himself shrouded in a sullen numbness and frost.

And the old joy in reading, the old plenitude and facility of imagination, were also in abeyance. He became the fierce critic of other men's ideas, while barren of his own. To be original, successful, happy, was now in his eyes the one dark and desperate offence. Yet every now and then he would have impulses of the largest generosity; would devote hours to the teaching of some struggling student and the correction of his work; or draw on his last remains of credit or influence—pester people with calls, or write reams to the newspapers—on behalf of some one, unduly overlooked, whose work he admired.

But through it all, the shadows deepened, and a fixed conviction that he was moving towards catastrophe. In spite of Watson's touching words to him, he did not often let himself think of Phoebe. Towards her, as towards so much else, his mind and heart were stiffened and voiceless. But for hours in the night—since sleeplessness was now added to his other torments—he would brood on the loss of his child, would try to imagine her dancing, singing, sewing—or helping her mother in the house. Seventeen! Why, soon no doubt they would be marrying her, and he, her father, would know nothing, hear nothing. And in the darkness he would feel the warm tears rise in his eyes, and hold them there, proudly arrested.

The rehearsals in which he spent many hours of the week, generally added to his distress and irritation. The play itself was, in his opinion, a poor vulgar thing, utterly unworthy of the 'spectacle' he had contrived for it. He could not hide his contempt for the piece, and indeed for most of its players; and was naturally unpopular with the management and the company. Moreover, he wanted his money desperately, seeing that the play had been postponed, first from November to February, and then from February to April; but the actor-manager concerned was in somewhat dire straits himself, and nothing could be got before production.

One afternoon, late in March, a rehearsal was nearing its completion, everybody was tired out, and everything had been going badly. One of Fenwick's most beautiful scenes—carefully studied from the Trianon gardens on the spot—had been, in his opinion, hopelessly spoilt in order to bring in some ridiculous 'business' wholly incongruous with the setting and date of the play. He had had a fierce altercation on the stage with the actor-manager. The cast, meanwhile, dispersed at the back of the stage or in the wings, looked on maliciously or chatted among themselves; while every now and then one or other of the antagonists would call up the leading lady, or the conceited gentleman who was to act Count Fersen, and hotly put a case. Fenwick was madly conscious all the time of his lessened consideration and dignity in the eyes of a band of people whom he despised. Two years before, his cooperation would have been an honour and his opinion law. Now, nothing of the kind; indeed, through the heated remarks of the actor-manager there ran the insolent implication that Mr. Fenwick's wrath was of no particular account to anybody, and that he was presuming on a commission he had been very lucky to get.

At last a crowd of stage-hands, setting scenery for another piece in the evening, invaded the stage, and the rehearsal was just breaking up when Fenwick, still talking in flushed exasperation, happened to notice two ladies standing in the wings, on the other side of the vast stage, close to the stage-entrance.

He suddenly stopped talking—stammered—looked again. They were two girls, one evidently a good deal older than the other. The elder was talking with the assistant stage-manager. The younger stood quietly, a few yards away, not talking to any one. Her eyes were on Fenwick, and her young, slightly frowning face wore an expression of amusement—of something besides, also—something puzzled and intent. It flashed upon him that she had been there for some time, that he had been vaguely conscious of her—that she had, in fact, been watching from a distance the angry scene in which he had been engaged.

'Why!—whatever is the matter, Mr. Fenwick?' said the actor beside him, startled by his look.

Fenwick made no answer, but he dropped a roll of papers he was holding and suddenly rushed forward across the stage, through the throng of carpenters and scene-shifters who were at work upon it. Some garden steps and a fountain just being drawn into position came in his way; he stumbled and fell, was conscious of two or three men coming to his assistance, rose again, and ran on, blindly, pushing at the groups in his way, till he ran into the arms of the stage-manager.

'Who were those ladies?—where are they?' he said, panting, and looking round him in despair; for they had vanished, and the stage-entrance was blocked by an outgoing stream of people.

'Don't know anything about them,' said the man, sulkily. Fenwick had been the plague of his life in rehearsals. 'What?—you mean those two girls? Never saw 'em before.'

'But you must know who they are—you must!' shouted Fenwick. 'What's their name? Why did you let them go?'

'Because I had finished with them.'

The manager turned on his heel, and was about to give an order to a workman, when Fenwick caught him by the arm.

'I implore you,' he said, in a shaking voice, his face crimson—'tell me who they are—and where they went.'

The man looked at him astonished, but something in the artist's face made him speak more considerately.

'I am extremely sorry, Mr. Fenwick, but I really know nothing about them. Oh, by the way'—he fumbled in his pocket. 'Yes—one of them did give me a card—I forgot—I never saw the name before.' He extracted it with difficulty and handed it to Fenwick, who stood trembling from head to foot.

Fenwick looked at it.

'Miss Larose.' Nothing else. No address.

'But the other one!—the other one!' he said, beside himself.

'I never spoke to her at all,' said his companion, whose name was Fison. 'They came in here twenty minutes ago and asked to see me. The door-keeper told them the rehearsal was just over and they would find me on the stage. The lady I was talking to wished to know whether we had all the people we wanted for the ballroom scene. Some friend with whom she had been acting in the country had advised her to apply—'

'Acting where?' said Fenwick, still gripping him.

The stage-manager rubbed his nose in perplexity.

'I really can't remember. Leeds—Newcastle—Halifax—was it? It's altogether escaped my memory.'

'For God's sake, remember!' cried Fenwick.

The stage-manager shook his head.

'I really didn't take notice. I liked the young lady very well. We got on, as you may say, at once. I talked to her while you were discussing over there. But I had to tell her there was no room for her—and no more there is. Her sister—or her friend—whichever it was—was an uncommonly pretty girl. I noticed that as she went out—which reminds me—she asked me to tell her who you were.'

Fenwick gazed at the speaker in passionate despair.

'And you can't tell me any more—can't help me?' His voice rose again into a shout, then failed him.

'No, I really can't,' said the other, decidedly, pulling himself away.
'You go and ask the door-keeper. Perhaps he'll know something.'

But the door-keeper knew only that he had been asked for 'Mr. Fison' by two nice-spoken young ladies, that he had directed them where to go, and had opened the stage-door for them. He hadn't happened to be in his 'lodge' when they went out, and couldn't say in which direction they had gone.

'Why, lor' bless you, sir, they come here in scores every week!'

Fenwick rushed out into the Strand, and walked from end to end of the theatrical section of it several times, questioning the policemen on duty. But he could discover nothing.

Then, blindly, he made his way down a narrow street to the Embankment.
There he threw himself on a bench, almost fainting, unable to stand.

What should he do? He was absolutely convinced that he had seen Carrie—his child; his little Carrie!—his own flesh and blood. It was her face—her eyes—her movement—changed, indeed, but perfectly to be recognised by him, her father. And by the cruel, the monstrous accidents of the meeting, she had been swept away from him again into this whirlpool of London, before he had had the smallest chance of grasping at the little form as it floated past him on this aimless stream of things. His whole nature was in surging revolt against life—against men's senseless theories of God and Providence. If it should prove that he had lost all clue again to his wife and child, he would put an end, once for all, to his share in the business—he swore, with clenched hands, that he would. The Great Potter had made sport of him long enough; it was time to break the cup and toss its fragments back into the vast common heap of ruined and wasted things. 'Some to honour—and some to dishonour'—the words rang in his ears, mingling with that deep bell of St. Paul's, whereof the echoes were being carried up the river towards him on the light southeasterly wind.

But first—he tried to make his mind follow out the natural implications and consequences of what had happened. Carrie had asked his name. But clearly, when it was given her, it had meant nothing to her. She could not have left her father there—knowing it was her father—without a word. No; Phoebe's first step, of course, would have been to drop her old name, and the child would have no knowledge of it.

But Phoebe? If Carrie was in England, so was Phoebe. He could not believe that she would part with the child. And supposing Carrie spoke of the prating, haranguing fellow she had seen?—mentioned the name, which the stage-manager had given her?—what then? Could Phoebe still have the cruelty, the wickedness to maintain her course of action—to keep Carrie from him? Ah! if he had been guilty towards her in the old days, she had wrung out full payment long ago; the balance of injury had long since dropped heavily on his side. But who could know how she had developed?—whether towards hardness or towards repentance. Still—to-night, probably—she would hear what and whom Carrie had seen. Any post might bring the fruits of it. And if not—he was not without a clue. If a girl whose name is known has been playing recently at an English provincial theatre, it ought to be possible somehow to recover news of her. He looked at his watch. Too late for the lawyers. But he roused himself, hailed a cab, and went to his club, where he wrote at length to his solicitor, describing what had happened, and suggesting various lines of action.

Then he went home, got some charcoal and paper and by lamp-light began to draw the face which he had seen—a very young and still plastic face, with delicate lips open above the small teeth; and eyes—why, they were Phoebe's eyes, of course!—no other eyes like them in the world. He drew them with an eager hand, knowing the way of them. He put the light—the smile—into them; a happy smile!—as of one to whom life has been kind. No sign of fear, distress, or cringing poverty—rather an innocent sovereignty, lovely and unashamed. Then the brow, and the curly hair in its brown profusion; and the small neck; and the thin, straight shoulders. He drew in the curve of the shady hat—the knot of lace at the throat—the spare young lines of the breast.

So it emerged; and when it was done, he put it on an easel and sat staring at it, his eyes blind with tears.

Yes, it was Carrie—he had no doubt whatever that it was Carrie. And behind her, mingling with her image—yet distinct—a veiled, intangible presence, stood Phoebe—Phoebe so like her, and yet so different. But of Phoebe—still—he would not think. It was as when a man, mortally tired, shrinks from some fierce contest of brain and limb, which yet he knows may some day have to be faced. He put his wife aside, and sank himself in the covetous, devouring vision of his child.

Next day there was great activity among the lawyers. They were confident of recovering the clue, and if Fenwick's identification was a just one, the search was near its end.

Only, till they really were on the track, better say nothing to
Lord Findon and Madame de Pastourelles. This was the suggestion of the
Findon's solicitor, and Fenwick eagerly endorsed it.

Presently inquiry had been made from every management in London as to the touring companies of the year; confidential agents had been sent to every provincial town that possessed a theatre; long lists of names had been compiled and carefully scanned. Fenwick's drawing of the girl whom he had seen had been photographed; and some old likenesses of Phoebe and Carrie had been reproduced and attached to it, for the use of Messrs. Butlin's provincial correspondents. The police were appealed to; the best private detectives to be had were employed.

In vain! The smiling child of seventeen had emerged for that one appearance on the stage of her father's life, only, it seemed, to vanish again for ever. No trace could be found anywhere of a 'Miss Larose,' either as a true or a theatrical name; the photographs suggested nothing to those who saw them; or if various hints and clues sometimes seemed to present themselves, they led to no result.

Meanwhile, day after day, Fenwick waited on the post, hurrying for and scanning his letters with feverish, ever-waning hope. Not a sign, not a word from Phoebe. His heart grew fierce. There were moments when he felt something not unlike hatred for this invisible woman, who was still able to lay a ghostly and sinister hand upon his life. And yet, and yet!—suppose, after all, that she were dead?

During these same weeks of torment The Queen's Necklace was produced; it was a pretentious failure, and after three weeks of difficult existence flickered to an end. The management went into bankruptcy, and the greater part of Fenwick's payment was irrecoverable. He could hardly now meet his daily living expenses, and there was an execution in his house, put in by the last firm of builders employed.

Close upon this disaster came the opening of his private exhibition.
Grimly, in a kind of dogged abstraction, he went through with it.
He himself, with the help of a lad who was his man-of-all-work in
Chelsea, nailed up the draperies, hung the pictures, and issued the
invitations for the private view.

About a hundred people came to the private view. His reputation was not yet dead, and there was much curiosity about his circumstances. But Fenwick, looking at the scanty crowd, considering the faces that were there and the faces that were not there, knew very well that it could be of no practical assistance to him. Not a picture sold; and next day there were altogether seven people in the gallery, of whom five were the relations of men to whom he had given gratuitous teaching at one period or other of his career.

And never, alack, in the case of any artist of talent, was there a worse 'press' than that which dealt with his pictures on the following morning. The most venomous article of all was the work of a man whom Fenwick had treated with conceit and rudeness in the days of his success. The victim now avenged himself, with the same glee which a literary club throws into the black-balling of some evil tongue—some too harsh and too powerful critic of the moment. 'Scamped and empty work,' in which 'ideas not worth stating' find an expression 'not worth criticism.' Mannerisms grown to absurdity; faults of early training writ dismally large; vulgarity of conception and carelessness of execution—no stone that could hurt or sting was left unflung, and the note of meditative pity in which the article came to an end, marked the climax of a very neat revenge. After reading it, Fenwick felt himself artistically dead and buried.

A great silence fell upon him. He spoke to no one in the gallery, and he avoided his club. Early in the afternoon he went to Lincoln's Inn Fields—only to hear from the lawyers that they had done all they could with the new scent, and it was no use pursuing it further. He heard what they had to say in silence, and after leaving their office he visited a shop in the Strand. Just as the light was waning, about seven o'clock on a May evening, he found himself again in his studio. It was now absolutely bare, save for a few empty easels, a chair or two, and some tattered portfolios. The two men representing the execution were in the dining-room. He could hear the voices of a charwoman and of the lad who had helped him to arrange the gallery, talking in the kitchen.

Fenwick locked himself into the studio. On his way thither he had recoiled, shivering, from the empty desolation of the house. In the general disarray of the ticketed furniture and stripped walls, all artistic charm had disappeared. And he said to himself, with a grim twist of the mouth, that if the house had grown ugly and commonplace, that only made it a better setting for the ugly and commonplace thing which he was about to do.

* * * * *

About half an hour later a boy, looking like the 'buttons' of a lodging-house, walked up to the side entrance of Fenwick's ambitious mansion—which possessed a kind of courtyard, and was built round two sides of an oblong. The door was open and the charwoman just inside, so that the boy had no occasion to ring. He carried a parcel carefully wrapped in an old shawl.

'Is this Mr. Fenwick's?' asked the boy, consulting a dirty scrap of paper.

'Aye,' said the woman. 'Well, who's it from? isn't there no note with it?'

The boy replied that there was no note, and his instructions were to leave it.

'But what name am I to say?' the woman called after him as he went down the path.

The boy shook his head.

'Don't know—give it up!' he said, impudently, and went off whistling.

'Silly lout,' said the woman, crossly, and, taking up the package, which was not very large, she went with it to the studio, reflecting as she went that by the feel of it it was an unframed picture, and that if some one would only take away some of the beastly, dusty things that were already in the house—that wouldn't, so the bailiffs said, fetch a halfpenny—it would be better worth while than bringing new ones where they weren't wanted.

There was at first no answer to her knock. She tried the door, and wondered to find it locked. But presently she heard Fenwick moving about inside.

'Well, what is it?'

His voice was low and impatient.

'A parcel for you, sir.'

'Take it away.'

'Very well, sir.'

She turned obediently and was halfway down the passage which led to the dining-room, when the studio door opened with a great crash and Fenwick looked out.

'Bring that here. What is it?'

She retraced her steps.

'Well, it's a picture, I think, sir.'

He held out his hand for it, took it, and instantly withdrew into the studio and again locked the door. She noticed that he seemed to have lit one candle in the big studio, and his manner struck her as strange. But her slow mind followed the matter no further, and she went back to the cooking of his slender supper.

Fenwick meanwhile was standing with the parcel in his hand. At the woman's knock he had risen from a table, where he had been writing a letter. A black object, half-covered with a painting-rag, lay beside the ink-stand.

'I must make haste,' he thought, 'or she will be bothering me again.'

He looked at the letter, which was still unfinished. Meanwhile he had absently deposited the parcel on the floor, where it rested against the leg of the table.

'Another page will finish it. Hôtel Bristol, Rome—till the end of the week?—if I only could be sure that was what Butlin said!'

He paced up and down, frowning, in an impotent distress, trying to make his brain work as usual. On his visit of the afternoon he had asked the lawyers for the Findon's address; but his memory now was of the worst.

Suddenly he wheeled round, sat down, and took up a book which had been lying face downwards on the table. It was the 'Memoirs of Benjamin Haydon,' and he opened it at one of the last pages—

'About an hour after, Miss Haydon entered the painting-room, and found her father stretched out dead, before the easel on which stood, blood-sprinkled, his unfinished picture. A portrait of his wife stood on a smaller easel facing his large picture.'

* * * * *

The man reading, paused.

'He had suffered much more than I,' he thought—'but his wife had helped him—stood by him—'

And he passed on to the next page—to the clause in Haydon's will which runs—'My dearest wife, Mary Haydon, has been a good, dear, and affectionate wife to me—a heroine in adversity and an angel in peace.'

'And he repaid her by blowing his brains out,' thought Fenwick, contemptuously. 'But he was mad—of course he was mad. We are all mad—when it comes to this.'

And he turned back, as though in fascination, to the page before, to the last entry in Haydon's Journal.

'21st.—Slept horribly. Prayed in sorrow and got up in agitation. '22d.—God forgive me. Amen.'

'Amen!' repeated Fenwick, aloud, as he dropped the book. The word echoed in the empty room. He covered his eyes with his right hand, leaning his arm on the table.

The other hand, as it fell beside him, came in contact with the parcel which was propped against the table. His touch told him that it contained a picture—an unframed canvas. A vague curiosity awoke in him. He took it up, peered at the address, then began to finger with and unwrap it.

Suddenly—he bent over it. What was it!

He tore off the shawl, and some brown paper beneath it, lifted the thing upon the table, so that the light of the one candle fell upon it, and held it there.

Slowly his face, which had been deeply flushed before, lost all its colour; his jaw dropped a little.

He was staring at the picture of himself which he had painted for Phoebe in the parlour of the Green Nab Cottage thirteen years before. The young face, in its handsome and arrogant vigour, the gypsy-black hair and eyes, the powerful shoulders in the blue serge coat, the sunburnt neck exposed by the loose, turn-down collar above the greenish tie—there they were, as he had painted them, lying once more under his hand. The flickering light of the candle showed him his signature and the date.

He laid it down and drew a long breath. Thrusting his hands into his pockets, he stood staring at it, his brain, under the sharp stimulus, beginning to work more clearly. So Phoebe, too, was alive—and in England. The picture was her token. That was what it meant.

He went heavily to the door, unlocked it, and called. The charwoman appeared.

'Who brought this parcel?'

'A boy, sir.'

'Where's the note?—he must have brought something with it.'

'No, he didn't, sir—there was no note.'

'Don't be absurd!' cried Fenwick. 'There must have been.'

Mrs. Flint, outraged, protested that she knew what she was a-saying of. He questioned her fiercely, but there was nothing to be got out of her rigmarole account, which Fenwick cut short by retreating into the studio in the middle of it.

This fresh check unhinged him altogether—seemed to make a mere fool of him—the sport of gods and men. There he paced up and down in a mad excitement. What in the Devil's name was the meaning of it? The picture came from Phoebe—no one else. But it seemed she had only sent it to him to torment him to punish him yet more? Women were the cruellest of God's creatures. And as for himself—idiot!—if he had only finished his business an hour ago, both she and he would have been released by this time. He worked himself up into a wild passion of rage, stopping every now and then to look at that ghost of his youth, which lay on the table, propped up against some books—and once at the reflexion of his haggard face and grey hair as he passed in front of an old mirror on the wall.

Then suddenly the tension gave way. He sank on the chair beside the table, hiding his face on his arms in an utter exhaustion, while yet, through the physical weakness, something swept and vibrated, which was in truth the onset of returning life.

As he lay there a cab drove up to the front door, and a lady dressed in black descended from it. She rang, and Mrs. Flint appeared.

'Is Mr. Fenwick at home?'

'He is, ma'am,' said the woman, hesitating—'but he did say he wasn't to be disturbed.'

'Will you please give him my card and say I wish to see him at once? I have brought him an important letter.'

Mrs. Flint, wavering between her dread of Fenwick's ill-humour and the impression produced upon her by the gentle decision of her visitor, retreated into the house. The lady followed.

'Well, if you'll wait there, ma'am'—the charwoman opened the door of the dismantled sitting-room—'I'll speak to Mr. Fenwick.'

She shuffled off. Eugénie de Pastourelles threw back her veil. She had arrived only that morning in London after a night journey, and her face showed deep lines of fatigue. But its beauty of expression had never been more striking. Animation—joy—spoke in the eyes, quivered in the lips. She moved restlessly up and down, holding in one hand a parcel of letters. Once she noticed the room—the furniture ticketed in lots—and paused in concern and pity. But the momentary cloud was soon chased by the happiness of the thought which held her. Meanwhile Mrs. Flint knocked at the door of the studio.

'Mr. Fenwick! Sir! There's a lady come, sir, and she wishes to speak to you particular.'

An angry movement inside.

'I'm busy. Send her away.'

'I've got her card here, sir,' said Mrs. Flint, dropping her voice. 'It's a queer name, sir—somethin furrin—Madam somethin. She says it's most pertickler. I was to tell you she'd only got home to-day, from abroad.'

A sudden noise inside. The door was opened.

'Where is she? Ask her to come in.'

He himself retreated into the darkness of the studio, clinging, so the charwoman noticed, to the back of a chair, as though for support. Wondering 'what was up,' she clattered back again down the long passage which led from the sitting-room to the studio.

But Eugénie had heard the opening door and came to meet her.

'Is anything wrong?' she asked, anxiously. 'Is Mr. Fenwick ill?'

'Well, you see, ma'am,' said Mrs. Flint, cautiously—'it's the
Sheriff's horficers—though they do it as kind as they can.'

Eugénie looked bewildered.

'A hexecution, ma'am,' whispered the woman as she led the way.

'Oh!' It was a cry of distress, checked by the sight of Fenwick, who stood in the door of his studio.

'I am sorry you were kept waiting,' he said, hoarsely.

She made some commonplace reply, and they shook hands. Mrs. Flint looked at them curiously, and withdrew again into the back premises.

Fenwick turned and walked in front of Eugénie towards the table from which he had risen. She looked at him in sudden horror—arrested—the words she had come to speak stifled on her lips. Then a quick impulse made her shut the door behind her. He turned again, bewildered, and raised his hand to his head.

'My God!' he said, in a low voice; 'I oughtn't to have let you come in here. Go away—please go away.'

Then she saw him totter backward, raise an overcoat which hung across the back of a chair, and throw it over something lying on the table. Terror possessed her; his aspect was so ghastly, his movements so strange. She flew to him, and took his hand in both hers.

'No, no—don't send me away! My friend—my dear friend—listen to me.
You look so ill—you've been in trouble! If I'd only known!
But I've thought of you always—I've prayed for you. And
listen—listen!—I've brought you good news.'

She paused, still holding him. Her eyes were bright with tears, but her mouth smiled. He looked at her, trembling. Her pale charm, her pleading grace moved him unbearably; this beauty, this tenderness—the sudden apparition of them in this dark room—unmanned him altogether.

But she came nearer.

'We got home only this morning. It was a sudden wish of my father's—he thought Italy wasn't suiting him. We came straight from Rome. I wrote to you by this morning's post. Then—this afternoon—after we'd settled my father—I drove to Lincoln's Inn Fields. And I found them so excited—just sending off a messenger to you. A letter had arrived by the afternoon post, an hour after you left the office. I have it here—they trusted it to me. Oh, dear Mr. Fenwick, listen to me! They are on the track—it's a real clue this time! Your wife has been in Canada—they know where she was three months ago—it's only a question of time now. Oh! and they told me about the theatre—how wonderful! Oh! I believe they're not far off—know it—I feel it!'

He had fallen on his chair; she stood beside him.

'And you've been ill,' she said, sadly, 'and in great distress, I'm afraid—about money, was it? Oh, if I'd only known! But you'll let me make that right, won't you?—you couldn't refuse me that? And think! you'll have them again—your wife—your little girl.'

She smiled at him, while the tears slipped down her cheeks. She cherished his cold hands, holding them close in her warm, soft palms.

He seemed to be trying to speak. Then suddenly he disengaged himself, rose feebly, went to the mantelpiece, lit another candle, and brought it, holding it towards something on a chair—beckoning to her. She went to him—perceived the unframed portrait—and cried out.

'Phoebe sent it me—just now,' he said, almost in a whisper—'without a word—without a single word. It was left here by a boy—with no letter—no address. Wasn't it cruel?—wasn't it horribly cruel?'

She watched him in dismay.

'Are you sure there was nothing—no letter?'

He shook his head. She released herself, took up the picture, and examined it. Then she shook out the folds of the shawl, the fragments of the brown paper, and still found nothing. But as she took the candle and stooped with it to the floor, something white gleamed. A neatly folded slip of paper had dropped among some torn letters beneath the table. She held it up to him with a cry of delight.

He made a movement, then fell back.

'Read it, please,' he said, hoarsely, refusing it. 'There's something wrong with my eyes.'

And he held his hands pressed to them, while she—little reluctantly, wistfully—opened and read:

* * * * *

MY DEAR JOHN,—I have Phoebe safe. She can't write. But she sends you this—as her sign. It's been with her all through. She knows she's been a sinful wife. But there, it's no use writing. Besides, it makes me cry. But come!—come soon! Your child is an angel. You'll forget and forgive when you see her.

[Illustration: 'Be my messenger']

I brought Phoebe here last week. Do you see the address?—it's the old cottage! I took it with a friend—three years ago. It seemed the right place for your poor wife—till she could make up her mind how and when to let you know.

As to how I came to know—we'll tell you all that.

Carrie knows nothing yet. I keep thinking of the first look in her eyes! Come soon!

Ever your affectionate old friend,

ANNA MASON.

There was silence. Eugénie had read the letter in a soft voice that trembled. She looked up. Fenwick was staring straight before him, and she saw him shudder.

'I know it's horrible,' he said, in a low voice—'and cowardly—but I feel as if I couldn't face it—I couldn't bear it.'

And he began feebly to pace to and fro, looking like an old, grey-haired man in the dim grotesqueness of the light. Eugénie understood. She felt, with mingled dread and pity, that she was in the presence of a weakness which represented far more than the immediate emotion; was the culmination, indeed, of a long, disintegrating process.

She hesitated—moved—wavered—then took courage again.

'Come and sit down,' she said, gently.

And, going up to him, she took him by the arm and led him back to his chair.

He sank upon it, his eyes hanging on her. She stooped over him.

'Shall I,' she said, uncertainly—'shall I—go first? Oh, I oughtn't to go! Nobody ought to interfere—between husband and wife. But if you wish it—if I could do any good—'

Her eyes sought the answer of his.

Her face, framed in the folds of her black veil, shone in the candle-light; her voice was humble, yet brave.

The silence continued a moment. Then his lips moved.

'Be my messenger!' he said, just breathing it.

She made a sign of assent. And he, feebly lifting her hands, brought them to his lips. Close to them—unseen by her—for the moment unremembered by him—lay the revolver with which he had meant to take his life—and the letter in which he had bid her a last farewell.