Fenwick's Career

by Mrs. Humphry Ward

Kind and simple sentences!—written so innocently and interpreted so perversely! And yet the fierce and blind bewilderment with which Phoebe read or misread them was natural enough. She never doubted for a moment but that the bad woman who wrote them meant to offer herself to John. She was separated from her husband, John had said, declaring of course that it was not her fault. As if any one could be sure of that! But, at any rate, if she were separated, she might be divorced—some time. And then—then!—she would be so obliging as to make a 'cushion,' and a home, for Phoebe Fenwick's husband! As to his not being grand enough for her, that was all nonsense. When a man was as clever as John, he was anybodies equal—one saw that every day. No, this creature would make people buy his pictures—she would push him on—and after a while—

With a morbid and devastating rapidity, a whole scheme, by which the woman before her might possess herself of John, unfolded itself in Phoebe's furious mind.

Yet, surely, it would only want one word from her—from her, his wife?—

She felt herself trembling. Her limbs began to sink under her. She dropped upon a chair, sobbing. What was the use of fighting, of protesting? John had forgotten her—John's heart had grown cold to her. She might dismay and trample on her rival—how would that give her back her husband?

Oh, how could he, how could he have treated her so! 'I know I was ill-tempered and cross, John,—I couldn't write letters like that—but I did, did love you—you know, you know—I did!'

It seemed as though she twined her arms round him, and he sat rigid as a stone, with a hard, contemptuous mouth. A lonely agony, a blackness of despair, seized on Phoebe, as she crouched there, the letters on her lap, her hands hanging, her beautiful eyes, blurred with tears and sleeplessness, fixed on the picture. What she felt was absurd; but how many tragedies—aye, the deepest—are at bottom ridiculous! She had lost him; he cared no more for her; he had passed into another world out of her ken; and what was to become of her?

She started up, goaded by a blind instinct of revenge, seizing she scarcely knew what. On the table lay a palette, laden with some dark pigment with which Fenwick had just been sketching in part of his new picture. In a pot beside it were brushes.

She caught up a large brush, dipped it in the paint, and going to the picture—panting and crimson—she daubed it from top to bottom, blotting out the eyes, the mouth, the beautiful outline of the head—above all, the hands, whose delicate whiteness specially enraged her.

When the work of wreck was done, she stood a moment gazing at it. Then, violently, she looked for writing-paper. She could see none: but there was an unused half-sheet at the back of one of Madame de Pastourelles' letters, and she roughly tore it off. Making use of a book held on her knee, and finding the pen and ink with which, only half an hour before, Lord Findon had written his cheque, she began to write:

Good-bye, John,—I have found out all I want to know, and you will never see me again. I will never be a burden on a man who is ashamed of me, and has behaved as though I were dead. It is no good wasting words—you know it's true. Perhaps you may think I have no right to take Carrie. But I can't be alone—and, after all, she is more mine than yours. Don't trouble about me. I have some money, and I mean to support myself and Carrie. It was only last night this idea came to me, though it was the night before that—Never mind—I can't write about it, it would take too long, and it doesn't really matter to either of us. I don't want you to find me here; you might persuade me to come back to you, and I know it would be for the misery of both of us. What was I saying?—oh, the money—Well, last night, a cousin of mine, from Keswick, perhaps you remember him—Freddie Tolson—came to see me. Father sent him. You didn't believe what I told you about father—you thought I was making up. You'll be sorry, I think, when you read this, for by now, most likely, father has passed away. Freddie told me the doctor had given him up, and he was very near going. But he sent Freddie to me, with some money he had really left me in his will—only he was afraid Mrs. Gibson would get hold of it, and never let me have it. So he sent it by hand, with his love and blessing—and Freddie was to say he was sorry you had left me so long, and he didn't think it was a right thing for a man to do. Never mind how much it was. It's my very own, and I'm glad it comes from my father, and not from you. I have my embroidery money too, and I shall be all right—though very, very miserable. The idea of what I would do came into my head while I was talking with Freddie—and since I came into this room, I have made up my mind. I'm sorry I can't set you free altogether. There's Carrie to think of, and I must live for her sake. But at any rate you won't have to look after me, or to feel that I'm disgracing you with the smart people who have taken you up—