Fenwick's Career

by Mrs. Humphry Ward

Morrison laughed good-temperedly. He touched a copy of The Art
Journal lying on the table.

'There's an article here about that German painter—Lenbach—whom they crack up so nowadays. When he was a young man, Baron Schack, it appears, paid him one hundred pounds a year, for all his time, as a copyist in Italy and Spain.' He spoke very delicately, mincing his words a little.

Fenwick's colour rose suddenly. Morrison was not looking at him, or he would have seen a pair of angry eyes.

'Prices have gone up,' said the painter, dryly. 'And I guess living in London's dearer now than living in Italy was when Lenbach (which he pronounced Lenback) was young!'

'Oh! so you know all about Lenbach?'

'You lent me the article. However'—Fenwick rose—'is that our bargain?'

The note in the voice was trenchant, even aggressive. Nothing of the suppliant, in tone or attitude. Morrison surveyed him, amused.

'If you like to call it so,' he said, lifting his delicate eyebrows a moment. 'Well, I'll take the risk.'

He left the room. Fenwick thrust his hands into his pockets, with a muttered exclamation, and walked to the window. He looked out upon a Westmoreland valley in the first flush of spring; but he saw nothing. His blood beat in heart and brain with a suffocating rapidity. So his chance was come! What would Phoebe say?

As he stood by the large window, face and form in strong relief against the crude green without, the energy of the May landscape was, as it were, repeated and expressed in the man beholding it. He was tall, a little round-shouldered, with a large, broad-browed head, covered with brown, straggling hair; eyes, glancing and darkish, full of force, of excitement even, curiously veiled, often, by suspicion; nose, a little crooked owing to an injury at football; and mouth, not coarse, but large and freely cut, and falling readily into lines of sarcasm.