Fenwick's Career

by Mrs. Humphry Ward

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.