Fenwick's Career

by Mrs. Humphry Ward

Phoebe stood looking at it forlornly. Carrie's young romance—and her own spoilt life—these two images held her. Carrie would go back, in time, across the sea—would marry, would forget her mother.

'And I'm not old, neither—I'm not old.'

Trembling she left the room. The door of Miss Anna's was open. Phoebe stood on the threshold, looking in. It had been her room and John's in the old days. Their very furniture was still there—as in the parlour, too. For John had sold it all to their landlord, when he wound up affairs. Miss Anna knew even what he had got for it—poor John!

She dared not go in. She stood leaning against the door-post, looking from outside, like one in exile, at the low-raftered room, with its oak press, and its bed, and its bit of green carpet. Thoughts passed through her mind—thoughts which shook her from head to foot.

The cottage was now enlarged. Miss Mason, when she took it on lease three years before this date, had built two new rooms, or got the Hawkshead landlord to build them. She had retired now, on her savings; and there lived with her an old friend, a tired teacher like herself. It was one of those spinster marriages—honourable and seemly ménages—for which the Lakes have always been famous. But Miss Wetherby was now away, visiting her relations in the South. Had she been there, Phoebe could never have made up her mind to accept Miss Anna's urgent invitation. She shrank from everybody—strangers, or old acquaintance—it was all one. The terror which ranked, in her mind, next to the disabling, heart-arresting terror of the first meeting with her husband, was that of the first moment when she must discover herself to her old acquaintance in Langdale or Elterwater—in Kendal or Keswick—as Phoebe Fenwick. She had arrived, closely veiled, as 'Mrs. Wilson,' and she had never yet left the cottage door.

Then again she caught her breath, remembering that at that very moment Carrie was learning her true name from Miss Anna—was realising that she had seen her father without knowing it—was hearing the story of what her mother had done.

'Perhaps she'll hate me!' thought Phoebe, miserably. Through the window came the soft spring air. The big sycamore opposite was nearly in full leaf, and in the field below sprawled the helpless, new-born lambs, so white beside their dingy mothers. The voice of the river murmured through the valley, and sometimes, as the west wind blew stronger, Phoebe's fine and long-practised ear could distinguish other and more distant sounds, wafted from the leaping waterfalls which threaded the ghyll, perhaps even from the stream of Dungeon Ghyll itself, thundering in its prison of rocks. It was a characteristic Westmoreland day, with high grey cloud and interlacing sun, the fells clear from base to top, their green or reddish sides marked with white farms or bold clumps of fir; with the blackness of scattered yews, landmarks through generations; or the purple-grey of the emerging limestone. Fresh, lonely, cheerful—a land at once of mountain solitude, and of a long-settled, long-humanised life—it breathed kindly on this penitent, anxious woman; it seemed to bid her take courage.

Ah! the sound of a horn echoing along the fell. Phoebe flew down to the porch; then, remembering she might be seen, perhaps recognised, by the postman, she stepped back into the parlour, listening, but out of sight.

The servant, who had run down to fetch the letters, seemed to be having something of an argument with the postman. In a few minutes she reappeared, breathless.

'There's no letters, mum,' she said, seeing Phoebe at the parlour window—'and I doan't think this has owt to do here.' She held up a telegram, doubtfully—yet with an evident curiosity and excitement in her look. It was addressed to 'Mrs. John Fenwick.' The postman had clearly made some remark upon it.