Fenwick's Career

by Mrs. Humphry Ward

He nodded, and she went.

'A dream!' he said to himself—'a dream!'

He was thinking of the child as she stood bathed in the mingled glory of sunset and moonlight flowing in upon her from the open window; for the long day of northern summer was still lingering in the valley.

'Ah! if I could only paint!—oh, God, if I could paint!' he groaned aloud, rubbing his hands together in a fever of impotence and misery.

Then he tumbled into bed, and lay there weak and passive, feeling the strangeness of the remembered room, of the open casement window, of the sycamore outside, and the mountain forms beyond it; of this pearly or golden light in which everything was steeped.

In the silence he heard the voice of the beck, as it hurried down the ghyll. Twelve years since he had heard it last; and the eternal water 'at its priestlike task' still murmured with the rocks, still drank the rain, and fed the river. No rebellion there, no failure; no helpless will!

He tried to think of Phoebe, to remember what she had said to him. He wondered if he had been merely brutal to her. But his heart seemed a dry husk within him. It was, as it had been. He could neither think nor feel.

Next day he was so ill that a doctor was sent for. He prescribed long rest, said all excitement must be avoided, all work put away.

Four or five dreary weeks followed. Fenwick stayed in bed most of the day, struggled down to the garden in the afternoon, was nursed by the three women, and scarcely said a word from morning till night that was not connected with some bodily want or discomfort. He showed no repugnance to his wife, would let her wait upon him, and sit beside him in the garden. But he made no spontaneous movement towards her whatever; and the only person who evidently cheered him was Carrie. He watched the child incessantly—in her housework, her sewing, her gardening, her coaxing of her pale mother, her fun with Miss Anna, who was by now her slave. There was something in the slight foreignness of her ways and accent, in her colonial resource and independence that delighted and amused him like a pleasant piece of acting. She had the cottage under her thumb. By now she had cleaned all the furniture, 'coloured' most of the walls, and mended all the linen, which had been in a sad condition—Miss Anna's powers being rather intellectual than practical. And through it all she kept a natural daintiness and refinement, was never clumsy, or loud, or untidy. She came and went so lightly—and always bringing with her the impression of something hidden and fragrant, a happiness within, that gave a dancing grace and perfume to all her life.

To her father she chattered mostly of Canada, and he would sit in the shade of the cottage, listening to her while she described their life; the big, rambling farm, the children she had been brought up with, the great lake with its ice and its storms, the apple-orchards, the sleighing in winter, the beauty of the fall, the splendour of the summers, the boom that was beginning 'up west.' Cunningly, in fact, she set the stage for an actor to come; but his 'cue' was not yet.