Fenwick's Career

by Mrs. Humphry Ward

It was only from her, indeed, that he would hear of these things. If Phoebe ventured on them his manner stiffened at once. Miss Anna's strong impression was, still, that with his wife he was always on his guard against demands he felt himself physically unable to meet. Yet it seemed to her, as time went on, that he was more and more aware of Phoebe, more sensitive to her presence, her voice.

She too watched Phoebe, and with a growing, involuntary respect. This changed woman had endured 'hardness,' had at last followed her conscience; and, rebuffed and unforgiven as she seemed to be, she was clothed none the less in a new dignity, modest and sad, but real. She might be hopeless of recovering her husband; but all the same, the law which links that strange thing, spiritual peace, with certain surrenders, had already begun to work, unknown even to herself.

As she moved about the cottage and garden, indeed, new contacts, new relations, slowly established themselves, unseen and unexpressed, between her and the man who scarcely noticed her in words, from morning till night. 'I should offend you twenty times a day,' he had said to her—'and perhaps it might be the same with me!' But they did not offend each other!—that was the merciful new fact, asserting itself through this silent, suspended time. She was still beautiful. The mountain air restored her clear, pure colour; and what time had robbed her of in bloom it had given her back in character—the artist's supreme demand. Self-control, bitterly learnt—fresh capacities, moral or practical—these expressed themselves in a thousand trifles. Not only in her tall slenderness and fairness was she presently a challenge to Fenwick's sharpening sense; she began, in a wholly new degree, to interest his intelligence. Her own had blossomed; and in spite of grief, she had brought back with her some of the ways of a young and tiptoe world. Soon he was, in secret, hungry for her history—the history he had so far refused to hear. Who was this man who had made love to her?—how far had it gone?—he tossed at nights thinking of it. There came a time when he would gladly have exchanged Carrie's gossip for hers; and through her soft silence, as she sat beside him, he would hear suddenly, in memory, the echoes of her girlish voice, and make a quick movement towards her—only to check himself in shyness or pride.

Meanwhile he could not know that he too had grown in her eyes, as she in his. In spite of all his errors and follies, he had not wrestled with his art, he had not lived among his intellectual peers, he had not known Eugénie de Pastourelles through twelve years, for nothing. Embittered he was, but also refined. The nature had grown harsher and more rugged—but also larger, more complex, more significant, better worth the patiences of love. As for his failure, the more she understood it, the more it evoked in her an angry advocacy, a passionate championship, a protesting faith—which she had much ado to hide.

And all this time letters came occasionally from Madame de Pastourelles—indifferently to her or to him—full of London artistic gossip, the season being now in full swim, of sly stimulus and cheer. As they handed them to each other, without talking of them, it was as though the shuttle of fate flew from life to life—these in Langdale, and that in London—weaving the three into a new pattern which day by day replaced and hid away the old.

The days lengthened towards midsummer. After a spell of rain, June descended in blossom and sunshine on the Westmoreland vales. The hawthorns were out, and the wild cherries. The bluebells were fading in the woods, but in the cottage gardens the lilacs were all fragrance, and the crown-imperials showed their heads of yellow and red. Each valley and hillside was a medley of soft and shimmering colour, save in the higher, austerer dales, where, as in Langdale, the woods scarcely climb, and the bare pastures have only a livelier emerald to show, or the crags a warmer purple, as their testimony to the spring.

Fenwick was unmistakeably better. The signs of it were visible in many directions. His passive, silent ways, so alien to his natural self and temperament, were at last breaking down.

One evening, Carrie, who had been to Elterwater, brought back some afternoon letters. They included a letter from Canada, which Carrie read over her mother's shoulder, laughing and wondering. Phoebe was sitting on a bench in the garden, an old yew-tree just above her on the slope. The heads of both mother and child were thrown out sharply on the darkness of the yew background—Phoebe's profile, upturned, and the abundant coils of her hair, were linked in harmonious line with the bending figure and beautiful head of the girl.

Suddenly Fenwick put down the newspaper which Carrie had brought him. He rose, muttered something, and went into the house. They could hear him rummaging in his room, where Phoebe had lately unpacked some boxes forwarded from London. He had never so far touched brush or crayon during his stay at the cottage.

Presently he returned with a canvas and palette.