Fenwick's Career

by Mrs. Humphry Ward

Carrie watched him go—followed his figure with her eyes along the road.

'And I'm glad we're off!'—she said to herself, her small feet dancing—'we've been cumbering this ground, Miss Anna and I—a deal too long!'

He was soon nearly a mile from home; rejoicing strangely in his recovered power of movement, and in the freshness of the evening air. He found himself on a hill above Elterwater, looking back on the lake, and on a wide range of hills beyond, clothed, in all their lower slopes, with the full leaf of June. Wood rose above wood, in every gradation of tone and loveliness, creeping upwards through blue haze, till they suddenly lost hold on the bare peaks, which rose, augustly clear, into the upper sky. The lake with its deep or glowing reflexions—its smiling shore—the smoke of its few houses—lay below him; and between him and it, glistening sharply, in a sun-steeped magic, upon the blue and purple background of the hills and woods—a wild cherry, in its full mantle of bridal white.

What tranquillity!—what colour!—what infinite variety of beauty! His heart swelled within him. Life of the body—and life of the soul—seemed to be flowing back upon him, lifting him on its wave, steeping him in its freshening strength. 'My God!' he thought, remembering the sketch he had just made, and the mastery with which he had worked—'if I am able to paint again!—if I am!'

An ecstasy of hope arose in him. What if really there had been something wrong with his eyes!—something that rest might set right? What if he had wanted rest for years?—and had gone on defying nature and common sense?

And in a moment, as he sat there, looking out into the evening, the old whirl of images invaded him—the old tumult of ideas—clamouring for shape and form—flitting, phantom-like, along the woods and over the bosom of the lake. He let himself be carried along, urging his brain, his fancy, filled with indescribable happiness. It was years since the experience had last befallen him! Did it mean the return of youth?—conception?—creative power? What matter!—years, or hardship?—if the mind could still imagine, the hand still shape?

He thought of his own series of the 'Months'—which he had planned among these hills, and had carried out perfunctorily and vulgarly, in the city, far from the freshness and infinity of Nature. All the faults of his designs appeared to him, and the poverty of their execution. But he was only exultant, not depressed. Now that he could judge himself, now that his brain had begun to react once more, with this vigour, this wealth of idea—surely all would be well.

Then for the first time he thought of the money which Phoebe had saved. Abroad! Italy?—or France? To go as a wanderer and a student, on pilgrimage to the sources of beauty and power. What was old, or played out? Not Beauty!—not the mind within him—not his craftsman's sense. He threw himself on the grass, face downwards, praying as he had been wont to do in his youth, but in a far more mystical, more inward way; not to a far-off God, invited to come down and change or tamper with external circumstance; but to something within himself, identified with himself, the power of beauty in him, the resurgent forces of hope—and love.

At last, after a long time, as the summer twilight was waning, there struck through his dream the thought of Phoebe—alone in the cottage—waiting for him. He sprang up, and began to hurry down the hill.

Phoebe was quite alone. The little servant who only came for the day had gone back to the farm where she slept, and Carrie and Miss Anna had long since departed on their visit.