Fenwick's Career

by Mrs. Humphry Ward

'The ideas are too lugubrious! And this young fellow—this
Fenwick—where did you pick him up?'

Cuningham explained.

'A character!—perhaps a genius?' said Findon. 'He has a clever, quarrelsome eye. Unmarried? Good Lord, I hope so, after the way I've been going on.'

Cuningham laughed. 'We've seen no sign of a wife. But I really know nothing about him.'

They were entering the upper room, and at sight of the large picture it contained, Lord Findon exclaimed:

'My goodness!—what an ambitious thing!'

The three men gathered in front of the picture. Fenwick lingered nervously behind them.

'What do you call it?' said Lord Findon, putting up his glasses.

'The "Genius Loci,"' said Fenwick, fumbling a little with the words.

It represented a young woman seated on the edge of a Westmoreland ghyll or ravine. Behind her the white water of the beck flowed steeply down from shelf to shelf; beyond the beck rose far-receding walls of mountain, purple on purple, blue on blue. Light, scantily nourished trees, sycamore or mountain-ash, climbed the green sides of the ghyll, and framed the woman's form. She sat on a stone, bending over a frail new-born lamb upon her lap, whereof the mother lay beside her. Against her knee leaned a fair-haired child. The pitiful concern in the woman's lovely eyes was reflected in the soft wonder of the child's. Both, it seemed, were of the people. The drawing was full of rustical suggestion, touched here and there by a harsh realism that did but heighten the general harmony. The woman's grave comeliness flowered naturally, as it were, out of the scene. She was no model posing with a Westmoreland stream for background. She seemed a part of the fells; their silences, their breezes, their pure waters, had passed into her face.