Fenwick's Career

by Mrs. Humphry Ward

'Lord Findon admires that kind of thing?'

'Besides a good many other kinds. Oh! my father has a dreadfully catholic taste. He tells me you haven't been abroad yet?'

Fenwick acknowledged it.

'Ah, well; of course you'll go. All artists do—except'—she dropped her voice—'the gentleman opposite.'

Fenwick looked, and beheld a personage scarcely, indeed, to be seen at all for his very bushy hair, whiskers, and moustache, from which emerged merely the tip of a nose and a pair of round eyes in spectacles. As, however, the hair was of an orange colour and the eyes of a piercing and pinlike sharpness, the eclipse of feature was not a loss of effect. And as the flamboyant head was a tolerably familiar object in the shop-windows of the photographers and in the illustrated papers, Fenwick recognised almost immediately one of the most popular artists of the day—Mr. Herbert Sherratt.

Fenwick flushed hotly.

'Lord Findon doesn't admire his work?' he said, almost with fierceness, turning to his companion.

'He hates his pictures and collects his drawings.'

'Drawings!' Fenwick shrugged his shoulders. 'Anybody can make a clever drawing. It's putting on the paint that counts. Why doesn't he go abroad?'

'Oh, well, he does go to Holland. But he thinks Italian painting all stuff, and that so many Madonnas and saints encourage superstition. But what's the use of talking? They have to station a policeman beside his picture in the Academy to keep off the crowd. Hush-sh! He is looking this way.'