Cousin Feenix

“ Then now listen to me; never speak to me in this way again.”
“I will,” she cried flushing. “Answer me this; would it be acting like an honorable man to let that sweet angel of a girl marry Claud Wilton?”
“What!” he cried, starting, and gazing at his sister intently. “Her own cousin? Absurd.”
“I’ve heard that it is to be so.”
“Nonsense!”
“People say so, and where there’s smoke there’s fire. Cousins marry, and I don’t believe they’ll let a fortune like that go out of the family.”
“They’re rich enough to laugh at it.”
“They’re not rich; they’re poor, for the Squire’s in difficulties.” ”

“ If she wouldn't, was he to blame if the cottage was lonesome?
But as though she divined this secret debate she presently said:
'I went to Keswick last week.'
He looked up, startled. 'Well?'
'Father's ill—he's got a bad chest, and the doctor says he may be going into a consumption.'
'Doctors'll say anything!' cried Fenwick, wrathfully. 'If ever there was a strong man, it's your father. Don't you believe any croaking of that sort, Phoebe.'
She shook her head.
'He looks so changed,' she said; and began drawing with her finger on the tablecloth. He saw that her lips were trembling. ”

“ He asked Fenwick a few easy questions, sitting rakishly on the edge of a tilted chair, his hat slipping back on his handsome, grizzled head. Where did he come from—with whom had he studied—what were his plans? Had he ever been abroad? No. Strange! The artists nowadays neglected travel. 'But you go! Beg your way, paint your way—but go! Go before the wife and the babies come! Matrimony is the deuce. Don't you agree with me, Philip?' He laid a familiar hand on the artist's arm.
'Take care!' said Cuningham, laughing. ”

“ A man like that—with his weaknesses and his temperament—which are part of his gift really—its penalty—wants his wife at every turn—the woman who loves him—who understands. But to desert him for a suspicion!—a dream! Oh! Mrs. Fenwick, there are those who—who are really starved—really forsaken—really trampled under foot—by those they love!'
Her voice broke. She stood gazing straight before her, quivering with the passion of recollection. Phoebe looked up—awed—remembering what John had said, so long ago, of the unhappy marriage, the faithless and cruel husband. ”

“ Fenwick. I must go and talk to him.'
'Eugénie, don't be a goose. Why should you take any trouble about him?'
'He's wonderfully clever, papa. And clever people are always getting into scrapes. Somebody must take him in hand.'
And, rising, she threw her father a whimsical backward look as she departed. Lord Findon watched her with mingled smiles and chagrin. How charmingly she was dressed to-night—his poor Eugénie! ”

“ Cuningham's pictures. I like him, and my father likes his painting.'
'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 for Lord Findon, except for a certain teasing vagueness on the business side of things, he had shown himself a good friend. Several times since the first variegated evening had Fenwick dined with them, mostly en famille. Lady Findon, indeed, had been away, nursing an invalid father; Madame de Pastourelles filled her place. The old fellow would talk freely—politics, connoisseurship, art. Fenwick too was allowed his head, and said his say; though always surrounded and sometimes chafing under that discipline of good society which is its only or its best justification. ”

“ Yes, that is one of the things which teach us that we are growing old.”
“I do not understand you.”
“I meant your cousin’s acuteness; when a man is about fifty, young ladies consider him a safe mark for their shafts.”
“Don’t think that, Doctor Asher. There is no malice in my dear cousin, but her deformity has caused her to be petted and indulged. She has not had a mother’s constant care.”
“Neither have you, my child.”
“No,” said Claude quietly; “but believe me, my cousin would be deeply grieved if she knew that she had said—Yes. What’s the matter? Papa?” ”

“ That old relation could never be again; the weeks at Versailles had killed it. Unless, indeed, some day it were her blessed lot to find the living Phoebe, and bring her to her husband! Then friendship, as well as love, might perhaps lift its head once more. And as during the months of winter, both before and since her departure from England, the tidings reached her of Fenwick's growing embarrassments, of his increasing coarseness and carelessness of work, his violence of temper, the friend in her suffered profoundly. She knew that she could still do much for him. ”

“ When Lady Richard discussed this situation with her friends the Gaston girls, she gained hearty sympathy from Fanny, but from May no more than a mocking half-sincere curiosity.
"Is it possible for a man to like both me and Mr. Quisanté?" Lady Richard asked. "And after all Dick does like me very much."
"Likes both his wife and Mr. Quisanté! What a man for paradoxes!" May murmured.
"Jimmy's worse if anything," the aggrieved wife went on. This remark was levelled straight at Fanny; Jimmy being understood to like Fanny, a parallel problem presented itself. ”

“ Eugénie, gravely.
'Nothing of the kind, Eugénie,' said her father, testily. 'You think everybody as sensitive as yourself. I assure you, young men are tough, and can stand a bit of hardship.'
'They seem to require butcher's meat, all the same,' said Eugénie. 'Do you know, papa, that I have been extremely uncomfortable about our behaviour to Mr. Fenwick?'
'I entirely fail to see why,' said Lord Findon, absently. ”

“ Fenwick, who had flushed hotly, turned away and occupied himself in replenishing his palette.
'Papa, of course, would say—Don't marry till you're a hundred and two!' she resumed. 'But pray, don't listen to him.'
'I dare say he's right,' said Fenwick, returning to his easel, his face bent over it.
'Not at all. People should have their youth together.'
'That's all very well. But many men don't know at twenty what they'll want at thirty,' said Fenwick, painting fast.
Madame de Pastourelles laughed. ”

“ I felicitate you, sir, and retract my words, for by that action of your kinsman's shall the graves of all his race and name be honoured."
Young Fiennes bowed. "Compliments fly, sir, when gentlemen meet. But"—and he glanced over his shoulder and rubbed the small of his back expressively, "as a Wykehamist, you will not have me late at names-calling."
"Go, boy, and answer to yours; they can call no better one." ”

“ John's smart friend belonged to the pampered ones of the earth, and Miss Anna did not intend to be taken in by her, not for a moment.
'Mr. Fenwick has been terribly overworked,' Eugénie repeated, colouring against her will, 'and yesterday he was quite broken down by your letter. It seemed too much for him. You will understand, I'm sure. When a person is so weak, they shrink—don't they?—even from what they most desire. And so he asked me—to—to come and tell Mrs. Fenwick something about his health, and his circumstances these last two years—just to prepare the way. ”

“ Lord Findon meanwhile held his peace. Every day Eugénie came in from her walk with Fenwick, to sit with or read to her father. She always spoke of what she had been doing, quite naturally and simply, describing their walk and their conversation, giving the news of Fenwick's work—bringing his sketches to show. Lord Findon would lie and listen—a little suspicious and ill at ease—sometimes a little sulky. But he let his illness and his voicelessness excuse him from grappling with her. She must, of course, please herself. ”

“ Fenwick, much troubled, protested that it was madness to have come back to the English winter.
'No,' said Cuningham, looking grave. 'Better die at home than among strangers. And I'm afraid it's come to that, dear old fellow!'
Then he described—with evident self-satisfaction—how he had heard, from a common friend, of Watson's arrival, how he had rescued the invalid from a dingy Bloomsbury hotel, and settled him in some rooms in Fitzroy Square, with a landlady who could be trusted.
'We must have a nurse before long—but he won't have one yet. He wants badly to see you. ”

“ Miss Anna Mason, the head-mistress of an endowed girls school in Hawkshead, had come to spend a Saturday afternoon with her old pupil, Phoebe Fenwick. A masterful-looking woman—ample in figure, with a mouth of decision. She wore a grey alpaca dress, adorned with a large tatted collar, made by herself, and fastened by a brooch containing a true-lover's knot in brown hair.
'He'll have stayed on to finish,' said Phoebe, looking round. 'Where's
Carrie?'
Miss Mason replied that the child wouldn't wait any longer for her supper, and that Daisy, the little servant, was feeding her. ”

“ Why do people ask you to their houses and then ill-treat you? Damn them!'
Meanwhile, Lord Findon had had a few whispered words with his daughter in an inner room.
'My dear!'—throwing up his hands—'a barbarian! Can't have him here again.'
'Mr. Fenwick, papa?'
'Of course. Cuningham ought to have warned me. However, I suppose I brought it on myself. I do these rash things, and must pay for them. He was so rude to De Chailles that I have had to apologise.'
'Poor papa! Where is he?'
'In the other room—looking at things. Better leave him alone.'
'Oh no; he'll feel himself neglected.'
'Well, let him. ”

“ Fenwick looked hastily, and saw a very handsome youth bending forward to answer a question which Lord Findon had addressed to him from across the table; a face in the 'grand style'—almost the face of a Greek—pure in outline, bronzed by foreign suns, and lit by eyes expressing so strong a force of personality that, but for the sweetness with which it was tempered, the spectator might have been rather repelled than won. When the young man answered Lord Findon, the voice was, like the face, charged—perhaps over-charged—with meaning and sensibility. ”

“ This line of argument was justified in a manner by the frankness of Fenton's intimation that he was incapable of any other relation to a fact than a desire to turn it to pecuniary account. Roger was uneasy, yet he took a certain comfort in the belief that, thanks to his early lessons, Nora could be trusted to confine her cousin to the limits of cousinship. In whatever he might have failed, he had certainly taught her to know a gentleman. Cousins are born, not made; but lovers may be accepted at discretion. ”

“ I was staring at the shadow of the porch into which he had disappeared, when my father touched my elbow.
"There goes a good lad," said he, quietly.
"And my best friend."
"He has sobered down strangely from the urchin I remember on Winchester meads; and in the sobering he has grown exalted. A man might almost say," mused my father, "that the imp in him had shed itself off and taken flesh in that Master Fett I left snoring with his head on my dining-table. An earthy spirit, that Master Fett; earthy and yet somewhat inhuman. Your Nat Fiennes has the clue of life—if only Atropos do not slit it." ”

“ It was one of those moments when a man feels a band about his tongue, woven by shyness or false shame, or social timidity. He knows that he ought to speak; but the moment passes and he has not spoken. And between him and the word unsaid there rises on the instant a tiny streamlet of division, which is to grow and broaden with the nights and days, till it flows, a stream of fate, not to be turned back or crossed; and all the familiar fields of life are ruined and blotted out.
Finally, as the great patron was going, Cuningham whispered a word in his ear. Lord Findon turned to Fenwick. ”

“ He followed Cuningham into the omnibus with nerves all on edge. He hated the notion, too, of taking an omnibus to go and dine in St. James's Square. But Cuningham's Scotch thriftiness scouted the proposal of a hansom.
On the way Fenwick suddenly asked his companion whether there was a Lady Findon. Cuningham, startled by the ignorance of his protégé, drew out as quickly as he could la carte du pays.
Lady Findon, the second wife, fat, despotic, and rich, rather noisy, and something of a character, a political hostess, a good friend, and a still better hater ”

“ I refused him at once, for I quite disliked the man, and he went away my enemy, I’m sure, and when I heard of his conduct towards his cousin, I felt that I had had a narrow escape from a perfect fiend. And now, Mr Salis, what shall I do?”
“The dog!” ejaculated Salis. “I’m longing for occupation; leave it to me, Mrs Berens. I’ve been seeing a friend—my solicitor—in town about North’s affair with his cousin; we’ll work the two together, and if Mr Thompson does not mind, he’ll find himself in a strange fix.” ”

“ This must be seen to.”
“What would you like to take, sir?”
“Anything, my dear Mrs Milt, anything. Too busy a man to trouble about food. I’m going to see a client, and while I’m gone perhaps you will get a snack ready for me.”
“You will not sleep here, I suppose?”
“But I will sleep here, Mrs Milt,” said Cousin Thompson, smiling. “I do not feel as if I could go back to town without being able to take with me the knowledge that my cousin is in better health.”
“And not at the mercy of thieves and scheming people,” he muttered, as he went off to see Mrs Berens, as he put it, “re shares.” ”

“ Fiennes, you're talking like a coward and you're acting like a coward! Let's get out of this."
"Give me your word first about Miss de Cazelet."
"What have you to do with her? Do you want to marry her?"
"Marry her!" Fiennes flung himself forward, and the torrent of his words poured out close to Bohun's ear. "Are you brute enough to ask that? Can't you see that there'll never be any marrying for me? This—this business is only beginning. I'm going to get worse all the time. The doctors told me that. My life is done! ”