Fenwick

“ Fenwick stood there tortured by an intense and morbid distress; realising how much this rich and illustrious person had already entered into his day dream. For all his pride as an artist—and he was full of it—his trembling, crude ambition had already seized on Lord Findon as a stepping-stone. He did not know whether he could stoop to court a patron. His own temper had to be reckoned with. But to lose him at the outset by a silly falsehood would be galling. A man who has to live in the world as a married man must not begin by making a mystery of his wife. ”

“ Mrs. Flint, wavering between her dread of Fenwick's ill-humour and the impression produced upon her by the gentle decision of her visitor, retreated into the house. The lady followed.
'Well, if you'll wait there, ma'am'—the charwoman opened the door of the dismantled sitting-room—'I'll speak to Mr. Fenwick.'
She shuffled off. Eugénie de Pastourelles threw back her veil. She had arrived only that morning in London after a night journey, and her face showed deep lines of fatigue. But its beauty of expression had never been more striking. Animation—joy—spoke in the eyes, quivered in the lips. ”

“ They alighted at the Haymarket, and as they walked down the street Fenwick found himself in the midst of the evening whirl of the West End. The clubs were at their busiest; men passed them in dress-suits and overcoats like themselves, and the street was full of hansoms, whence the faces of well-dressed women, enveloped in soft silks and furs, looked out.
Fenwick felt himself treading a new earth. At such an hour he was generally wending his way to a Bloomsbury eating-house, where he dined for eighteenpence; he was a part of the striving, moneyless student-world. ”

“ All round, the trees stand close—the lawns spread their quiet slopes. On this sparkling autumn morning, a glory of russet, amber, and red, begirt the white figures and the gleaming grotto. The Immortals, the champing horses, locked behind their grilles lest the tourist should insult them—all the queer crumbling romance of the statuary, all the natural beauty of leaf and water, of the white clouds overhead and their reflexions below—combined to make Fenwick's guilty bewilderment more complete, to turn all life to dream, and all its figures into the puppets of a shadow-play. ”

“ Fenwick felt himself strangely sore and jealous as he listened. Who was this man? Some young aristocrat, no doubt, born silver spoon in mouth—one of your idle, insolent rich, with nothing to do but make a hobby of art, and patronise artists. He loathed the breed.
Her voice startled him back from these unspoken tirades, and once more he found her eyes fixed upon him. It provoked him to feel that their scrutiny made him self-conscious—anxious to please. ”

“ Fenwick began to talk of old friends, and current exhibitions; and presently tea made its appearance. Watson's strength seemed to revive. He sat more upright in his chair, his voice grew stronger, and he dallied with his tea, joking hoarsely with his nurse, and asking Fenwick all the questions that occurred to him. His face, in its rugged pallor and emaciation, and his great head, black or iron-grey on the white pillows, were so fine that Fenwick could not take his eyes from him; with the double sense of the artist, he saw the subject in the man ”

“ At the same moment there was a shout of greeting from below, and Fenwick came into sight on the steep pitch of lane that led from the high-road to the cottage. Miss Anna strolled down to meet him.
In the eyes of his old friend, John Fenwick made a very handsome figure as he approached her, his painter's wallet slung over his shoulder. That something remarkable had happened to him she divined at once. In moments of excitement a certain foreign look—as some people thought, a gypsyish look—was apt to show itself. ”

“ Phoebe Fenwick, waiting and listening for the post in an upper room of Green Nab Cottage, ran hurriedly to the window several times in vain, drawn by the sound of wheels. The cart which clattered past was not that which bore Her Majesty's mails.
At the third of these false alarms she lingered beside the open casement window, looking out into the valley. It was a very weary woman who stood thus—motionless and drooping; a woman so tired, so conscious of wasted life and happiness, that although expectation held her in a grip of torture, there was in it little or nothing of hope. ”

“ Half an hour later Lord Findon, who was traversing the drawing-rooms after having taken the Ambassadress to her carriage, found a regenerate and humanised Fenwick sitting beside his daughter; the centre, indeed, of a circle no less friendly to untutored talent than the circle of the dinner-table had been hostile. Lord Findon stopped to listen. Really the young man was now talking decently!—about matters he understood; Burne-Jones, Rossetti—some French pictures in Bond Street—and so forth. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ The white houses, the wide avenues, the château on its hill, were steeped in light—a light golden, lavish, and yet melancholy, as though the autumn day still remembered the October afternoon when Marie Antoinette turned to look for the last time at the lake and the woods of Trianon.
As Fenwick crossed the Rue de la Paroisse, a lady on the other side of the road, who was hurrying in the opposite direction, stopped suddenly at sight of him, and stared excitedly. She was a woman no longer young, much sunburnt, with high cheek-bones and a florid complexion. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Only the eyes, much darker than the hair, and the rich brown of the sable cloak where it touched the white, gave accent and force to the ethereal pallor, the supreme refinement, of the rest—face, dress, hands. Nothing but civilisation in its most complex workings could have produced such a type; that was what prevailed dimly in Fenwick's mind as he wrestled with his picture. Sometimes his day's work left him exultant, sometimes in a hell of despair.
'I went to see Mr. Welby's studio yesterday,' he said, hastily, after another minute or two, seeing her droop with fatigue. ”

“ Half an hour later he was shown into the library at Fenwick Hall, where in radiant beauty his blushing sweetheart gave him a royal welcome.
As he approached her, with shining eyes and face aglow, soul and body radiant with the grace and adoration of his all-absorbing love, the heroic order of his manly beauty thrilled the heart of Fern Fenwick with its irresistible charm. The kisses claimed by a lover's privilege, she was powerless to deny. ”

“ 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. ”

“ She felt through every nerve that he was constantly aware of details of dress or ménage that jarred upon him; she suspected miserably that all her little personal ways and habits seemed to him ugly and common; and the suspicion showed itself in pride or brusquerie.
Meanwhile, if she had been restful, if he could only have forgotten his cares in her mere youth and prettiness, Fenwick would have been easily master of his discontents. For he was naturally of a warm, sensuous temper. Had the woman understood her own arts, she could have held him. ”

“ Fenwick should know—'
'Know what?' cried Miss Anna.
Madame de Pastourelles bent forward again, and said a few words under her breath.
Anna Mason recoiled.
'Horrible!' she said; 'and—and so cowardly! So like a man!'
Eugénie could not help a tremulous smile; then she resumed:
'The picture had come—just come. It was that which saved him. Ah, yes'—the smile flashed out again—'I had forgotten! Of course Mrs. Fenwick must know! It was the picture—it was she that saved him. But your note, by some strange accident, had escaped him. ”

“ Fenwick is as good a specimen of an English country parson's wife as you shall meet in a county,—gay, good-looking, fond of the society around her, with a little dash of fun, knowing in blankets and corduroys and coals and tea; knowing also as to beer and gin and tobacco; acquainted with every man and woman in the parish; thinking her husband to be quite as good as the squire in regard to position, and to be infinitely superior to the squire, or any other man in the world, in regard to his personal self;—a handsome, pleasant, well-dressed lady, who has no nonsense about her. ”

“ Fenwick spoke of it with envy and astonishment. The pleasure of it had penetrated him, its gay, perpetual festa—as compared with the strain of thought and conscience under which the modern lives.
'It gives me a perfect hunger for fine clothes, and jewels, and masquerades—and "fêtes de nuit"—and every sort of theatricality and expense! Nature has sent us starvelings on the scene a hundred years late. We are like children in the rain, flattening our noses against a ballroom window.'
'There were plenty of them then,' said Eugénie. ”

“ He looked up.
'Well, why don't you?'
'Because—somehow—one has to live.'
Watson climbed on to his high stool, still observing his visitor. For a good many years now, Fenwick had been always well and carefully dressed—an evident Londoner, accustomed to drawing-rooms and frequenting expensive tailors. But to-day there was something in his tired, dishevelled look, and comparatively shabby coat, which reminded Watson of years long gone by—of a studio in Bernard Street, and a broad-browed, handsome fellow, with queer manners and a North-Country accent. ”

“ A white dress, a lace shawl, some handkerchiefs, a sash, a fan—there they lay, ranged on brown paper on the studio floor. Cuningham was immensely proud of them, and had been quite ready to show them to Fenwick also, fingering their fresh folds, enlarging on their beauties. And Fenwick had thought sorely of Phoebe as he watched Cuningham turn the pretty things over. When had he ever been able to give her any feminine gauds? Always this damned poverty, pressing them down! ”

“ But Fenwick had come over—charged—and Watson had touched the spring. He sat there, smoking and declaiming, his eyes blazing, one hand playing with Watson's favourite dog, an Aberdeen terrier who was softly smelling and pushing against him. All that litany of mockery and bitterness, which the Comic Spirit kindles afresh on the lips of each rising generation, only to quench it again on the lips of those who 'arrive,' flowed from him copiously. He was the age indeed for 'arrival,' when, as so often happens, the man of middle life, appeased by success, dismisses the revolts of his youth. ”

“ Just like her! He hoped the young man understood her condescension—and that to see her and talk with her was a privilege. Involuntarily Lord Findon glanced across the room, at the décolleté shoulders and buxom good looks of his wife. When Eugénie was in the house the second Lady Findon never seemed to him well dressed.
When Fenwick and Cuningham had departed—Fenwick in a glow of grateful good-humour, expressing himself effusively to his host—Madame de Pastourelles approached her father, smiling. ”

“ When the nurse had withdrawn, and they were alone again, in a silence made more intimate still by the darkness of the panelled walls, which seemed to isolate them from the rest of the room, enclosing them in a glowing ring of lamp and firelight, Fenwick was suddenly seized by an impulse he could not master. He bent towards the sick man. ”