Fenugreek

“ 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 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. ”

“ No scarecrow was ever more dingily attired than this strange man, who now lifted his cap and bowed with something of foreign ceremoniousness, and looked at Fenella out of melancholy, hollow eyes.
“When the heart is heavy, madame, it is good to look at the little people.” He spoke in English fluently, and with a strong French accent. “They are so gay always. They know so little of care. To sing and shout, and jump Gros Jean, that is the business of life. Well! As good a business as any other when all is said and done.” ”

“ And the old drawing-master!—a German—half blind, though he would never confess it—who dabbled in oil-painting, and let the boy watch his methods. How he would twirl his dirty brush round and dab down a lump of Prussian blue, imagining it to be sepia, hastily correcting it a moment afterwards with a lump of lake, and then say chuckling to himself: 'By Gode, dat is fine!—dat is very nearly a good purple. Fenwick, my boy, mark me—you vill not find a good purple no-vere! Some-vere—in de depths of Japanese art—dere is a good purple. Dat I believe. But not in Europe. Ve Europeans are all tam fools. ”

“ Then he stooped, kissed Fenella's burning brow, and went forth to seek his son—the little, innocent boy, with the curly head and clear eyes, the very thought of whom made his heart grow big.
There are seasons in the lives of all of us when the best of which we are capable rises to the surface—when the resolutions which we make for the future are not based on an insecure and worthless foundation, but on a fixed and permanent one. Such a time had come to Lord Francis. He left Guernsey a chastened, but a better man, determined henceforth to lead a new and purer life. ”

“ For in Eugénie de Pastourelles, who is Phoebe's unconscious rival, I tried to embody, not the sensuous intoxicating power of an Emma Hamilton, but those more exquisite and spiritual influences which many women have exercised over some of the strongest and most virile of men. Fenwick indeed possesses the painter's susceptibility to beauty. Beauty comes to him and beguiles him, but it is a beauty akin to that of Michel Angelo's 'Muse and dominant Lady, spirit-wed'—which yet, for all its purity, is not, as Fenwick's case shows, without its tragic effects in the world. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The male figure which Lord Francis had seen stealing toward his wife's room was the Count de Mürger. In this Lord Francis was not mistaken, but Fenella was. We know how at the moment her heart was yearning for its rightful lord, but De Mürger little thought that Lady Francis had taken him for Frank. Her feelings had been so wrought up to the pitch of hope, that leaving her room to find her husband and throw herself at his feet, she fancied him in a similar frame of mind—as indeed he was—and love interpreted the approach of the count into that of her husband. ”

“ Fénélon had a deep sense of his responsibility to God and man in educating the future sovereign of France. He studied his pupil's character; he adapted himself to it. Nature had clone even more in fitting him: his enthusiasm, joined to his angelic goodness, excited at once the love and reverence of the prince, at the same time that he was the friend and companion of his hours of pastime. He conquered his pride by gentleness, by raillery, or by a dignified wisdom, which convinced while it awed. When the boy insolently asserted his superiority, Fénélon was silent ”

“ Thirty-six hours later Fenella stood by herself upon the deck of a Channel steamer, watching the white cliffs of England as they receded further and further into the distance. She was quite alone in the world—she had not even taken a maid with her. She had made up her mind that she would break every connection of her former life, and start entirely anew. There should not be even a servant about her to remind her of her past. ”

“ BY FRANK DANBY.
"Row faster, man, row faster. Move—no, sit where you are, but give me the other oars. Pull, pull," he said, "as if you were getting away from hell." And feverishly, with white set lips, with gleaming eyes. Lord Francis accentuated his words by his actions, and propelled the boat with all the strength of which he was capable, across the blue waters that kept him from Fenella. His feet pressed against the wood, the muscles of his arms standing out like iron, the youth in him dying under the strain, his very brain ceasing to act, and his heart almost standing still ”

“ 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. ”

“ Hardly had De Mürger surprised the startled Fenella than Lord Francis arose from the chair and retraced his steps toward his wife’s room. While all that he knew of himself was asleep, Nature, in one of its strangest freaks, propelled him forth. ”

“ 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. ”

“ All the same, the deep store of hidden sentiment which this queer idealist possessed had been touched by the position. The young woman isolated and childless, so charming, so nobly sincere, so full of heart—was she to be always Ariadne, and forsaken? The man—excitable, nervous, selfish, yet, in truth, affectionate and dependent—what folly, or what chivalry kept him unmarried? Ever since the death of M. le Comte de Pastourelles, dreams concerning these two people had been stirring in the brain of Watson, and these dreams spoke now in the dark eyes he bent on Fenwick. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Fenwick hoped nothing from them. Yet as he walked fast through the London streets, from which the fog was lifting, his mind wrestled with vague images of great lakes, and virgin forests, and rolling wheat-lands—of the streets of Montreal, or the Heights of Québec—and amongst them, now with one background, now with another, the slender figure of a fair-haired woman with a child beside her. And through his thoughts, furies of distress and fear pursued him—now as always.
'Well, this is a queer go, isn't it?' said Watson, in a half-whispering voice. 'Nature has horrid ways of killing you. ”

“ The great liner swiftly pushed her homeward way through the rolling surges of the Atlantic. Other yearning, tender hearts there doubtless were whose sole freight of hope the steamer carried; but the heart that beat so anxiously in the little Guernsey cottage had the most at stake. The ordeal of the past months had not lessened Fenella’s beauty. The outlines of her features were sharper, their tints less vivid than of old. The tawny eyes looked wistfully out upon the world from orbits that were hollowed with grief and watching, the chestnut hair showed a thread of silver here and there. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Little as Fenwick talked about Madame de Pastourelles, Phoebe understood perfectly that she was a woman of high education and refinement, and that her stored and subtle mind was at once an attraction and a cause of humiliation to John. And through his rare stories of the Findon household and the Findon dinner-parties, the wife dimly perceived a formidable world, bristling with strange acquirements and accomplishments, in which he, perhaps, was beginning to find a place, thanks to his art ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They were quite away from the houses now, and the brisk, pure air, the pleasant scents from the hedgerows, and the swift movement to the music of the horses' feet, and perhaps some other sources of satisfaction within, brought a light to Fenella's eyes, and a rose-soft color to her cheek that made her altogether enchanting and sweet.
"And pray," said Frank, looking at her eagerly, unwillingly, as at forbidden fruit that sorely tempted him, "do you talk to any of the fellows at the hotel?"
"No," she said airily," they talk to me. You see, they are all so fond of Ronny." ”

“ 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. ”

“ Meanwhile the struggle for life in that cottage room in Guernsey had turned in favor of Fenella. The doctor had given a guarded opinion when Lord Francis made his frantic appeal to him. Before her husband fronted the Western Ocean, the wasted sufferer opened her eyes, and once more looked out, through the glance of reason, on the world where she had endured so much.
For a day or two she hung between life and death. She looked too frail for this world. But she had store of the best of medicines in her own blood—youth—and she began to mend rapidly. ”

“ 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. ”