Fenwick's Career Part 14

'A fright?'

'Yes. There was a tramp one night came to the door. I half-opened it--and his face was so horrible I tried to shut it again at once. And he struggled with me, but I was strongest. Then he tried to get in at the window, but luckily I had fastened the iron bar across the shutter--and the back door. But it all held, mercifully. He couldn't get in. Then he abused me through the door, and said he would have killed me and the child, if he could have got in--and some day he would come again.' She shuddered.

Fenwick had turned pale. With his painter's imagination he saw the thing--the b.e.s.t.i.a.l man outside, the winter night, the slender form within pressing against the door and the bolt--

'Look here,' he said, abruptly. 'We can't have this. Somebody must sleep here. Did you tell the police?'

'Yes, I wrote--to Ambleside. They sent a man over to see me. But they couldn't catch him. He's probably left the country. I got a bell'--she opened her eyes, and pointed to it. 'If I rang it, they might hear it down at Brow Farm. They _might_--if the wind was that way.'

There was silence a moment. Then Fenwick stooped and kissed her.

'Poor old girl!' he said, softly. She made but slight response. He returned to his place, repeating with a frowning energy--'You must have some one to sleep here.'

'Daisy would come--if I'd pay her.'

Daisy was their little servant of the summer, the daughter of a quarryman near by.

'Well, pay her!'

She drew herself up sharply. 'I haven't got the money--and you always say, when you write, you haven't any either.'

'I'll find some for that. I can't have you scared like this.'

But, though his tone was vehement, it was not particularly affectionate. He was horribly discomposed indeed, could not get the terrible image out of his mind. But as he went on with his supper, the shock of it mingled with a good many critical or reproachful thoughts.

Why had she persisted in staying on in Langdale, instead of going to her father? All that foolish dislike of her stepmother! It had been open to her to stay in her father's farm, with plenty of company. 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. A strong impulse worked in him, bidding him go to her again, kiss away her tears, and say--'Hang everything! Come with me to London, and let's sink or swim together.'

Instead of which some perverse cross-current hurried him into the words:

'He'd be all right if you'd go and nurse him, Phoebe.'

'No, not at all. They didn't want me--and Mrs. Gibson, poor creature, was real glad when I said I was going. She was jealous of me all the time.'

'I expect you imagined that.'

Phoebe's face flushed angrily.

'I didn't!' she said, shortly. 'Everybody in the house knew it.'

The meal went on rather silently. Fenwick's conscience said to him, 'Take her back with you!--whatever happens, take her to London--she's moping her life out here.' And an inner voice clamoured in reply--'Take her to those rooms?--in the very middle of the struggle with those two pictures?--go through all the agitation and discomfort of explanations with Lord Findon and Madame de Pastourelles?--run the risk of estranging them, and of distracting your own mind from your work at this critical moment?--the further risk, moreover, of Phoebe's jealousy?'

For in her present nervous and fidgety state she would very likely be jealous of his sitter, and of the way in which Madame de Pastourelles'

portrait possessed his mind. No, it really couldn't be done!--it really _couldn't!_ He must finish the two pictures--persuade Lord Findon to buy the 'Genius Loci,' and make the portrait such a success that he must needs buy that too. Then let discovery come on; it should find him steeled.

Meanwhile, Phoebe must have a servant, and not any mere slip of a girl, but some one who would be a companion and comfort. He began to talk of it, eagerly, only to find that Phoebe took but a languid interest in the idea.

She could think of no one--wanted no one, but Daisy. Again his secret ill-humour waxed and justified itself. It was unreasonable and selfish that she should not be able to think for herself and the child better; after all, he was slaving for her as much as for himself.

Meanwhile, Carrie sat very silent beside her father, observing him, and every now and then applying her pink lips to some morsel he held out to her on his fork. He had kissed her, and tossed her, and she was now sitting in his pocket. But after these eight months the child of four was shy and timid with this unfamiliar father. He on his side saw that she was prettier than before; his eye delighted in some of the rarer and lovelier lines of her little face; and he felt a fatherly pride. He must make some fresh studies of her; the child in the 'Genius Loci' might be improved.

After supper, Phoebe seemed to him so pale and tottering that he made her rest beside the fire, while he himself cleared the supper-things away. She lay back in her chair, laughing at his awkwardness, or starting up when china clashed.

Meanwhile, as in their farewell talk beside the ghyll eight months before, her mood gradually and insensibly changed. Whatever unloving thoughts or resentments had held her in the first hour of their meeting, however strong had been the wish to show him that she had been lonely and suffering, she could not resist what to her was the magic of his presence. As he moved about in the low, firelit room, and she watched him, her whole nature melted; and he knew it.

Presently she took the child upstairs. He waited for her, hanging over the fire--listening to the storm outside--and thinking, thinking--

When she reappeared, and he, looking round, saw her standing in the doorway, so tall and slender, her pale face and hair coloured by the glow of the fire, pa.s.sion and youth spoke in him once more.

He sprang up and caught her in his arms. Presently, sitting in the old armchair beside the blaze, he had gathered her on his knee, and she had clasped her hands round his neck, and buried her face against him.

All things were forgotten, save that they were man and wife together, within this 'wind-warm s.p.a.ce'--ringed by night, and pattering sleet, and gusts that rushed in vain upon the roof that sheltered them.

But next morning, within the little cottage--beating rain on the windows, and a cheerless storm-light in the tiny rooms--the hard facts of the situation resumed their sway. In the first place money questions had to be faced. Fenwick made the most of his expectations; but at best they were no more, and how to live till they became certainties was the problem. If Lord Findon had commissioned the portrait, or definitely said he would purchase the 'Genius Loci,'

some advance might have been asked for. As it was, how could money be mentioned yet a while? Phoebe had a fine and costly piece of embroidery on hand, commissioned through an 'Art Industry' started at Windermere the summer before; but it could not be finished for some weeks, possibly months, and the money Fenwick proposed to earn during his fortnight in the North by some ill.u.s.trations long overdue had been already largely forestalled. He gloomily made up his mind to appeal to an old cousin in Kendal, the widow of a grocer, said to be richly left, who had once in his boyhood given him five shillings. With much distaste he wrote the letter and walked to Elterwater in the rain to post it. Then he tried to work; but little Carrie, fractious from confinement indoors, was troublesome and disturbed him. Phoebe, too, would make remarks on his drawing which seemed to him inept. In old days he would have laughed at her for pretending to know, and turned it off with a kiss. Now what she said set him on edge. The talk he had been living amongst had spoilt him for silly criticisms. Moreover, for the first time he detected in her a slight tone of the 'schoolmarm'--didactic and self-satisfied, without knowledge. The measure Madame de Pastourelles had dealt out to him, he in some sort avenged on Phoebe.

At the same time there were much more serious causes of difference.

Each had a secret from the other. Fenwick's secret was that he had foolishly pa.s.sed in London as an unmarried man, and that he could not take Phoebe back with him, because of the discomforts and risks in which a too early avowal of her would involve him. He was morbidly conscious of this; brooded over it, and magnified it.

She on the other hand was tormented by a fixed idea--already in existence at the time of their first parting, but much strengthened by loneliness and fretting--that he was tired of her and not unwilling to be without her. The joy of their meeting banished it for a time, but it soon came back. She had never acquiesced in the wisdom of their separation; and to question it was to resent it more and more deeply--to feel his persistence in it a more cruel offence, month by month. Her pride prevented her from talking of it; but the soreness of her grievance invaded their whole relation. And in her moral unrest she showed faults which had been scarcely visible in their early married years--impatience, temper, suspicion, a readiness to magnify small troubles whether of health or circ.u.mstance.

During her months alone she had been reading many novels of an indifferent sort, which the carrier brought her from the lending library at Windermere. She talked excitedly of some of them, had 'cried her eyes out' over this or that. Fenwick picked up one or two, and threw them away for 'trash.' He scornfully thought that they had done her harm, made her more nervous and difficult. But at night, when he had done his work, he never took any trouble to read to her, or to talk to her about other than household things. He smoked or drew in silence; and she sat over her embroidery, lost in morbid reverie.

One morning he discovered amongst her books a paper-covered 'Life of Romney'--a short compilation issued by a local bookseller.

'Why, whatever did you get this for, Phoebe?' he said, holding it up.

She looked up from her mending, and coloured. 'I wanted to read it.'

'But why?'

'Well'--she hesitated--'I thought it was like you.'

'Like me?--you little goose!'

'I don't know,' she said, doggedly, looking hard at her work--'there was the hundred pounds that he got to go to London with--and then, marrying a wife in Kendal--and'--she looked up with a half-defiant smile--'and leaving her behind!'