Fenwick's Career Part 16

As to the debt--he tried to fight against a feeling of deliverance--but clearly he need be in no hurry to pay it. He had been living in dread of Morrison's appearing in Bernard Street to claim his bond--revealing Phoebe's existence perhaps to ears unprepared--and laying greedy hands upon the 'Genius Loci.' It would have been hard to keep him off it--unless Lord Findon had promptly come forward--and it would have been odious to yield it to him. 'Now I shall take my time.'

Of course, ultimately, he would repay the money to Mrs. Morrison and Bella. But better, even in their interests, to wait a while, till there could be no question of any other claim to it.

So from horror he pa.s.sed to a personal relief, of which he was rather ashamed, and then again to a real uneasy pity for the wife and for the vulgar daughter who had so bitterly resented his handling of her charms. He remembered the note in which she had acknowledged the final delivery of her portrait. In obedience to Morrison's suggestion, he had kept it by him a few days; and then, either unable or proudly unwilling to alter it, he had returned it to its owner. Whereupon a furious note from Miss Bella, which--knowing that her father took no account of her tempers--Fenwick had torn up with a laugh. It was clear that she had heard of her father's invitation to him to 'beautify' it, and when the picture reappeared unaltered she took it as a direct and personal insult--a sign that he disliked her and meant to humiliate her. It was an odd variety of the _spretae injuria formae_. Fenwick had never been in the least penitent for his behaviour. The picture was true, clever--and the best he could do. It was no painter's business to endow Miss Bella with beauty, if she did not possess it.

As a piece of paint, the picture _had_ beauty--if she had only eyes to find it out.

Poor girl!--what husband now would venture on such a termagant wife?--penniless too, and disgraced! He would like to help her, and her mother--for Morrison's sake. Stirred by a fleeting impulse, he began to scheme how he might become their benefactor, as Morrison had been his.

Then, as he raised his eyes from the path--with a rush of delight he noticed the flood of afternoon sunlight pouring on the steep fell-side, the sharp black shadows thrown by wall and tree, the brilliance of the snow along the topmost ridge. He raced along, casting the Morrisons out of his thoughts, forgetting everything but the joy of atmosphere and light--the pleasure of his physical strength. Near one of the highest crags he came upon a shepherd-boy and his dog collecting some sheep. The collie ran hither and thither with the marvellous shrewdness of his breed, circling, heading, driving; the stampede of the sheep, as they fled before him, could be heard along the fell. The sun played upon the flock, turning its dirty grey to white, caught the little figure of the shepherd-boy, as he stood shouting and waving, or glittered on the foaming stream beside him. Purple shadows bathed the fell beyond--and on its bosom the rustic scene emerged--a winter idyl.

Fenwick sat down upon a rock, ransacked his pockets for sketch-book and paints, and began to sketch. When he had made his 'note,' he sat lost a while in the pleasure of his own growing skill and sharpening perceptions, and dreaming of future 'subjects.' A series of 'Westmoreland months,' ill.u.s.trating the seasons among the fells and the life of the dalesmen, ran through his mind. Nature appeared to his exultant sense as a vast treasure-house stored for him only--a mine inexhaustible offered to his craftsman's hand. For him the sweeping hues, the intricate broideries--green or russet, red or purple--of this winter world!--for him the delicacy of the snow, the pale azure of the sky, the cloud-shadows, the white becks, the winding river in the valley floor, the purple crags, the lovely accents of light and shade, the hints of composition that wooed his eager eye. Who was it that said 'Composition is the art of preserving the accidental look'?

Clever fellow!--there was the right thing said, for once! And so he slipped into a reverie, which was really one of those moments--plastic and fruitful--by which the artist makes good his kinship with 'the great of old,' his right to his own place in the unending chain.

Strange!--from that poverty of feeling in which he had considered the Morrison tragedy--from his growing barrenness of heart towards Phoebe--he had sprung at a bound into this ecstasy, this expansion of the whole man. It brought with it a vivid memory of the pictures he was engaged upon. By the time he turned homeward, and the light was failing, he was counting the days till he could return to London--and to work.

There was still, however, another week of his holiday to run. He wrote to Mrs. Morrison a letter which cost him much pains, expressing a sympathy that he really felt. He got on with his ill.u.s.tration work, and extracted a further advance upon it. And the old cousin in Kendal proved unexpectedly generous. She wrote him a long Scriptural letter, rating him for disobedience to his father, and warning him against debt; but she lent him twenty pounds, so that, for the present, Phoebe could be left in comparative comfort, and he had something in his pocket.

Yet with this easing of circ.u.mstance, the relation between husband and wife did not improve. During this last week, indeed, Phoebe teased him to make a sketch of himself to leave with her. He began it unwillingly, then got interested, and finally made a vigorous sketch, as ample as their largest looking-gla.s.s would allow, with which he was extremely pleased. Phoebe delighted in it, hung it up proudly in the parlour, and repaid him with smiles and kisses.

Yet the very next day, under the cloud of his impending departure, she went about pale and woe-begone, on the verge of tears or temper. He was provoked into various harsh speeches, and Phoebe felt that despair which weak and loving women know, when parting is near, and they foresee the hour beyond parting--when each unkind word and look, too well remembered, will gnaw and creep about the heart.

But she could not restrain herself. Nervous tension, doubt of her husband, and condemnation of herself drove her on. The very last night there was a quarrel--about the child--whom Fenwick had punished for some small offence. Phoebe hotly defended her--first with tears, then with pa.s.sion. For the first time these two people found themselves looking into each other's eyes with rage, almost with hate. Then they kissed and made up, terrified at the abyss which had yawned between them; and when the moment came, Phoebe went through the parting bravely.

But when Fenwick had gone, and the young wife sat alone beside the cottage fire, the January darkness outside seemed to her the natural symbol of her own bitter foreboding. Why had he left her? There was no reason in it, as she had said. But there must be some reason behind it. And slowly, in the firelight, she fell to brooding over the image of that pale cla.s.sical face, as she had seen it in the sketch-book.

John had talked quite frankly about Madame de Pastourelles--not like a man beguiled; making no mystery of her at all, answering all questions. But his restlessness to get back to London had been extraordinary. Was it merely the restlessness of the artist?

This was Tuesday. To-morrow Madame de Pastourelles was to come to a sitting. Phoebe sat picturing it; while the curtain of rain descended once more upon the cottage, blotting out the pikes, and washing down the sodden fields.

CHAPTER VI

'I must alter that fold over the arm,' murmured Fenwick, stepping back, with a frown, and gazing hard at the picture on his easel--'it's too strong.'

Madame de Pastourelles gave a little shiver.

The big bare room, with its Northern aspect and its smouldering fire, had been of a polar temperature this March afternoon. She had been sitting for an hour and a half. Her hands and feet were frozen, and the fur cloak which she wore over her white dress had to be thrown back for the convenience of the painter, who was at work on the velvet folds.

Meanwhile, on the further side of the room sat 'propriety'--also shivering--an elderly governess of the Findon family, busily knitting.

'The dress is coming!' said Fenwick, after another minute or two.

'Yes, it's coming.'

And with a flushed face and dishevelled hair he stood back again, staring first at his canvas and then at his sitter.

Madame de Pastourelles sat as still as she could, her thin, numbed fingers lightly crossed on her lap. Her wonderful velvet dress, of ivory-white, fell about her austerely in long folds, which, as they bent or overlapped, made beautiful convolutions, firm yet subtle, on the side turned towards the painter, and over her feet. The cla.s.sical head, with its small ear, the pale yet shining face, combined with the dress to suggest a study in ivory, wrought to a great delicacy and purity. 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 h.e.l.l of despair.

'I went to see Mr. Welby's studio yesterday,' he said, hastily, after another minute or two, seeing her droop with fatigue.

Her face changed and lit up.

'Well, what did you see?'

'The two Academy pictures--several portraits--and a lot of studies.'

'Isn't it fine--the "Polyxena"?'

Fenwick twisted his mouth in a trick he had.

'Yes,' he said, perfunctorily.

She coloured slightly, as though in antagonism.

'That means that you don't admire it at all?'

'Well, it doesn't say anything to me,' said Fenwick, after a pause.

'What do you dislike?'

'Why doesn't he paint flesh?' he said, abruptly--'not coloured wax.'

'Of course there is a decorative convention in his painting'--her tone was a little stiff--'but so there is in all painting.'

Fenwick shrugged his shoulders.

'Go and look at Rubens--or Velasquez.'

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Eugenie_]

'Why not at Leonardo--and Raphael?'

'Because they are not _moderns_--and we can't get back into their skins. Rubens and Velasquez _are_ moderns,' he protested, stoutly.

'What is a "modern"?' she asked, laughing.

It was on the tip of his tongue to say, 'You are--and it is only fashion--or something else--that makes you like this archaistic stuff!' But he restrained himself, and they fell into a skirmish, in which, as usual, he came off badly. As soon as he perceived it, he became rather heated and noisy, trying to talk her down. Whereupon she sprang up, came down from her pedestal to look at the picture, called mademoiselle to see--praised--laughed--and all was calm again. Only Fenwick was left once more reflecting that she was Welby's champion through thick and thin. And this ruffled him.

'Did Mr. Welby study mostly in Italy?' he asked her presently, as he fetched a hand-gla.s.s, in which to examine his morning's work.

'Mostly--but also in Vienna.'

And, to keep the ball rolling, she described a travel-year--apparently before her marriage--which she, Lord Findon, a girl friend of hers, and Welby had spent abroad together--mainly in Rome, Munich, and Vienna--for the purpose, it seemed, of Welby's studies. The experiences she described roused a kind of secret exasperation in Fenwick. And what was really resentment against the meagreness of his own lot showed itself, as usual, in jealousy. He said something contemptuous of this foreign training for an artist--so much concerned with galleries and Old Masters. Much better that he should use his eyes upon his own country and its types; that had been enough for all the best men.

Madame de Pastourelles politely disagreed with him; then, to change the subject, she talked of some of the humours and incidents of their stay in Vienna--the types of Viennese society--the Emperor, the beautiful mad Empress, the Archdukes, the priests--and also of some hurried visits to Hungarian country houses in winter, of the cosmopolitan luxury and refinement to be found there, ringed by forests and barbarism.