Fenwick's Career Part 24

Lord Findon and Eugenie mounted the stairs. The studio door was half-open. As they approached the threshold they heard Fenwick speaking.

'I say, hand me that rag--and look sharp and bring me some more oil--quick! And where the devil is that sketch? Well, get the oil--and then look for it--under that pile over there--No!--hi!--stand still a moment--just where you are--I want to see the tone of your head against this background! Hang it!--the light's going!'

The visitors paused--to see Fenwick standing between them and a large canvas covered with the first 'laying-in' of an important subject. The model, a thin, dark-faced fellow, was standing meekly on the spot to which Fenwick had motioned him, while the artist, palette on thumb, stood absorbed and frowning, his keen eye travelling from the man's head to the canvas behind it.

Lord Findon smiled. He was a clever amateur, and relished the details of the business.

'Smells good!' he said, in Eugenie's ear, sniffing the scents of the studio. 'Looks like a fine subject too. And just now he's king of it.

The torments are all ahead. Hullo, Fenwick!--may we come in?'

Fenwick turned sharply and saw them in the doorway. He came to meet them with mingled pleasure and embarra.s.sment.

'Come in, please! Hope you don't mind this get-up.' He pointed to his shirt-sleeves.

'It's we who apologise!' smiled Eugenie. 'You are in a great moment!'

She glanced at the canvas, filled with a rhythmical group of dim figures, already beautiful, though they had caught the artist and his work in the very act of true creation--when after weeks or months of brooding, of hard work, of searching study of this or that, of inspiration tested and verified, of mechanical drudgery, of patient construction, _birth_ begins--the birth of values, relations, distances, the _drawing of colour_.

Fenwick shrugged his shoulders. His eyes sparkled in a strained and haggard face, with such an ardour that Eugenie had the strange impression of some headlong force, checked in mid-career, and filling the quiet studio with the thrill of its sudden reining-up; and Lord Findon's announcement was checked on his lips.

'Why, it is my subject!' she cried, looking again at the picture.

'Well, of course!' said Fenwick, flushing.

It was only a few weeks before that she had read him, from a privately printed volume, a poem, of which the new, strange music was then freshly in men's ears--suggesting that he should take it as a theme.

The poem is called 'An Elegy on a Lady, whom grief for the death of her betrothed killed.' Its n.o.ble verse summons all true maids and lovers to bear the dead company, in that burial procession which should have been her bridal triumph. The priests go before, white-robed; the 'dark-stoled minstrels follow'; then the bier with the bride:--

And then the maidens in a double row, Each singing soft and low, And each on high a torch upstaying: Unto her lover lead her forth with light, With music, and with singing, and with praying.

'Here is the finished sketch,' he said, placing it in her hands and watching her eagerly.

She bent over it in emotion, conscious of that natural delight of woman when she has fired an artist.

'How fine!--and how you must have worked!'

'Night and day. It possessed me. I didn't want you to see it yet a while. But you understand?--it is to be romantic--not sentimental.

Strong form. Every figure discriminated, and yet kept subordinate to the whole. No monotony! Character everywhere--expressing grief--and longing. An evening light-between sunset and moonrise. The sky gold--and the torches. Then below--in the crowd, the autumn woods, the distant River of Death, towards which the procession moves--a ma.s.sing of blues and purples'--his hand--pointing--worked rapidly over the canvas; 'and here, some pale rose, black, emerald green, dimly woven in--and lastly, the whites of the bride-maidens, and of the bride upon her bier--towards which, of course, the whole construction mounts.'

'I see!--a sort of Mantegna Triumph--with a difference!'

'The drawing's all right,' said Fenwick, with a long breath, and a stretch. 'If I can only get the paint as I want it'--he stooped forward again peering into the canvas--'it's the _handling of the paint_--that's what excites me! I want to get it broad and pure--no messing--no working over!--a fine surface!--and yet none of your waxy prettiness. The forms like Millet--simple--but full of knowledge.

_Ah!_'--he took up a brush, flung it down bitterly, and turned on his heel--'I can draw!--but why did no one ever teach me to paint?'

Eugenie lifted her eyebrows--amused at the sudden despair. Lord Findon laughed. He had restrained himself so far with difficulty while these two romanced; and now, bursting with his tidings, he laid a hand on Fenwick:--

'Look here, young man--we didn't come just on the loose--to bother you. Have you heard--?'

Fenwick made a startled movement.

'Heard what?'

'Why, that your two pictures are _accepted_!--and will be admirably hung--both on the line, and one in the big room.'

The colour rushed again into Fenwick's cheeks.

'Are you sure?' he stammered, looking from one to the other.

Lord Findon gave his authority, and then Eugenie held out her hand.

'We _are_ so glad!'

She had thrown back the gauze veil in which she had shrouded herself during her drive with her father, and her charming face--still so pale!--shone in sympathy.

Fenwick awkwardly accepted her congratulation, and shook the proffered hand.

'I expect it's your doing,' he said, abruptly.

'Not in the least!' cried Lord Findon. His eye twinkled. 'My dear fellow, what are you thinking of? These are the days of merit, and publicity!--when every man comes to his own.' Fenwick grinned a little. 'You've earned _your_ success anyway, and it'll be a thumper.

Now look here, where can we talk business?'

Fenwick put down his palette, and slipped his arms into his coat.

The model lit a lamp, and disappeared. Eugenie meanwhile withdrew discreetly to the further end of the room, where she busied herself with some wood-blocks on which Fenwick had been drawing. The two men remained hidden behind the large canvas, and she heard nothing of their conversation. She was aware, however, of the scratching of a pen, and immediately after her father called to her.

'Eugenie, come!--we must get back for dinner.'

Fenwick, looking up, saw her emerging from the shadows of the further room into the bright lamp-light, her grey veil floating cloudwise round her. As she came towards him, he felt her once more the emblem and angel of his good-fortune. All the inspiration she had been to him, all that closer acquaintance, to which during the preceding weeks she had admitted him, throbbed warm at his heart. His mind was full of grat.i.tude--full also of repentance!--towards Phoebe and towards her.

That very night would he write his confession to her, at last!--tell all his story, beg her to excuse his foolish lack of frankness and presence of mind to Lord Findon, and ask her kindness for Phoebe and the child. He already saw little Carrie on her knee, and the _aegis_ of her protecting sweetness spread over them all.

Meanwhile the impression upon her was that he had taken the news of his success with admirable self-restraint, that he was growing and shaping as a human being, no less than as an artist, that his manner to her father was excellent, neither tongue-tied nor effusive, and his few words of thanks manly and sincere. She thought to herself that here was the beginning of a great career--the moment when the streamlet finds its bed, and enters upon its true and destined course.

And in the warm homage, the evident attachment she had awakened in the man before her, there was for Eugenie at the moment a peculiar temptation. Had she not just given proof that she was set apart--that for her there could be no more thought of love in its ordinary sense?

In her high-strung consciousness of Welby's dismissal, she felt herself not only secure against the vulgar snares of vanity and s.e.x, but, as it were, endowed with a larger spiritual freedom. She had sent away the man of whom she was in truth afraid--the man whom she might have loved. But in this distant, hesitating, and yet strong devotion that Fenwick was beginning to show her, there was something that appealed--and with peculiar force, in the immediate circ.u.mstances,--to a very sore and lonely heart. Here was no danger to be feared!--nothing but a little kind help to a man of genius, whose great gifts might be so easily nullified and undone by his th.o.r.n.y vehemence of character, his lack of breeding and education.

The correspondence indeed which had arisen between them out of Fenwick's first remarkable letter to her, had led unconsciously to a new att.i.tude on the part of Madame de Pastourelles. That he was an interesting and promising artist she knew; that on subjects connected with his art he could talk copiously and well, that also, she knew; but that he could write, with such pleasant life, detail, and ingenuity, was a surprise, and it attracted her, as it would have attracted a French-woman of the eighteenth century. Her maimed life had made her perforce an 'intellectual'; and in these letters, the man's natural poetry and force stirred her enthusiasm. Hence a new interest and receptivity in her, quickened by many small and natural incidents--books lent and discussed, meetings in picture-galleries, conversations in her father's house, and throughout it that tempting, dangerous pleasure of 'doing good,' that leads astray so many on whom Satan has no other hold! She was introducing him every week to new friends--her friends, the friends she wished him to have; she was making his social way plain before him; she had made her father buy his pictures; and she meant to look after his career in the future.

So that, quivering as she still was under the strain of her scene with Welby--so short, so veiled, and at bottom so tragic!--she showed herself glitteringly cheerful--almost gay--as she stood talking a few minutes with her father and Fenwick. The restless happiness in Fenwick's face and movements gave his visitors indeed so much pleasure that they found it hard to go; several times they said good-bye, only to plunge again into the sketches and studies that lay littered about the room, to stand chatting before the new canvas, to laugh and gossip--till Lord Findon remembered that Eugenie did not yet know that he had offered Fenwick five hundred pounds for the two pictures instead of four hundred and fifty pounds; and that he might have the prompt satisfaction of telling her that he had bettered her instructions, he at last dragged her away. On this day of all days, did he wish to please her!--if it were only in trifles.

CHAPTER VIII

When Fenwick was alone, he walked to a chest of drawers in which he kept a disorderly mult.i.tude of possessions, and took out a mingled handful of letters, photographs, and sketches. Throwing them on a table, he looked for and found a photograph of Phoebe with Carrie on her knee, and a little sketch of Phoebe--one of the first ideas for the 'Genius Loci.' He propped them up against some books, and looked at them in a pa.s.sion of triumph.

'It's all right, old woman--it's all right!' he murmured, smiling.

Then he spread out Lord Findon's cheque before the photograph, as though he offered it at Phoebe's shrine.