Fenwick's Career Part 26

Nights almost sleepless, arrangements made and carried out in a tumult of excitement, a sense of impending tragedy, accepted, and almost welcomed, as the end of long weeks of doubt and self-torment, which had become at last unbearable--into this fatal coil of actions and impressions, the young wife had been sinking deeper and deeper with each successive hour. She had neither friend nor adviser. Her father, a weak inarticulate man, was dying; her stepmother hated her; and she had long ceased to write to Miss Anna, because it was she who had urged John to go to London! All sane inference and normal reasoning were now indeed, and had been for some time, impossible to her.

Fenwick, possessed by the imaginations of his art, had had no imagination--alack!--to spend upon his wife's case, and those morbid processes of brain developed in her by solitude, and wounded love, and mortified vanity. One hour with him!--one hour of love, scolding, tears--would have saved them both. Alone, she was incapable of the merest common sense. She came prepared to discover the worst--to find evidence for all her fears. And for the worst she had elaborately laid her plans. Only if it should turn out that she had been an unkind, unreasonable wife, wrongly suspicious of her husband, was she uncertain what she would do.

With dry, reddened eyes, she stared at the portrait of the woman who must have stolen John from her. The mere arrangement of the room seemed to her excited nerves a second outrage;--Mrs. Gibbs's reception of her and all that it had implied, had been the first. What could this strange illumination mean but that John's thoughts were taken up with his sitter in an unusual and unlawful way? For weeks he could leave his wife without a letter, a word of affection. But before going out for an hour, he must needs light these lamps and place them so--in order that this finicking lady should not feel herself deserted, that he should still seem to be admiring and adoring her!

And after all, was she so pretty? Phoebe looked at the pale and subtle face, at the hair and eyes so much less brilliant than her own, at the thin figure, and the repose of the hands. Not pretty at all!--she said to herself, violently--but selfish, and artful, and full, of course, of all the tricks and wiles of 'society people.' _Didn't_ she know that John was married? Phoebe scornfully refused to believe it. Such women simply didn't care what stood in their way. If they took a fancy to a man, what did it matter whether he were married or no?

The poor girl stood there, seething with pa.s.sion, pluming herself on a knowledge of the world which enabled her to 'see through' these abominable great ladies.

But if she didn't know, if Bella Morrison's tale were true, then it was John, on whom Phoebe's rage returned to fling itself with fresh and maddened bitterness. That he should have thus utterly ignored her in his new surroundings--have never said a word about her to the landlady with whom he had lodged for nearly a year, or to any of his new acquaintances and friends--should have deliberately hidden the very fact of his marriage--could a husband give a wife any more humiliating proof of his indifference, or of her insignificance in his life?

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Phoebe's Rival_]

Meanwhile the picture possessed her more and more. Closer and closer she came, her chest heaving. Was it not as though John had foreseen her coming, her complaints--and had prepared for her this silent, this cruel answer? The big picture of course was gone in to the Academy, but his wife, if she came, was to see that he could not do without Madame de Pastourelles. So the sketch, with which he had finished, really, months ago, was dragged out, and made queen of all it surveyed, because, no doubt, he was miserable at parting with the picture. Ingenuity and self-torment grew with what they fed on.

The burning lamps--the solitude--the graceful woman, with her slim, fine-lady hands--with every moment they became in Phoebe's eyes a more bitter, a more significant offence. Presently, in her foolish agony, she did actually believe that he had thought she might descend upon him, provoked beyond bearing by his silence and neglect, and had carefully planned this infamous way of telling her--what he wanted her to know!

Waves of unreasoning pa.s.sion swept across her. The gentleness and docility of her youth had been perhaps mechanical, half-conscious; she came in truth of a hard stock, capable of violence. She put her hands to her face, trembled, and turned away. She began to be afraid of herself.

With a restless hand, as though she caught hold of anything that might distract her from the picture, she began to rummage among the papers on the table. Suddenly her attention pounced upon them; she bent her head, took up some and carried them to the lamp. Five or six large envelopes, bearing a crest and monogram, addressed in a clear hand, and containing each a long letter--she found a packet, of these, tied round with string. Throwing off her hat and veil, she sat down under the lamp, and, without an instant's demur, began to read.

First, indeed, she turned to the signature--'Eugenie de Pastourelles.'

Why, pray, should Madame de Pastourelles write these long letters to another woman's husband? The hands which held them shook with anger and misery. These pages filled with discussion of art and books, which had seemed to the woman of European culture, and French a.s.sociations, so natural to write, which had been written as the harmless and kindly occupation of an idle hour, with the shades of Madame de Sevigne and Madame du Deffand standing by, were messengers of terror and despair to this ignorant and yet sentimental Westmoreland girl. Why should they be written at all to _her_ John, her own husband? No nice woman that she had ever known wrote long letters to married men. What could have been the object of writing these pages and pages about John's pictures and John's prospects?--affected stuff!--and what was the meaning of these appointments to see pictures, these invitations to St. James's Square, these thanks 'for the kind and charming things you say'--above all, of the constant and crying omission, throughout these delicately written sheets, of any mention whatever of Fenwick's wife and child? But of course for the two correspondents whom these letters implied, such dull, stupid creatures did not exist.

Ah! but wait a moment. Her eye caught a sentence--then fastened greedily on the following pa.s.sage:

'I hardly like to repeat what I said the other day--you will think me a very intrusive person!--but when you talk of melancholy and loneliness, of feeling the strain of compet.i.tion, and the nervous burden of work, so that you are sometimes tempted to give it up altogether, I can't help repeating that some day a wife will save you from all this. I have seen so much of artists!--they of all men should marry. It is quite a delusion to suppose that art--whatever art means--is enough for them, or for anybody. Imagination is the most exhausting of all professions!--and if we women are good for nothing else we _can_ be cushions--we can "stop a c.h.i.n.k and keep the wind away." So pay no attention, please, to my father's diatribes. You will very soon be prosperous--sooner perhaps than you think. A _home_ is what you want.'

Kind and simple sentences!--written so innocently and interpreted so perversely! And yet the fierce and blind bewilderment with which Phoebe read or misread them was natural enough. She never doubted for a moment but that the bad woman who wrote them meant to offer herself to John. She was separated from her husband, John had said, declaring of course that it was not her fault. As if any one could be sure of that! But, at any rate, if she were separated, she might be divorced--some time. And then--_then_!--_she_ would be so obliging as to make a 'cushion,' and a home, for Phoebe Fenwick's husband! As to his not being grand enough for her, that was all nonsense. When a man was as clever as John, he was anybodies equal--one saw that every day.

No, this creature would make people buy his pictures--she would push him on--and after a while--

With a morbid and devastating rapidity, a whole scheme, by which the woman before her might possess herself of John, unfolded itself in Phoebe's furious mind.

Yet, surely, it would only want one word from her--from her, his wife?--

She felt herself trembling. Her limbs began to sink under her. She dropped upon a chair, sobbing. What was the use of fighting, of protesting? John had forgotten her--John's heart had grown cold to her. She might dismay and trample on her rival--how would that give her back her husband?

Oh, how could he, how _could_ he have treated her so! 'I know I was ill-tempered and cross, John,--I couldn't write letters like that--but I did, _did_ love you--you know, you know--I did!'

It seemed as though she twined her arms round him, and he sat rigid as a stone, with a hard, contemptuous mouth. A lonely agony, a blackness of despair, seized on Phoebe, as she crouched there, the letters on her lap, her hands hanging, her beautiful eyes, blurred with tears and sleeplessness, fixed on the picture. What she felt was absurd; but how many tragedies--aye, the deepest--are at bottom ridiculous! She had lost him; he cared no more for her; he had pa.s.sed into another world out of her ken; and what was to become of her?

She started up, goaded by a blind instinct of revenge, seizing she scarcely knew what. On the table lay a palette, laden with some dark pigment with which Fenwick had just been sketching in part of his new picture. In a pot beside it were brushes.

She caught up a large brush, dipped it in the paint, and going to the picture--panting and crimson--she daubed it from top to bottom, blotting out the eyes, the mouth, the beautiful outline of the head--above all, the hands, whose delicate whiteness specially enraged her.

When the work of wreck was done, she stood a moment gazing at it.

Then, violently, she looked for writing-paper. She could see none: but there was an unused half-sheet at the back of one of Madame de Pastourelles' letters, and she roughly tore it off. Making use of a book held on her knee, and finding the pen and ink with which, only half an hour before, Lord Findon had written his cheque, she began to write:

Good-bye, John,--I have found out all I want to know, and you will never see me again. I will never be a burden on a man who is ashamed of me, and has behaved as though I were dead. It is no good wasting words--you know it's true. Perhaps you may think I have no right to take Carrie. But I can't be alone--and, after all, she is more mine than yours. Don't trouble about me. I have some money, and I mean to support myself and Carrie. It was only last night this idea came to me, though it was the night before that--Never mind--I can't write about it, it would take too long, and it doesn't really matter to either of us. I don't want you to find me here; you might persuade me to come back to you, and I know it would be for the misery of both of us. What was I saying?--oh, the money--Well, last night, a cousin of mine, from Keswick, perhaps you remember him--Freddie Tolson--came to see me. Father sent him. You didn't believe what I told you about father--you thought I was making up. You'll be sorry, I think, when you read this, for by now, most likely, father has pa.s.sed away.

Freddie told me the doctor had given him up, and he was very near going. But he sent Freddie to me, with some money he had really left me in his will--only he was afraid Mrs. Gibson would get hold of it, and never let me have it. So he sent it by hand, with his love and blessing--and Freddie was to say he was sorry you had left me so long, and he didn't think it was a right thing for a man to do. Never mind how much it was. It's my very own, and I'm glad it comes from my father, and not from you. I have my embroidery money too, and I shall be all right--though very, very miserable. The idea of what I would do came into my head while I was talking with Freddie--and since I came into this room, I have made up my mind. I'm sorry I can't set you free altogether. There's Carrie to think of, and I must live for her sake.

But at any rate you won't have to look after me, or to feel that I'm disgracing you with the smart people who have taken you up--

Don't look for us, for you will never, never find us.

Good-bye, John. Do you remember that night in the ghyll, and all the things we said?

I've spoiled your sketch--I couldn't help it--and I'm not sorry--not yet, anyway. She has everything in the world, and I had nothing--but you. Why did you leave the lamps?--just to mock at me?

Good-bye. I have left my wedding-ring on this paper. You'll know I couldn't do that, if I ever meant to come back!

She rose, and moved a small table in front of the ruined picture.

On it she placed, first, the parcel she had brought with her, which contained papers and small personal possessions belonging to her husband; in front of the packet she laid the five letters of Madame de Pastourelles, her own letter in an envelope addressed to him, and upon it her ring.

Then she put on her hat and veil, tying the veil closely round her face, and, with one last look round the room, she crept to the door and unlocked it. So quietly did she descend the stairs that Mrs.

Gibbs, who was listening sharply, with the kitchen door open, for any sound of her departure, heard nothing. The outer door opened and shut without the smallest noise, and the slender, veiled figure was quickly lost in the darkness and the traffic of the street.

PART III

AFTER TWELVE YEARS

'Our acts our angels are, or good or ill, Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.'

CHAPTER IX

'Quand vous arriverez au troisieme, monsieur, montez, montez toujours!

Vous trouverez un pet.i.t escalier tournant, en bois. ca vous conduira a l'atelier.'

Thus advised by the wife of the concierge, Fenwick crossed the courtyard of an old house in the Rue du Bac, looked up a moment at the sober and distinguished charm of its architecture, at the corniced, many-paned windows, so solidly framed and plentifully lined in white, upon the stone walls, and the high roof, with its lucarne windows just touched with cla.s.sical decoration; each line and tint contributing to a seemly, restrained whole, as of something much worn by time, yet merely enhanced thereby, something deliberately built, moreover, to stand the years, and abide the judgement of posterity. The house in Saint-Simon's day had belonged to one of those newly enn.o.bled dukes, his contemporaries and would-be brethren, whose monstrous claims to rank with himself and the other real magnificences among the _ducs et pairs de France_ drove him to distraction. It was now let out to a mult.i.tude of families, who began downstairs in affluence and ended in the genteel or artistic penury of the garrets. The first floor was occupied by a deputy and ex-minister, one of the leaders of the Centre Gauche--in the garrets it was possible for a _rapin_ to find a bedroom at sixteen francs a month. But it was needful that he should be a seemly _rapin_, orderly and quietly ambitious, like the house, otherwise he would not have been long suffered within its tranquil and self-respecting walls.

Fenwick climbed and climbed, discovered the little wooden staircase, and still climbed. At the very top he found a long and narrow corridor, along which he groped in darkness. Suddenly, at the end, a door opened, and a figure appeared on the threshold.

'Fenwick!--that you? All right!--no steps! The floor was left _au naturel_ about 1680--but you won't come to grief.'

Fenwick arrived at the open door, and d.i.c.k Watson drew him into the large studio beyond. Fenwick looked round him in astonishment. The room was a huge _grenier_ in the roof of the old house, roughly adapted to the purposes of a studio. A large window to the north had been put in, and the walls had been rudely plastered. But all the blasts of heaven seemed still to blow through them, and through the c.h.i.n.ks or under the eaves of the roof; while in the middle of the floor a pool of water, the remains of a recent heavy shower, testified to the ease with which the weather could enter if it chose.

'I say'--said Fenwick, pointing to the water--'can you stand this kind of thing?'

Watson shivered.