Fenwick's Career Part 41

'Well, what is it?'

His voice was low and impatient.

'A parcel for you, sir.'

'Take it away.'

'Very well, sir.'

She turned obediently and was halfway down the pa.s.sage which led to the dining-room, when the studio door opened with a great crash and Fenwick looked out.

'Bring that here. What is it?'

She retraced her steps.

'Well, it's a picture, I think, sir.'

He held out his hand for it, took it, and instantly withdrew into the studio and again locked the door. She noticed that he seemed to have lit one candle in the big studio, and his manner struck her as strange. But her slow mind followed the matter no further, and she went back to the cooking of his slender supper.

Fenwick meanwhile was standing with the parcel in his hand. At the woman's knock he had risen from a table, where he had been writing a letter. A black object, half-covered with a painting-rag, lay beside the ink-stand.

'I must make haste,' he thought, 'or she will be bothering me again.'

He looked at the letter, which was still unfinished. Meanwhile he had absently deposited the parcel on the floor, where it rested against the leg of the table.

'Another page will finish it. Hotel Bristol, Rome--till the end of the week?--if I only could be _sure_ that was what Butlin said!'

He paced up and down, frowning, in an impotent distress, trying to make his brain work as usual. On his visit of the afternoon he had asked the lawyers for the Findon's address; but his memory now was of the worst.

Suddenly he wheeled round, sat down, and took up a book which had been lying face downwards on the table. It was the 'Memoirs of Benjamin Haydon,' and he opened it at one of the last pages--

'About an hour after, Miss Haydon entered the painting-room, and found her father stretched out dead, before the easel on which stood, blood-sprinkled, his unfinished picture. A portrait of his wife stood on a smaller easel facing his large picture.'

The man reading, paused.

'He had suffered much more than I,' he thought--'but his wife had helped him--stood by him--'

And he pa.s.sed on to the next page--to the clause in Haydon's will which runs--'My dearest wife, Mary Haydon, has been a good, dear, and affectionate wife to me--a heroine in adversity and an angel in peace.'

'And he repaid her by blowing his brains out,' thought Fenwick, contemptuously. 'But he was mad--of course he was mad. We are all mad--when it comes to this.'

And he turned back, as though in fascination, to the page before, to the last entry in Haydon's Journal.

'21st.--Slept horribly. Prayed in sorrow and got up in agitation.

'22d.--G.o.d forgive me. Amen.'

'Amen!' repeated Fenwick, aloud, as he dropped the book. The word echoed in the empty room. He covered his eyes with his right hand, leaning his arm on the table.

The other hand, as it fell beside him, came in contact with the parcel which was propped against the table. His touch told him that it contained a picture--an unframed canvas. A vague curiosity awoke in him. He took it up, peered at the address, then began to finger with and unwrap it.

Suddenly--he bent over it. What was it!

He tore off the shawl, and some brown paper beneath it, lifted the thing upon the table, so that the light of the one candle fell upon it, and held it there.

Slowly his face, which had been deeply flushed before, lost all its colour; his jaw dropped a little.

He was staring at the picture of himself which he had painted for Phoebe in the parlour of the Green Nab Cottage thirteen years before.

The young face, in its handsome and arrogant vigour, the gypsy-black hair and eyes, the powerful shoulders in the blue serge coat, the sunburnt neck exposed by the loose, turn-down collar above the greenish tie--there they were, as he had painted them, lying once more under his hand. The flickering light of the candle showed him his signature and the date.

He laid it down and drew a long breath. Thrusting his hands into his pockets, he stood staring at it, his brain, under the sharp stimulus, beginning to work more clearly. So Phoebe, too, was alive--and in England. The picture was her token. That was what it meant.

He went heavily to the door, unlocked it, and called. The charwoman appeared.

'Who brought this parcel?'

'A boy, sir.'

'Where's the note?--he must have brought something with it.'

'No, he didn't, sir--there was no note.'

'Don't be absurd!' cried Fenwick. 'There must have been.'

Mrs. Flint, outraged, protested that she knew what she was a-saying of. He questioned her fiercely, but there was nothing to be got out of her rigmarole account, which Fenwick cut short by retreating into the studio in the middle of it.

This fresh check unhinged him altogether--seemed to make a mere fool of him--the sport of G.o.ds and men. There he paced up and down in a mad excitement. What in the Devil's name was the meaning of it? The picture came from Phoebe--no one else. But it seemed she had only sent it to him to torment him to punish him yet more? Women were the cruellest of G.o.d's creatures. And as for himself--idiot!--if he had only finished his business an hour ago, both she and he would have been released by this time. He worked himself up into a wild pa.s.sion of rage, stopping every now and then to look at that ghost of his youth, which lay on the table, propped up against some books--and once at the reflexion of his haggard face and grey hair as he pa.s.sed in front of an old mirror on the wall.

Then suddenly the tension gave way. He sank on the chair beside the table, hiding his face on his arms in an utter exhaustion, while yet, through the physical weakness, something swept and vibrated, which was in truth the onset of returning life.

As he lay there a cab drove up to the front door, and a lady dressed in black descended from it. She rang, and Mrs. Flint appeared.

'Is Mr. Fenwick at home?'

'He is, ma'am,' said the woman, hesitating--'but he did say he wasn't to be disturbed.'

'Will you please give him my card and say I wish to see him at once? I have brought him an important letter.'

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. Eugenie 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. She moved restlessly up and down, holding in one hand a parcel of letters. Once she noticed the room--the furniture ticketed in lots--and paused in concern and pity. But the momentary cloud was soon chased by the happiness of the thought which held her. Meanwhile Mrs. Flint knocked at the door of the studio.

'Mr. Fenwick! Sir! There's a lady come, sir, and she wishes to speak to you particular.'

An angry movement inside.