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 illustration 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 circumstance, 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-glass 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 passion. 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 classical 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 classical 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 hell 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.'



'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-glass, 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.

Fenwick listened greedily, and presently inquired whether Mr. Welby had shared in all these amusements.

'Oh yes. He was generally the life and soul of them.'

'I suppose he made lots of friends—and got on with everybody?'

Madame de Pastourelles assented—cautiously.

'That's all a question of manners,' said Fenwick, with sudden roughness.

She gave a vague 'Perhaps'—and he straightened himself aggressively.

'I don't think manners very important, do you?'

'Very!' She said it, with a gay firmness.

'Well, then, some of us will never get any,' his tone was surly—'we weren't taught young enough.'

'Our mothers teach us generally—all that's wanted!'

He shook his head.

'It's not as simple as that. Besides—one may lose one's mother.'

'Ah, yes!' she said, with quick feeling.

And presently a little tact, a few questions on her part had brought out some of his own early history—his mother's death—his years of struggle with his father. As he talked on—disjointedly—painting hard all the time, she had a vision of the Kendal shop and its customers—of the shrewd old father, moulded by the business, the avarice, the religion of an English country town, with a Calvinist contempt for art and artists—and trying vainly to coerce his sulky and rebellious son.

'Has your father seen these pictures?' She pointed to the 'Genius Loci' on its further easel—and to the portrait.

'My father! I haven't spoken to him or seen him for years.'

'Years!' She opened her eyes. 'Is it as bad as that?'

'Aye, that's North-Country. If you've once committed yourself, you stick to it—like death.'

She declared that it might be North-Country, but was none the less barbarous. However, of course it would all come right. All the interesting tales of one's childhood began that way—with a cruel father, and a rebellious son. But they came to magnificent ends, notwithstanding—with sacks of gold and a princess. Diffident, yet smiling, she drew conclusions. 'So, you see, you'll make money—you'll be an R.A.—you'll marry—and Mr. Fenwick will nurse the grandchildren. I assure you—that's the fairy-tale way.'

Fenwick, who had flushed hotly, turned away and occupied himself in replenishing his palette.

'Papa, of course, would say—Don't marry till you're a hundred and two!' she resumed. 'But pray, don't listen to him.'

'I dare say he's right,' said Fenwick, returning to his easel, his face bent over it.

'Not at all. People should have their youth together.'

'That's all very well. But many men don't know at twenty what they'll want at thirty,' said Fenwick, painting fast.

Madame de Pastourelles laughed.

'The doctors say nowadays—it is papa's latest craze—that it doesn't matter what you eat—or how little—if you only chew it properly. I wonder if that applies to matrimony?'

'What's the chewing?'

'Manners,' she said, laughing—'that you think so little of. Whether the food's agreeable or not, manners help it down.'

'Manners!—between husband and wife?' he said, scornfully.

'But certainly!' She lifted her beautiful brows for emphasis. 'Show me any persons, please, that want them more!'

'The people I've been living among,' said Fenwick, with sharp persistence, 'haven't got time for fussing about manners—in the sense you mean. Life's too hard.'

A flush of bright colour sprang into her face. But she held her ground.

'What do you suppose I mean? I don't meant court trains and courtesies—I really don't.'

Fenwick was silent a moment, and then said—aggressively—' We can't all of us have the same chances—as Mr. Welby, for instance.'

Madame de Pastourelles looked at him in astonishment. What an extraordinary obsession! They seemed not to be able to escape from Arthur Welby's name: yet it never cropped up without producing some sign of irritation in this strange young man. Poor Arthur!—who had always shown himself so ready to make friends, whenever the two men met—as they often did—in the St. James's Square drawing-room. Fenwick's antagonism, indeed, had been plain to her for some time. It was natural, she supposed; he was clearly very sensitive on the subject of his own humble origin and bringing-up; but she sighed that a perverse youth should so mismanage his opportunities.

As to 'chances,' she declared rather tartly that they had nothing to do with it. It was natural to Arthur Welby to make himself agreeable.

'Yes—like all other kinds of aristocrats,' said Fenwick, grimly.

Madame de Pastourelles frowned.

'Of all the words in the dictionary—that word is the most detestable!' she declared. 'It ought to be banished. Well, thank goodness, it is generally banished.'

'That's only because we all like to hide our heads in the sand—you who possess the privileges—and we who envy them!'

'I vow I don't possess any privileges at all,' she said, with defiance.

'You say so, because you breathe them—live in them—like the air—without knowing it,' said Fenwick, also trying to speak lightly. Then he added, suddenly putting down his palette and brushes, while his black eyes lightened—'And so does Mr. Welby. You can see from his pictures that he doesn't know anything about common, coarse people—real people—who make up the world. He paints wax, and calls it life; and you—'

'Go on!—please go on!'

'I shall only make a fool of myself,' he said, taking up his brushes again.

'Not at all. And I praise humbug?—and call it manners?'

He paused, then blurted out—'I wouldn't say anything rude to you for the world!'

She smiled—a smile that turned all the delicate severity of her face to sweetness. 'That's very nice of you. But if you knew Mr. Welby better, you'd never want to say anything rude to him either!'

Fenwick was silent. Madame de Pastourelles, feeling that for the moment she also had come to the end of her tether, fell into a reverie, from which she was presently roused by finding Fenwick standing before her, palette in hand.

'I don't want you to think me an envious brute,' he said, stammering. 'Of course, I know the "Polyxena" is a fine thing—a very fine thing.'

She looked a little surprised—as though he offered her moods to which she had no key. 'Shall I show you something I like much better?' she said, with quick resource. And drawing towards her a small portfolio she had brought with her, she took out a drawing and handed it to him. 'I am taking it to be framed. Isn't it beautiful?'

It was a drawing, in silver-point, of an orange-tree in mingled fruit and bloom—an exquisite piece of work, of a Japanese truth, intricacy, and perfection. Fenwick looked at it in silence. These silver-point drawings of Welby's were already famous. In the preceding May there had been an exhibition of them at an artistic club. At the top of the drawing was an inscription in a minute handwriting—'Sorrento: Christmas Day,' with the monogram 'A.W.' and a date three years old.

As Madame de Pastourelles perceived that his eyes had caught the inscription, she rather hastily withdrew the sketch and returned it to the portfolio.

'I watched him draw it,' she explained—'in a Sorrento garden. My father and I were there for the winter. Mr. Welby was in a villa near ours, and I used to watch him at work.'

It seemed to Fenwick that her tone had grown rather hurried and reserved, as though she regretted the impulse which had made her show him the drawing. He praised it as intelligently as he could; but his mind was guessing all the time at the relation which lay behind the drawing. According to Cuningham's information, it was now three years since a separation had been arranged between Madame de Pastourelles and her husband, Comte Albert de Pastourelles, owing to the Comte's outrageous misconduct. Lord Findon had no doubt taken her abroad after the catastrophe. And, besides her father, Welby had also been near, apparently—watching over her?

He returned to his work upon the hands, silent, but full of speculation. The evident bond between these two people had excited his imagination and piqued his curiosity from the first moment of his acquaintance with them. They were both of a rare and fine quality; and the signs of an affection between them, equally rare and fine, had not been lost on those subtler perceptions in Fenwick which belonged perhaps to his heritage as an artist. If he gave the matter an innocent interpretation, and did not merely say to himself, 'She has lost a husband and found a lover,' it was because the woman herself had awakened in him fresh sources of judgement. His thoughts simply did not dare besmirch her.

* * * * *

The clock struck five; and thereupon a sound of voices on the stairs outside.

'Papa!' said Madame de Pastourelles, jumping up—in very evident relief—her teeth chattering.

The door opened and Lord Findon put in a reconnoitring head.

'May I—or we—come in?'

And behind him, on the landing, Fenwick with a start perceived the smiling face of Arthur Welby.

'I've come to carry off my daughter,' said Findon, with a friendly nod to the artist. 'But don't let us in if you don't want to.'

'Turn me out, please, at once, if I'm in the way,' said Welby. 'Lord Findon made me come up.'

It was the first time that Welby had visited the Bernard Street studio. Fenwick's conceit had sometimes resented the fact. Yet now that Welby was there he was unwilling to show his work. He muttered something about there being 'more to see in a day or two.'

'There's a great deal to see already,' said Lord Findon. 'But, of course, do as you like. Eugenie, are you ready?'

'Please!—may I be exhibited?' said Madame de Pastourelles to Fenwick, with a smiling appeal.

He gave way, dragged the easel into the best light, and fell back while the two men examined the portrait.

'Stay where you are, Eugenie,' said Lord Findon, holding up his hand. 'Let Arthur see the pose.'

She sat down obediently. Fenwick heard an exclamation from Welby, and a murmured remark to Lord Findon; then Welby turned to the painter, his face aglow.

'I say, I do congratulate you! You are making a success of it! The whole scheme's delightful. You've got the head admirably.'

'I'm glad you like it,' said Fenwick, rather shortly, ready at once to suspect a note of patronage in the other's effusion. Welby—a little checked—returned to the picture, studying it closely, and making a number of shrewd, or generous comments upon it, gradually quenched, however, by Fenwick's touchy or ungracious silence. Of course the picture was good. Fenwick wanted no one to tell him that.

Meanwhile, Lord Findon—though in Fenwick's studio he always behaved himself with a certain jauntiness, as a man should who has discovered a genius—was a little discontented.

'It's a fine thing, Eugenie,' he was saying to her, as he helped her put on her furs, 'but I'm not altogether satisfied. It wants animation. It's too—too—'

'Too sad?' she asked, quietly.

'Too grave, my dear—too grave. I want your smile.'

Madame de Pastourelles shook her head.

'What do you mean?' he asked.

'I can't go smiling to posterity!' she said; first gaily—then suddenly her lip quivered.

'Eugenie, darling—for God's sake—'

'I'm all right,' she said, recovering herself instantly. 'Mr. Arthur, are you coming?'

'One moment,' said Welby; then, turning to Fenwick as the others approached them, he said, 'Might I make two small criticisms?'

'Of course.'

'The right hand seems to me too large—and the chin wants fining. Look!' He took a little ivory paper-cutter from his pocket, and pointed to the line of the chin, with a motion of the head towards Madame de Pastourelles.

Fenwick looked—and said nothing.

'By George, I think he's right,' said Lord Findon, putting on spectacles. 'That right hand's certainly too big.'

'In my opinion, it's not big enough,' said Fenwick, doggedly.

Welby withdrew instantly from the picture, and took up his hat. Lord Findon looked at the artist—half angry, half amused. 'You don't buy her gloves, sir—I do.'

Eugenie's eyes meanwhile had begun to sparkle, as she stood in her sable cap and cloak, waiting for her companions. Fenwick approached her.

'Will you sit to-morrow?'

'I think not—I have some engagements.'

'Next day?'

'I will let you know.'

Fenwick's colour rose.

'There is a good deal to do still—and I must work at my other picture.'

'Yes, I know. I will write.'

And with a little dry nod of farewell she slipped her hand into her father's arm and led him away. Welby also saluted pleasantly, and followed the others.

* * * * *

Fenwick was left to pace his room in a tempest, denouncing himself as a 'damned fool,' bent on destroying all his own chances in life. Why was it that Welby's presence always had this effect upon him:—setting him on edge, and making a bear of him? No!—it was not allowed to be so handsome, so able, so ingratiating. Yet he knew very well that Welby made no enemies, and that in his grudging jealousy of a delightful artist he, Fenwick, stood alone.

He walked to the window. Yes, there they were, all three—Mademoiselle Barras seemed to have gone her ways separately—just disappearing into Russell Square. He saw that Welby had possessed himself of the fair lady's portfolio, and was carrying her shawl. He watched their intimate, laughing ways—how different from the stiffness she had just shown him—from the friendly, yet distant relations she always maintained between herself and her painter! A fierce and irritable ambition swept through him—rebellion against the hampering conditions of birth and poverty, which he felt as so many chains upon body and soul. Why was he born the son of a small country tradesman, narrow, ignorant, and tyrannical?—harassed by penury, denied opportunities—while a man like Welby found life from the beginning a broad road, as it were, down a widening valley, to a land of abundance and delight?

But the question led immediately to an answering outburst of vanity. He paced up and down, turning from the injustice of the past to challenge the future. A few more years, and the world would know where to place him—with regard to the men now in the running—men with half his power—Welby and the like. A mad arrogance, a boundless confidence in himself, flamed through all his veins. Let him paint, paint, paint—think of nothing, care for nothing but the maturing of his gift!

How long he lost himself in this passion of egotism and defiance he hardly knew. He was roused from it by the servant bringing a lamp; and as she set it down, the light fell upon a memorandum scrawled on the edge of a sketch which was lying on the table: 'Feb. 21—10 o'clock.'

His mood collapsed. He sat down by the dying fire, brooding and miserable. How on earth was he going to get through the next few weeks? Abominable!—thoughtlessly cruel!—that neither Lord Findon nor Madame de Pastourelles should ever yet have spoken to him of money! These months of work on the portrait—this constant assumption on the part of the Findon circle that both the portrait and the 'Genius Loci' were to become Findon possessions—and yet no sum named—no clear agreement even—nothing, as it seemed to Fenwick's suspicious temper, in either case, that really bound Lord Findon. 'Write to the old boy'—so Cuningham had advised again and again—'get something definite out of him.' But Fenwick had once or twice torn up a letter of the kind in morbid pride and despair. Suppose he were rebuffed? That would be an end of the Findon connexion, and he could not bring himself to face it. He must keep his entree to the house; above all, he clung to the portrait and the sittings.

But the immediate outlook was pretty dark. He was beginning to be pestered with debts and duns—the appointment on the morrow was with an old frame-maker who had lent him twenty pounds before Christmas, and was now begging piteously for his money. There was nothing to pay him with—nothing to send Phoebe, in spite of a constant labour at paying jobs in black-and-white that often kept him up till three or four in the morning. He wondered whether Watson would help him with a loan. According to Cuningham, the queer fellow had private means.

The fact was he was overstrained—he knew it. The year had been the hardest of his life, and now that he was approaching the time of crisis—the completion of his two pictures, the judgement of the Academy and the public, his nerve seemed to be giving way. As he thought of all that success or failure might mean, he plunged into a melancholy no less extravagant than the passion of self-confidence from which he had emerged. Suppose that he fell ill before the pictures were finished—what would become of Phoebe and the child?

As he thought of Phoebe, suddenly his heart melted within him. Was she, too, hating the hours? As he bowed his head on his arms a few hot, unwilling tears forced themselves into his eyes. Had he been unkind and harsh to her?—his poor little Phoebe! An imperious impulse seemed to sweep him back into her arms. She was his own, his very own; one flesh with him; of the same clay, the same class, the same customs and ideals. Let him only recover her, and his child—and live his own life as he pleased. No more dependence on the moods of fine people. He hated them all! Clearly he had offended Madame de Pastourelles. Perhaps she would not sit again—the portrait would be thrown on his hands—because he had not behaved with proper deference to her spoilt and petted favourite.

Involuntarily he looked up. The lamp-light fell on the portrait.

There she sat, the delicate, ethereal being, her gentle brow bent forward, her eyes fixed upon him. He perceived, as though for the first time, what an image of melancholy grace it was which he had built up there. He had done it, as it were, without knowing—had painted something infinitely pathetic and noble without realising it in the doing.

As he looked, his irritation died away, and something wholly contradictory took its place. He felt a rush of self-pity, and then of trust. What if he called on her to help him—unveiled himself to this kind and charming woman—confessed to her his remorse about Phoebe—his secret miseries and anxieties—the bitterness of his envies and ambitions? Would she not rain balm upon him—quiet him—guide him?

He yearned towards her, as he sat there in the semi-darkness—seeking the ewig-weibliche in the sweetness of her face—without a touch of passion—as a Catholic might yearn towards his Madonna. Her slight and haughty farewell showed that he had tried her patience—had behaved like an ungenerous cur. But he must and would propitiate her—win her friendship for himself and Phoebe. The weakness of the man threw itself strangely, instinctively, on the moral strength of the woman; as though in this still young and winning creature he might recover something of what he had lost in childhood, when his mother died. He mocked at his own paradox, but it held him. That very night would he write to her; not yet about Phoebe—not yet!—but letting her understand, at least, that he was not ungrateful, that he valued her sympathy and good-will. Already the phrases of the letter, warm and eloquent, yet restrained, began to flow through his mind. It might be an unusual thing to do; but she was no silly conventional woman; she would understand.

By Jove! Welby was perfectly right. The hand was too big. It should be altered at the next sitting. Then he sprang up, found pen and paper, and began to write to Phoebe—still in the same softened and agitated state. He wrote in haste and at length, satisfying some hungry instinct in himself by the phrases of endearment which he scattered plentifully through the letter.

* * * * *

That letter found Phoebe on a mid-March morning, when the thrushes were beginning to sing, when the larches were reddening, and only in the topmost hollows of the pikes did any snow remain, to catch the strengthening sunlight.

As she opened it, she looked at its length with astonishment. Then the tone of it brought the rushing colour to her cheek, and when it was finished she kissed it and hid it in her dress. After weeks of barrenness, of stray post-cards and perfunctory notes, these ample pages, with their rhetorical and sentimental effusion, brought new life to the fretting, lonely woman. She went about in penitence. Surely she had done injustice to her John; and she dreaded lest any inkling of those foolish or morbid thoughts she had been harbouring should ever reach him.

She wrote back with passion—like one throwing herself on his breast. The letter was long and incoherent, written at night beside Carrie's bed—and borrowing much, unconsciously, from the phraseology of the novels she still got from Bowness. Alack! it is to be feared that John Fenwick—already at another point in spiritual space when the letter reached him—gave it but a hasty reading.

But, for the time, it was an untold relief to the writer. Afterwards, she settled down to wait again, working meanwhile night and day at her beautiful embroidery that John had designed for her. Miss Anna came to see her, exclaimed at her frail looks, wanted to lend her money. Phoebe in a new exaltation, counting the weeks, and having still three or four sovereigns in the drawer, refused—would say nothing about their straits. John, she declared, was on the eve of an enormous success. It would be all right presently.

* * * * *

Weeks passed. The joy of that one golden letter faded; and gradually the shadows re-closed about her. Fenwick's letters dwindled again to post-cards, and then almost ceased. When the hurried lines came, the strain and harass expressed in them left no room for affection. Something wrong with the 'Genius Loci'!—some bad paints—hours of work needed to get the beastly thing right—the portrait still far from complete—but the dress would be a marvel!—without quenching the head in the least. And not a loving word!—scarcely an inquiry after the child.

April came. The little shop in the neighbouring village gave Mrs. Fenwick credit—but Phoebe, brought up in frugal ways, to loathe the least stain of debt, hated to claim it, and went there in the dusk, that she might not be seen.

Meanwhile not a line from John to tell her that his pictures had gone in to the Academy. She saw a paragraph, however, in the local papers describing 'Show Sunday.' Had John been entertaining smart people to tea, and showing his pictures, with the rest? If so, couldn't he find ten minutes in which to send her news of it? It was unkind! All her suspicions and despair revived.

As she carried her child back from the village, tottering often under the weight, gusts of mingled weakness and passion would sweep over her. She would not be treated so—John should see! She would get her money for her work and go to London—whether he liked it or no—tax him with his indifference to her—find out what he was really doing.

The capacity for these moments of violence was something new in her—probably depending, if the truth were known, on some obscure physical misery. She felt that they degraded her, yet could not curb them.

And, in this state, the obsession of the winter seized her again. She brooded perpetually over the doleful Romney story—the tale of a great painter, born, like her John, in this Northern air, and reared in Kendal streets, deserting his peasant wife—enslaved by Emma Hamilton through many a passionate year—and coming back at last that the drudge of his youth might nurse him through his decrepit old age. She remembered going with John in their sweetheart days to see the house where Romney died, imbecile and paralysed, with Mary Romney beside him.

'I would never have done it—never!' she said to herself in a mad recoil. 'He had chosen—he should have paid!'

She sat closer and closer at her work, in a feverish eagerness to finish it, sleeping little and eating little. When she wrote to her husband it was in a bitter, reproachful tone she had never yet employed to him. 'I have had one nice letter from you this winter, and only one. As you can't take the trouble to write any more, you'll hardly wonder if I think you sent that one to keep me quiet.' She wrote too often in this style. But, whether in this style or another, John made no answer—had apparently ceased to write.

One afternoon towards the end of April she was sitting at her work in the parlour, with the window open to the lengthening day, when she heard the gate open and shut. A woman in black came up the pathway, and, seeing Phoebe at the window, stopped short. Phoebe rose, and, as the visitor threw back her veil, recognised the face of Mr. Morrison's daughter, Bella.

She gave a slight cry; then, full of pity and emotion, she hastened to open the door.

'Oh, Miss Morrison!' She held out her hand; her attitude, her beautiful eyes, breathed compassion, and also embarrassment. The thought of the debt rushed into her mind. Had Miss Morrison come to press for it? It was within a fortnight of twelve months since the loan was granted. She felt a vague terror.

The visitor just touched her hand, then looked at her with an expression which stirred increasing alarm in the woman before her. It was so hard and cold; it threatened, without speech.

'I came to return you something I don't want any more,' said the girl, with a defiant air; and Phoebe noticed, as she spoke, that she carried in her left hand a large, paper-covered roll. In her deep black she was more startling than ever, with spots of flame-colour on either cheek, the eyes fixed and staring, the lips wine-red. It might have been a face taken from one of those groups of crudely painted wood or terra-cotta, in which northern Italy—as at Orta or Varallo—has expressed the scenes of the Passion. The Magdalen in one of the ruder groups might have looked so.

'Will you please to come in?' said Phoebe, leading the way to the parlour, which smelled musty and damp for lack of fire, and was still littered with old canvases, studies, casts, and other gear of the painter who had once used it as his studio.

Bella Morrison came in, but she refused a chair.

'There's no call for me to stay,' she said, sharply. 'You won't like what I came to do—I know that.'

Phoebe looked at her, bewildered.

'I've brought back that picture of me your husband painted,' said the girl, putting down her parcel on the table. 'It's in there.'

'What have you done that for?' said Phoebe, wondering.

'Because I loathe it—and all my friends loathe it, too. Papa—'

'Oh! do tell me—how is Mrs. Morrison?' cried Phoebe, stepping forward, her whole aspect quivering with painful pity.

'She's all right,' said Bella, looking away. 'We're going to live in Guernsey. We're selling this house. It's hers, of course. Papa settled it on her, years before—'

She stopped—then drew herself together.

'So, you see, I got that picture out of mother. I've never forgiven Mr. Fenwick for taking it home, saying he'd improve it, and then sending it back as bad as ever. I knew he'd done that to spite me—he'd disliked me from the first.'

'John never painted a portrait to spite anybody in his life,' cried Phoebe. 'I never heard such nonsense.'

'Well, anyway, he can take it back,' said the girl. 'Mother wouldn't let me destroy it, but she said I might give it back; so there it is. We kept the frame—that's decent—that might do for something else.'

Phoebe's eyes flashed.

'Thank you, Miss Morrison. It would, indeed, be a great pity to waste my husband's work on some one who couldn't appreciate it.' She took the roll and stood with her hand upon it, protecting it. 'I'll tell him what you've done.'

'Oh, then, you do know where he is!' said Bella, with a laugh.

'What do you mean?'

'What I say.' The eyes of the two women met across the table. A flash of cruelty showed itself in those of the girl. 'I thought, perhaps, you mightn't—as he's been passing in London for an unmarried man.'

There was a pause—a moment's dead silence.

'That, of course, is a lie!' said Phoebe at last, drawing in her breath—and then, restraining herself, 'or else a silly mistake.'

'It's no mistake at all,' said Bella, with a toss of the head. 'I thought you ought to know, and mother agreed with me. The men are all alike. There's a letter I got the other day from a friend of mine.'

She drew a letter from a stringbag on her wrist, and handed it to Phoebe.

Phoebe made no motion to take it. She stood rigid, her fierce, still look fixed on her visitor.

'You'd better,' said Bella; 'I declare you'd better. If my husband had been behaving like this, I should want to know the truth—and pay him out.'

Phoebe took the letter, opened it with steady fingers, and read it. While she was reading it the baby Carrie, escaped from the little servant's tutelage, ran in and hid her face in her mother's skirts, peering sometimes at the stranger.

When she had finished the letter, Phoebe handed it back to its owner.

'Who wrote that?'

'A friend of mine who's working at South Kensington. You can see—she knows a lot about artists.'

'And what she doesn't know she makes up,' said Phoebe, with slow contempt. 'You tell her, Miss Morrison, from me, she might be better employed than writing nasty, lying gossip about people she never saw.'

She caught up her child, who flung her arms round her mother's neck, nestling on her shoulder.

'Oh, well, if you're going to take it like that—' said the other, with a laugh.

'I am taking it like that, you see,' said Phoebe, walking to the door and throwing it wide. 'You'd better go, Miss Morrison. I am sure I can't imagine why you came. I should have thought you'd have had sorrow enough of your own, without trying to make it for other people.'

The other winced.

'Well, of course, if you don't want to know the truth, you needn't.'

Phoebe laughed.

'It isn't truth,' she said. 'But if it was—Did you want to know the truth about your father?' Her white face, encircled by the child's arms, quivered as she spoke.

'Don't you abuse my father,' cried Bella, furiously.

Phoebe's eyes wavered and fell.

'I wasn't going to abuse him,' she said, in a choked voice. 'I was sorry for him—and for your mother. But you've got a hard, wicked heart—and I hope I'll never see you again, Miss Morrison. I'll thank you, please, to leave my house.'

The other drew down her veil with an affected smile and shrug. 'Good-bye, Mrs. Fenwick. Perhaps you'll find out before long that my friend wasn't such a fool to write that letter—and I wasn't such a beast to tell you—as you think now. Good-bye!'

Phoebe said nothing. The girl passed her insolently, and left the house.

Phoebe put the child to bed, sat without touching a morsel while Daisy supped, and then shut herself into the parlour, saying that she was going to sit up over her work, to which only a few last touches were wanting. It had been her intention to go with the carrier to Windermere the following day in order to hand it over to the shop that had got her the commission, and ask for payment.

But as soon as she was alone in the room, with her lamp and her work, she swept its silken, many-coloured mass aside, found a sheet of paper, and began to write.

She was trying to write down, as nearly as she could remember, the words of the letter which Bella had shown her.

'Didn't you tell me about a man called John Fenwick, who painted your portrait?—a beastly thing you couldn't abide? Well, they say he's going to be awfully famous soon, and make a pile of money. I don't know him, but I have a friend who knows one of the two men who used to lodge in the same house with him—I believe they've just moved to Chelsea. He says that Mr. Fenwick will have two ripping pictures in the Academy, and is sure to get his name up. And, besides that, there is some lord or other who's wild about him—and means to buy everything he can paint. But I thought you said your man was married?—do you remember I chaffed you about him when he began, and you said, "No fear—he is married to a school-teacher," or something of that sort? Well, I asked about the wife, and my friend says, "Nonsense! he isn't married—nothing of the sort—or, at any rate, if he is, he makes everybody believe he isn't—and there must be something wrong somewhere." By the way, one of the pictures he's sending in is a wonderful portrait. An awfully beautiful woman—with a white velvet dress, my dear—and they say the painting of the dress is marvellous. She's the daughter of the Lord Somebody who's taken him up. They've introduced him to all sorts of smart people, and, as I said before, he's going to have a tremendous success. Some people have luck, haven't they?'

She reproduced it as accurately as she could, read it through again, and then pushed it aside. With set lips she resumed her work, and by midnight she had put in the last stitch and fastened the last thread. That she should do so was essential to the plan she had in her mind. For she had already determined what to do. Within forty-eight hours she would be in London. If he had really disowned and betrayed her—or if he had merely grown tired of her and wished to be quit of her—in either case she would soon discover what it behoved her to know.

When at last, in the utter silence of midnight, she took up her candle to go to bed, its light fell, as she moved towards the door, on the portrait of himself that Fenwick had left with her at Christmas. She looked at it long, dry-eyed. It was as though it began already to be the face of a stranger.



CHAPTER VII

Eugenie, are you there?'

'Yes, papa.'

Lord Findon, peering short-sightedly into the big drawing-room, obstructed by much furniture and darkened by many pictures, had not at first perceived the slender form of his daughter. The April day was receding, and Eugenie de Pastourelles was sitting very still, her hands lightly clasped upon a letter which lay outspread upon her lap. These moments of pensive abstraction were characteristic of her. Her life was turned within; she lived more truly in thought than in speech or action.

Lord Findon came in gaily. 'I say, Eugenie, that fellow's made a hit.'

'What fellow, papa?'

'Why, Fenwick, of course. Give me a cup of tea, there's a dear. I've just seen Welby, who's been hob-nobbing with somebody on the Hanging Committee. Both pictures accepted, and the portrait will be on the line in the big room—the other very well hung, too, in one of the later rooms. Lucky dog! Millais came up and spoke to me about him—said he heard we had discovered him. Of course, there's lots of criticism. Drawing and design, modern and realistic—the whole painting method, traditional and old-fashioned, except for some wonderful touches of pre-Raphaelitism—that's what most people say. Of course, the new men think it'll end in manner and convention; and the old men don't quite know what to say. Well, it don't much matter. If he's genius, he'll do as he likes—and if he hasn't—'

Lord Findon shrugged his shoulders, and then, throwing back his head against the back of his capacious chair, proceeded to 'sip' his tea, held in both hands, according to an approved digestive method—ten seconds to a sip—he had lately adopted. He collected new doctors with the same zeal that he spent in pushing new artists.

Eugenie put out a hand and patted his shoulder tenderly. She and her father were the best of comrades, and they showed it most plainly in Lady Findon's absence. That lady was again on her travels, occupied in placing her younger daughter for a time in a French family, with a view to 'finishing.' Eugenie or Lord Findon wrote to her every day; they discussed her letters when they arrived with all proper egards; and, for the rest, enjoyed their tete-a-tete, and never dreamed of missing her. Tete-a-tete, indeed, it scarcely was; for there was still another daughter in the house, whom Madame de Pastourelles—her much older half-sister—mothered with great assiduity in Lady Findon's absence; and the elder son also, who was still unmarried, lived mainly at home. Nevertheless, it was recognised that 'papa' and Eugenie had special claims upon each other, and as the household adored them both, they were never interfered with.

On this occasion Eugenie was bent on business as well as affection. She withdrew her hand from her father's shoulder in order to raise a monitory finger.

'Genius or no, papa, it's time you paid him his money.'

'How you go on, Eugenie!' said Lord Findon, crossing his knees luxuriously, as the tea filtered down. 'Pray, what money do I owe him?'

'Well, of course, if you wait till he's made a hit, prices will go up,' said Eugenie, calmly. 'I advise you to agree with him quickly, while you are in the way with him.'

'I never asked him to paint you,' said Lord Findon, hastily, swallowing a sip of tea under the regulation time, and frowning at the misdeed.

'Oh, shuffling papa! Come—how much?—two hundred?'

'Upon my word! A painter shouldn't propose to paint a picture, my dear, and then expect to get paid for it as if he'd been commissioned. The girls might as well propose matrimony to the men.'

'Nobody need accept,' said Eugenie, slyly, replenishing his cup. 'I consider, papa, that you have bolted that cup.'

'Then for goodness' sake, don't give me any more!' cried Lord Findon. 'It's no joke, Eugenie, this sipping business—Where were we? Oh, well, of course I knew we should have to take it—and I don't say I'm not pleased with it. But two hundred!'

'Not a penny less,' said Eugenie—'and the apotheosis of my frock alone is worth the money. Two hundred for that—and two-fifty for the other?'

'Welby told me that actually was the price he had put on it! The young man won't starve, my dear, for want of knowing his own value.'

'I shouldn't wonder if he had been rather near starving,' said Eugenie, gravely.

'Nothing of the kind, Eugenie,' said her father, testily. 'You think everybody as sensitive as yourself. I assure you, young men are tough, and can stand a bit of hardship.'

'They seem to require butcher's meat, all the same,' said Eugenie. 'Do you know, papa, that I have been extremely uncomfortable about our behaviour to Mr. Fenwick?'

'I entirely fail to see why,' said Lord Findon, absently. He was holding his watch in his hand, and calculating seconds.

'We have let him paint my portrait without ever saying a word of money—and you have always behaved as though you meant to buy the "Genius Loci."'

'Well, so I do mean to buy it,' said Lord Findon, closing his watch with a sigh of satisfaction.

'You should have told him so, papa, and advanced him some money.'

'It is an excellent thing, my dear Eugenie, for a young man to be kept on tenterhooks. Otherwise they soon get above themselves.'

'You have driven him into debt, papa.'

'What on earth do you mean?'

'I have been questioning Mr. Cuningham. He doesn't know, but he thinks Mr. Watson has been lending him money.'

'Artists are always so good to one another,' said Lord Findon, complacently. 'Nice fellow, Watson—but quite mad.'

'Papa, you are incorrigible. I tell you he has been in great straits. He has not been able to buy a winter overcoat, and Mr. Cuningham suspects he has often not had enough to eat. He does illustration-work the greater part of the night—et cetera.'

'The way you pile on the agony, my dear!' said Lord Findon, rising. 'What I see you want is that I should write the check, and then go with you to call on the young man?'

'Precisely!' said Eugenie, nodding.

Lord Findon looked at her.

'And that you suppose is your own idea?'

Eugenie waited—interrogatively.

'Do you know why I have never said a word to the young man about money?'

'Because you forgot it,' said Eugenie, smiling.

'Not in the least,' said Lord Findon, flushing like a school-boy found out; 'I wanted my little sensation at the end.'

'My very epicurean papa!' said Eugenie, caressing him. 'I see! Young man in a garret—starving—au desespoir. Enter Providence, alias my papa—with fame in one hand and gold in the other. Ah, que tu es comedien, mon pere. A la bonne heure!—I now order the carriage!'

She moved toward the bell, but paused suddenly:—

'I forgot—Arthur was to come before six.'

A slight silence fell between the father and daughter.

Lord Findon cleared his throat, took up the evening paper and laid it down again.

'Eugenie!'

'Yes, papa.'

Lord Findon went up to her and took her hand. She stood with downcast eyes, the other hand playing with the folds of her dress. Her father's face was discomposed.

'Eugenie!' he broke out. 'I don't think he ought to come so much. Forgive me, dear!'

'You only think what I have thought for a long time,' she said, in a low voice, without raising her eyes. 'But to-day I sent for him.'

'Because?'—Lord Findon's face expressed a quick and tender anxiety.

'I want to persuade him—to marry Elsie Bligh.'

Lord Findon made a hurried exclamation, drew her to him, kissed her on the brow, and then, releasing her, turned away.

'I might have known—what you would do,' he said, in a muffled voice.

'I ought to have done it long ago,' she said, passionately; then, immediately curbing herself, she turned deliberately to a vase of roses that stood near and began to rearrange them, picking out a few faded blooms and throwing them on the wood-fire.

Lord Findon watched her, the delicate, drooping figure in its grey dress, the thin hand among the roses.

'Eugenie!—tell me one thing!—you are in the same mind as ever about the divorce?'

She made a sign of assent.

'Just the same. I am Albert's wife—unless he himself asks me to release him—and then the release would only be—for him.'

'You are too hard on yourself, Eugenie!' cried Lord Findon. 'I vow you are! You set an impossible standard.'

'I am his wife'—she repeated, gently—'while he lives. And if he sent for me—at any hour of the day or night—I would go.'

Lord Findon gave an angry sigh.

'You can't wonder, Eugenie,' he said, impetuously, 'that I often wish his death.'

A shudder ran through her.

'Don't, papa! Never, never wish that. He loves life so.'

'Yes!—now that he has ruined yours.'

'He didn't mean to,' she said, almost inaudibly. 'You know what I think.'

Lord Findon restrained himself. In his eyes there was no excuse whatever for his scoundrel of a son-in-law, who after six years of marriage had left his wife for an actress, and was now living with another woman of his own class, a Comtesse S., ten years older than himself. He knew that Eugenie believed her husband to be insane; as for him, he had never admitted anything of the kind. But if it comforted her to believe it, let her, for Heaven's sake, believe it—poor child!

So he said nothing—as he paced up and down—and Eugenie finished the rearrangement of the roses. Then she turned to him, smiling.

'You didn't know I saw Elsie yesterday?'

'Did she confide in you?'

'Oh, that—long ago! The poor child's dreadfully in love.'

'Then it's a great responsibility,' said Lord Findon, gravely. 'How is he going to satisfy her?'

'Only too easily. She would marry him blindly—on any terms.'

There was a short silence. Then Eugenie gathered up the letter she had been reading when her father entered.

'Let's talk of something else, papa! Do you know that I've had a very interesting letter from Mr. Fenwick this afternoon?'

Lord Findon stared.

'Fenwick? What on earth does he write to you about?'

'Oh! this is not the first time by a long way!' said Eugenie, smiling. 'He began it in March, when he thought he had offended me—by being rude to Arthur.'

'So he was—abominably rude. But what can one expect? He hasn't had the bringing-up of a gentleman—and there you are. That kind of thing will out.'

'I wonder whether it matters—to a genius?' said Eugenie, musing.

'It matters to everybody!' cried Lord Findon. 'Gentlefolk, my dear, say what you will, are the result of a long natural selection—and you can't make 'em in a hurry.'

'And what about genius? You will admit, papa, that a good many gentlefolk in the world go to one genius!'

The light was still good enough to show Lord Findon that, in spite of her flicker of gaiety, Eugenie was singularly pale. And he knew well that they were both listening for the same step on the stairs. However, he tried to keep it up.

'Genius?' he said, humming and hawing—'genius? How do we know what it is—or who has it? Everybody's so diabolically clever nowadays. Take my advice, Eugenie—I know you want to play Providence to that young fellow—you think you'll civilise him, and that kind of thing; but I warn you—he hasn't got breeding enough to stand it.'

Eugenie drew a long breath.

'Well, don't scold me, papa—if I try—I must'—her voice escaped her, and she began again, firmly—'I must have something to fill up.'

'Fill up what?'

She looked round to make sure that the servants had finished clearing away the tea, and that they were alone.

'The days—and the hours,' she said, softly. 'One must have something to think of.'

Lord Findon frowned.

'He will fall in love with you, Eugenie—and then where shall we be?'

He heard a laugh—very sweet—very feminine, yet, to his ear, very forlorn.

'I'll take care of that. We'll find him a wife, too, papa—when he "arrives." We shall be in practice—you and I.'

Lord Findon sprang up.

'Here he is!' he said, with very evident agitation.

The pronoun clearly had no reference to Fenwick. Eugenie sat motionless, looking into the fire, her hands on her knee. Lord Findon listened a moment.

'I'm going to my room. Eugenie!—if I could be the slightest use—'

'Dear papa!' she looked up, smiling. 'It's very simple.'

With a muttered exclamation, Lord Findon walked to the further end of the drawing-room, and vanished through an inner door.

The footman announced 'Mr. Welby.'

As soon as the door was shut, Eugenie rose.

Welby hurriedly approached her. 'You say in your note that you have something important to tell me?'

She made a sign of assent, and as he grasped her hand, she allowed herself a moment's pause. Her eyes rested—just perceptibly—on the face of the man whose long devotion to her, expressed through every phase of delicate and passionate service, had brought them both at last to that point where feeling knows itself—where illusions die away—and the deep foundations of our life appear.

Welby's dark face quivered. In the touch of his friend's hand, in the look of her eyes there was that which told him that she had bidden him to no common meeting. The air between them was in an instant alive with memories. Days of first youth; youth's high impressions of great and lovely things; all the innocent, stingless joys of art and travel, of happy talk and ripening faculty, of pure ambitions, hero-worships, compassions, shared and mutually enkindled: these were for ever intertwined with their thoughts of each other.

But much more than these!

For him, the unspoken agony of loss suffered when she married; for her, the memories of her marriage, of the dreary languor into which its wreck had plunged her, and of the gradual revival in her of the old intellectual pleasures, the old joys of the spirit, under the influence of Arthur's life and Arthur's companionship. How simply he had offered all that his art, his tact, his genius had to give!—and how pitifully, how hungrily she had leaned upon it! It had seemed so natural. Her own mind was clear, her own pulses calm; their friendship had appeared a thing apart, and she was able to feel, with sincerity and dignity, that if she received much, she also gave much—the hours of relief and pleasure which ease the labour, the inevitable torment of the artist, all that protecting environment which a woman's sweet and agile wit can build around a man's taxed brain or ruffled nerves. To chat with her, in success or failure; to be sure of her welcome, her smile at all times; to ask her sympathy in matters where he had himself trained in her the faculty of response; to rouse in her the gentle, diffident humour which seemed to him a much rarer and more distinguished thing than other women's brilliance; to watch the ways of a personality which appeared to many people a little cold, pale, and over-refined, and was to him supreme distinction; to search for pleasures for her, as a botanist hunts rare flowers; to save her from the most trifling annoyance, if time and brains could do it;—these things, for three years, had made the charm of Welby's life. And Eugenie knew it—knew it with an affectionate gratitude that had for long seemed both to her and to the world the last word of their situation on both sides—a note, a tone, which could always be evoked from it, touch or strike it where you would.

And now?

Through what subtle phases and developments had time led them to this moment of change and consciousness?—representing in her, sharp recoil, an instant girding of the will—and in him a new despair, which was also a new docility, a readiness to content and tranquillise her at any cost. As they stood thus, for these few seconds, amid the shadows of the rich encumbered room, the picture of the weeks and months they had just passed through flashed through both minds—illuminated—thrown into true relation with surrounding and irrevocable fact. Both trembled—she under the admonition of her own higher life—he, because existence beside her could never again be as sweet to him to-morrow as it had been yesterday.

She moved. The trance was broken.

'I do, indeed, want to talk to you,' she said, in her gentlest voice. 'We shan't have very long. Papa wants me in half an hour.'

She motioned to the seat beside her; and their talk began.

* * * * *

Lord Findon sat alone in his study on the ground-floor, balancing a paper-knife on one finger, fidgeting with a newspaper of which he never read a word, and otherwise beguiling the time until the sound of Welby's step on the stairs should tell him that the interview upstairs was over.

His mind was full of disagreeable thoughts. Eugenie was dearer to him than any other human being, and Welby—his ward, the orphan child of one of his oldest friends—had been from his boyhood almost a son of the house. Eight years before, what more natural than that these two should marry? Welby had been then deeply in love; Eugenie in her first maiden bloom had been difficult to read, but a word from the father she adored would probably have been enough to incline her towards her lover, to transform and fire a friendship which was already more romantic than she knew. But Lord Findon could not make up his mind to it. Arthur was a dear fellow; but from the worldly point of view it was not good enough. Eugenie was born for a large sphere; it was her father's duty to find it for her if he could.

Hence the French betrothal—the crowning point of a summer visit to a French chateau where Eugenie had been the spoiled child of a party containing some of the greatest names in France. It flattered both Lord Findon's vanity and imagination to find himself brought into connexion with historic families all the more attractive because of that dignified alienation from affairs, imposed on them by their common hatred of the Second Empire. Eugenie, too, had felt the romance of the milieu; had invested her French suitor with all that her own poetic youth could bring to his glorification; had gone to him a timid, willing, and most innocent bride.

Ah, well! it did not do to think of the sequel. Perhaps the man was mad, as Eugenie insisted; perhaps much was due to some obscure brain effects of exposure and hardship during the siege of Paris—for the war had followed close on their honeymoon. But, madness or wickedness, it was all the same; Eugenie's life was ruined, and her father could neither mend it nor avenge it.

For owing to some—in his eyes—quixotic tenderness of conscience on Eugenie's part, she would not sue for her divorce. She believed that Albert was not responsible—that he might return to her. And that passionate spiritual life of hers, the ideas of which Lord Findon only half understood, forbade her, it seemed, any step which would finally bar the way of that return; unless Albert should himself ask her to take it. But the Comte had never made a sign. Lord Findon could only suppose that he found himself as free as he wished to be, that the ladies he consorted with were equally devoid of scruples, and that he, therefore, very naturally, preferred to avoid publicity.

So here was Eugenie, husbandless and childless at eight-and-twenty—for the only child of the marriage had died within a year of its birth; the heroine of an odious story which, if it had never reached the law courts, was none the less perfectly well known in society; and, in the eyes of those who loved her, one of the bravest, saddest, noblest of women. Of course Welby had shared in the immense effort of the family to comfort and console her. They had been so eager to accept his help; he had given it with such tact and self-effacement; and now, meanly, they must help Eugenie to dismiss him! For it was becoming too big a thing, this devotion of his, both in Eugenie's life and also in the eyes of the world. Lord Findon must needs suppose—he did not choose to know—that people were talking; and if Eugenie would not free herself from her wretched Albert, she must not provide him—poor child!—with any plausible excuse.

All of which reasoning was strictly according to the canons as Lord Findon understood them; but it did not leave him much the happier. He was a sensitive, affectionate man, with great natural cleverness, and much natural virtue—wholly unleavened by either thought or discipline. He did the ordinary things from the ordinary motives; but he suffered when the ordinary things turned out ill, more than another man would have done. It would certainly have been better, he ruefully admitted, if he had not meddled so much with Eugenie's youth. And presently he supposed he should have to forgive Charlie!—(Charlie was the son who had married his nurse)—if only to prove to himself that he was not really the unfeeling or snobbish father of the story-books.

Ah! there was the upstairs door! Should he show himself, and make Arthur understand that he was their dear friend all the same, and always would be?—it was only a question of a little drawing-in.

But his courage failed him. He heard the well-known step come downstairs and cross the hall. The front door closed, and Lord Findon was still balancing the paper-knife.

Would he really marry that nice child Elsie? Elsie Bligh was a cousin of the Findons; a fair-haired, slender slip of a thing, the daughter of a retired Indian general. The Findons had given a ball the year before for her coming-out, and she had danced through the season, haloed, Euphrosyne-like, by a charm of youth and laughter—till she met Arthur Welby. Since then Euphrosyne had grown a little white and piteous, and there had been whisperings and shakings of the head amongst the grown-ups who were fond of her.

Well, well; he supposed Eugenie would give him some notion of the way things had gone. As to her—his charming, sweet-natured Eugenie!—it comforted him to remember the touch of resolute and generally cheerful stoicism in her character. If a hard thing had to be done, she would not only do it without flinching, but without avenging it on the bystanders afterwards. A quality rare in women!

* * * * *

'Papa!—is the carriage there?'

It was her voice calling. Lord Findon noticed with relief its even, silvery note. The carriage was waiting, and in a few minutes she was seated beside him, and they were making their way eastwards through the sunset streets.

'Dear?' he said, with timid interrogation, laying his hand momentarily on hers.

Eugenie was looking out of window with her face turned away.

'He was very—kind,' she said, rather deliberately. 'Don't let us talk about it, papa—but wait—and see!'

Lord Findon understood that she referred to Elsie Bligh—that she had sown her seed, and must now let it germinate.

But herself—what had it cost her? And he knew well that he should never ask the question; and that, if he did, she would never answer it.

By the time they were threading the slums of Seven Dials, she was talking rather fast and flowingly of Fenwick.

'You have brought the cheque, papa?'

'I have my cheque-book.'

'And you are quite certain about the pictures?'

'Quite.'

'It will be nice to make him happy,' she said, softly. 'His letters have been pretty doleful.'

'What has he found to write about?' exclaimed Lord Findon, wondering.

'Himself, mostly!' she laughed. 'He likes rhetoric—and he seems to have found out that I do too. As I told you, he began with an apology—and since then he writes about books and art—and—and the evils of aristocracy.'

'Bless my soul, what the deuce does he know about it! And you answer him?'

'Yes. You see he writes extremely well—and it amuses me.'

Privately, he thought that if she encouraged him beyond a very moderate point, Fenwick would soon become troublesome. But whenever she pleaded that anything 'amused' her, he could never find a word to say.

Every now and then he watched her, furtively trying to pierce that grey veil in which she had wrapt herself. To-morrow morning, he supposed, he should hear her step on the stairs, towards eight o'clock—should hear it passing his door in going, and an hour later in coming back—and should know that she had been to a little Ritualist church close by, where what Lady Findon called 'fooleries' went on, in the shape of 'daily celebrations' and 'vestments' and 'reservation.' How lightly she stepped; what a hidden act it was; never spoken of, except once, between him and her! It puzzled him often; for he knew very well that Eugenie was no follower of things received. She had been a friend of Renan and of Taine in her French days; and he, who was a Gallic with a leaning to the Anglican Church, had sometimes guessed with discomfort that Eugenie was in truth what his Low Church wife called a 'free-thinker.' She never spoke of her opinions, directly, even to him. But the books she ordered from Paris, or Germany, and every now and then the things she let fall about them, were enough for any shrewd observer. It was here too, perhaps, that she and Arthur were in closest sympathy; and every one knew that Arthur, poor old boy, was an agnostic.

And yet this daily pilgrimage—and that light and sweetness it breathed into her aspect!—

So one day he had asked her abruptly why she liked the little church so much, and its sacramental 'goings-on.'

'One wouldn't expect it, you know, darling—from the things you read.'

Eugenie had coloured faintly.

'Wouldn't you, papa? It seems to me so simple. It's an Action—not words—and an action means anything you like to put into it—one thing to me—another to you. Some day we shall all be tired, shan't we?—of creeds, and sermons, but never of "This do, in remembrance of Me!'"

And she had put up her hand to caress his, with such a timid sweetness of lip, and such a shining of the eye, that he had been silenced, feeling himself indeed in the presence of something he was not particularly well fitted to explore.

Well, if she was inconsequent, she was dear!—and if her mystical fancies comforted and sustained her, nobody should ever annoy or check her in the pursuit of them. He put a very summary stop to his wife's 'Protestant nonsense,' whenever it threatened to worry Eugenie; though on other occasions it amused him.

* * * * *

The landlady in Bernard Street greeted them with particular effusion. If they had only known, they represented to her—cautious yet not unkindly soul!—the main security for those very long arrears of rent she had allowed her lodger to run up. Were they now come—at this unusual hour—to settle up with Mr. Fenwick? If so, her own settling up—sweet prospect!—might be in sight. Cuningham and Watson had recently left her, and taken a joint studio in Chelsea. Their rooms, moreover, were still unlet. Her anxieties therefore were many, and it was with lively expectation that she watched the 'swells' grope their way upstairs to Mr. Fenwick's room. She always knew it must come right some day, with people like that about.

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 embarrassment.

'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 noble 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 massing 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 gratitude—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 sex, 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 circumstances,—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 thorny 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 attitude 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 multitude 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 passion 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.

Five hundred pounds! Well, it was only what his work was worth—what he had every right to expect. None the less, the actual possession of the money seemed to change his whole being. What would his old father say? He gave a laugh, half-scornful, half-good-humoured, as he admitted to himself that not even now—probably—would the old man relent.

And Phoebe!—he imagined the happy wonder in her eyes—the rolling away of all clouds between them. For six weeks now he had been a veritable brute about letters! First, the strain of his work (and the final wrestle with the 'Genius Loci,' including the misfortune of the paints, had really been a terrible affair!)—then—he confessed it—the intellectual excitement of the correspondence with Madame de Pastourelles: between these two obsessions, or emotions, poor Phoebe had fared ill.

'But you'll forgive me now, old girl—won't you?' he said, kissing her photograph in an effusion that brought the moisture to his eyes. Then he replaced it, with the sketches, in the drawer, forgetting in his excitement the letters which lay scattered on the table.

What should he do now? Impossible to settle down to any work! The North post had gone, but he might telegraph to Phoebe and write later. Meanwhile he would go over to Chelsea, and see Cuningham and Watson—repay Watson his debt!—or promise it at least for the morrow, when he should have had time to cash the cheque—perhaps even—pompous thought!—to open a banking account.

Suddenly a remembrance of Morrison crossed his mind and he stood a moment with bent head—sobered—as though a ghost passed through the room. Must he send a hundred pounds to Mrs. Morrison? He envisaged it, unwillingly. Already his treasure seemed to be melting away. Time enough, surely, for that. He and Phoebe had so much to do—to get a house and furnish it, to pay pressing bills, to provide models for the new picture! Why, it would be all gone directly!

He locked up the cheque safely, took his hat, and was just running out when his eye fell on the three-hours' sketch of Madame de Pastourelles, which had been the foundation of the portrait. He had recently framed it, but had not yet found a place for it. It stood on the floor, against the wall. He took it up, looked at it with delight—by Jove! it was a brilliant thing!—and placing it on a small easel, he arranged two lamps with moveable shades, which he often used for drawing in the evening, so as to show it off. There was in him more than a touch of theatricality, and as he stood back from this little arrangement to study its effect, he was charmed with his own fancy. There she queened it, in the centre of the room—his patron saint, and Phoebe's. He knew well what he owed her—and Phoebe should soon know. He was in a hurry to be off; but he could not make up his mind—superstitiously—to put out the lights. So, after lingering a few moments before her, in this tremor of imagination and of pleasure, he left her thus, radiant and haloed!—the patron saint in charge.

On his way out he found an anxious landlady upon his path. Mrs. Gibbs was soon made happy, so far as promises could do it, and in another minute he was in a hansom speeding westward. It was nearly seven o'clock on a mild April evening. The streets were full, the shops still open. As he passed along Oxford Street, monarch it seemed of all he beheld, his eyes fell on Peter Robinson's windows, glittering with lights, and gay with spring ribbons, laces, and bright silks. An idea rushed into his mind. Only the week before, on his first visit to the new Chelsea quarters whither Cuningham and Watson had betaken themselves, he had stumbled upon an odd little scene in the still bare, ungarnished studio. Cuningham, who had been making money with some rapidity of late, was displaying before the half-sympathetic, half-sarcastic eyes of Watson, some presents that he was just sending off to his mother and sisters in Scotland. A white dress, a lace shawl, some handkerchiefs, a sash, a fan—there they lay, ranged on brown paper on the studio floor. Cuningham was immensely proud of them, and had been quite ready to show them to Fenwick also, fingering their fresh folds, enlarging on their beauties. And Fenwick had thought sorely of Phoebe as he watched Cuningham turn the pretty things over. When had he ever been able to give her any feminine gauds? Always this damned poverty, pressing them down!

But now—by Jove!—

He made the hansom stop, rushed into Peter Robinson's, bought a dress-length of pink-and-white cotton, a blue sash for Carrie, and a fichu of Indian muslin and lace. Thrusting his hand into his pocket for money, he found only a sovereign—pretty nearly his last!—and some silver. 'That's on account,' he said loftily, giving the sovereign to the shopman; 'send the things home to-morrow afternoon—to-morrow afternoon, mind—and I'll pay for them on delivery.'

Then he jumped into his hansom again, and for sheer excitement told the man to hurry, and he should have an extra shilling. On they sped down Park Lane. The beds of many-coloured hyacinths in the Park shone through the cheerful dusk; the street was crowded, and beyond, the railings, the seats under the trees were full of idlers. There was a sparkle of flowers in the windows of the Park Lane houses, together with golden sunset touches on the glass; and pretty faces wrapt in lace or gauze looked out from the hansoms as they passed him by. Again the London of the rich laid hold on him; not threateningly this time, but rather as though a door were opened and a hand beckoned. His own upward progress had begun; he was no longer jealous of the people who stood higher.

Dorchester House, Dudley House;—he looked at them with a good-humoured tolerance. After all, London was pleasant; there was some recognition of merit; and even something to be said for Academies.

Then his picture began to hover before him. It was a big thing; suppose it took him years? Well, there would be portraits to keep him alive. Meanwhile it was true enough what he had said to Madame de Pastourelles. As a painter he had never been properly trained. His values were uncertain; and he had none of the sureness of method which men with half his talent had got out of study under a man like, say, Carolus Duran.

Supposing now, he went to Paris for a year? No, no!—too many of the Englishmen who went to Paris lost their individuality and became third-rate Frenchmen. He would puzzle out things for himself—stick to his own programme and ideas.

English poetic feeling, combined with as much of French technique as it could assimilate—there was the line of progress. Not the technique of these clever madmen—Manet, Degas, Monet, and the rest—with the mean view of life of some, and the hideous surface of others. No!—but the Barbizon men—and Mother Nature, first and foremost! Beauty too, beauty of idea and selection—not mere beauty of paint, to which everything else—line, modelling, construction—was to be vilely sacrificed.

In his exaltation he began an imaginary article denouncing the Impressionists, spouting it aloud as he went along; so that the passers-by caught a word or two, through the traffic, now and then, and turned to look, astonished, at the handsome, gesticulating fellow in the hansom. Till he stopped abruptly, first to laugh at himself, and then to chuckle over the thought of Phoebe, and the presents he had just bought.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, at the very moment, probably, that Fenwick was in Peter Robinson's shop, an omnibus coming from Euston passed through Russell Square, and a woman, volubly advised by the conductor, alighted from it at the corner of Bernard Street. She was very tall and slender; her dress was dusty and travel-stained, and as she left the omnibus she drew down a thickly spotted veil over a weary face. She walked quickly down Bernard Street, looking at the numbers, and stopped before the door of Fenwick's lodgings.

The door was opened by Mrs. Gibbs, the landlady.

'Is Mr. Fenwick at home?'

'No; he's just this minute gone out. Did you want to see him, Miss?'

The young woman hung back a moment in hesitation. Then she advanced into the hall.

'I've got a parcel for him'—she showed it under her arm. 'If you'll allow me, I'll go up, and leave it in his room. It's important.'

'And what name, Miss—if I may ask?'

The visitor hesitated again—then she said, quietly:

'I am Mrs. Fenwick—Mr. Fenwick's wife.'

'His wife!' cried the other, startled. 'Oh no; there is some mistake—he hasn't got no wife!'

Phoebe drew herself up fiercely.

'You mustn't say such things to me, please! I am Mr. Fenwick's wife—and you must please show me his rooms.'

The emphasis and the passion with which these words were said left Mrs. Gibbs gaping. She was a worthy woman, for whom the world—so far as it could be studied from a Bernard Street lodging-house—had few surprises; and a number of alternative conjectures ran through her mind as she studied Phoebe's appearance.

'I'm sure, ma'am, I meant no offence,' she said, hurriedly; 'but, you see, Mr. Fenwick has never—as you might say—'

'No,' said Phoebe, proudly, interrupting her; 'there was no reason why he should speak of his private affairs. I have been in the country, waiting till he could make a home for me. Now will you show me his room?'

But Mrs. Gibbs did not move. She stood staring at Phoebe, irresolute—thinking, no doubt, of the penny novelettes on which she fed her leisure moments—till Phoebe impatiently drew a letter from her pocket.