'Why does that fellow upstairs always pass you as though he were in
a passion with somebody?' said Richard Watson, stepping back as he
spoke, palette on thumb, from the picture upon which he was engaged.
'He almost knocked me down this morning, and I am not conscious of
having done anything to offend his worship.'
His companion in the dingy Bloomsbury studio, where they were both at
work, also put down palette and brush, examining the canvas before him
with a keen, cheerful air.
'Perhaps he loathes mankind, as I did yesterday.'
'And to-day it's all right?'
'Well, come and look.'
Watson crossed over. He was a tall and splendid man, a 'black Celt'
from Merionethshire, with coal-black hair, and eyes deeply sunken and
lined, with fatigue or ill health. Beside him, his comrade, Philip
Cuningham, had the air of a shrewd clerk or man of business--with his
light alertness of frame, his reddish hair, and sharp, small features.
A pleasant, serviceable ability was stamped on Cuningham's whole
aspect; while Watson's large, lounging way, and dishevelled or
romantic good looks suggested yet another perennial type--the dreamer
entangled in the prose of life.
He looked at the picture which Cuningham turned towards him--his hands
thrust into the vast pockets of his holland coat. It was a piece of
charming _genre_--a crowded scene in Rotten Row, called 'Waiting for
the Queen,' painted with knowledge and grace; owing more to Wilkie
than to Frith, and something to influences more modern than either;
a picture belonging to a familiar English tradition, and worthily
representing it.
'Yes--you've got it!' he said, at last, in a voice rather colourless
and forced. Then he made one or two technical comments, to which
the other listened with something that was partly indulgence, partly
deference; adding, finally, as he moved away, 'And it'll sell, of
course--like hot potatoes!'
'Well, I hope so,' said Philip, beginning to put away his brushes and
tubes with what seemed to be a characteristic orderliness--'or I shall
be in Queer Street. But I think Lord Findon wants it. I shouldn't
wonder if he turned up this afternoon!'
'Ah?' Watson raised his great shoulders with a gesture which might
have been sarcastic, but was perhaps more than anything else languid
and weary. He returned to his own picture, looking at it with a
painful intensity.
'Nobody will ever want to buy that!' he said, quietly.
Cuningham stood beside him, embarrassed.
'It's full of fine things,' he said, after a moment. 'But--'
'You wish I wouldn't paint such damned depressing subjects?'
'I wish you'd sometimes condescend to think of the public, old
fellow!'
'That--_never_!' said the other, under his breath. 'Starve--and please
yourself! But I shan't starve--you forget that.'
'Worse luck!' laughed Cuningham. 'I believe Providence ordained the
British Philistine for our good--drat him! It does no one any harm to
have to hook the public. All the great men have done it. You're too
squeamish, Master Dick!'
Watson went on painting in silence, his lips working. Presently
Cuningham caught--half lost in the beard--'There's a public of to-day,
though--and a public of to-morrow!'
'Oh, all right,' said Philip. 'So long as you take a public of some
sort into consideration! I like your jester.'
He bent forward to look into the front line of the large composition
crowded with life-size figures on which Watson was engaged. It was an
illustration of some Chaucerian lines, describing the face of a man on
his way to execution, seen among a crowd:
'a pale face
Among a press ...'
so stricken that, amid all the thronging multitude, 'men might know
his face that was bestead' from all the rest.
The idea--of helpless pain, in the grip of cruel and triumphant
force--had been realised with a passionate wealth of detail,
comparable to some of the early work of Holman Hunt. The head of the
victim bound with blood-stained linen, a frightened girl hiding her
eyes, a mother weeping, a jester with the laugh withered on his lip by
this sudden vision of death and irremediable woe--and in the distance
a frail, fainting form, sweetheart or sister--each figure and group,
rendered often with very unequal technical merit, had yet in it
something harshly, intolerably true. The picture was too painful to be
borne; but it was neither common nor mean.
Cuningham turned away from it with a shudder.
'Some of it's magnificent, Dick--but I couldn't live with it if you
paid me!'
'Because you look at it wrongly,' said Watson, gruffly. 'You take it
as an anecdote. It isn't an anecdote--it's a symbol.'
'What?--The World?--and The Victim?--from all time?--and to all time?
Well, that makes it more gruesome than ever. Hullo, who's that? Come
in!'
The door opened. A young man, in some embarrassment, appeared on the
threshold.
'I believe these letters are yours,' he said, offering a couple to
Cuningham. 'They brought them up to me by mistake.'
Philip Cuningham took them with thanks, then scanned the newcomer as
he was turning to depart.
'I think I saw you at Berners Street the other night?'
John Fenwick paused.
'Yes--' he said, awkwardly.
'Have you been attending all the summer?'
'Pretty well. There were about half a dozen fellows left in August. We
clubbed together to keep the model going.'
'I don't remember you in the Academy.'
'No. I come from the North. I've painted a lot already--I couldn't be
bothered with the Academy!'
Watson turned and looked at the figure in the doorway.
'Won't you come in and sit down?'
The young man hesitated. Then something in his look kindled as it fell
on Watson's superb head, with its strong, tossed locks of ebon-black
hair touched with grey, the penthouse brows, and the blue eyes beneath
with their tragic force of expression.
Fenwick came in and shut the door. Cuningham pushed him a chair, and
Watson offered him a cigarette, which he somewhat doubtfully accepted.
His two hosts--men of the educated middle-class--divined at once
that he was self-taught, and risen from the ranks. Both Cuningham and
Watson were shabbily dressed; but it was an artistic and metropolitan
shabbiness. Fenwick's country clothes were clumsy and unbecoming; and
his manner seemed to fit him as awkwardly as his coat. The sympathy of
both the older artists did but go out to him the more readily.
Cuningham continued the conversation, while Watson, still painting,
occasionally intervened.
They discussed the _personnel_ of the life-school Fenwick was
attending, the opening of a new _atelier_ in North London by a
well-known Academician, the successes at the current 'Academy,' the
fame of certain leading artists. At least Cuningham talked; Fenwick's
contributions were mostly monosyllabic; he seemed to be feeling his
way.
Suddenly, by a change of attitude on the painter's part, the picture
on which Dick Watson was engaged became visible to Fenwick. He walked
eagerly up to it.
'I say!'--his face flushed with admiration. 'That figure's wonderful.'
He pointed to the terror-stricken culprit. 'But that horse there--you
don't mind, do you?--that horse is wrong!'
'I know he is! I've worked at him till I'm sick. Can't work at him any
more!'
'It should be like this.'
He took out a sketch-book from his pocket, caught up a piece of
charcoal and rapidly sketched the horse in the attitude required. Then
he handed the book to Watson, who looked first at the sketch, and then
at some of the neighbouring pages, which were covered with studies of
horses observed mostly on the day of some trade-union procession, when
mounted police were keeping the road.
Watson was silent a moment, then, walking up to his picture, he took
his palette-knife and scraped out the whole passage. 'I see!' he said,
and, laying down the knife, he threw himself into a chair, flushed and
discomposed.
'Oh, you'll soon put it right!' said Fenwick, encouragingly.
Watson winced--then nodded.
'May I see that book?' He held out his hand, and Fenwick yielded it.
Watson and Cuningham turned it over together. The 'notes,' of which it
was full, showed great brilliancy and facility, an accurate eye, and a
very practised hand. They were the notes of a countryman artist
newly come to London. The sights, and tones, and distances of London
streets--the human beings, the vehicles, the horses--were all freshly
seen, as though under a glamour. Cuningham examined them with care.
'Is this the sort of thing you're going to do?' he said, looking
up, and involuntarily his eye glanced towards his own picture on the
distant easel.
Fenwick smiled.
'That's only for practice. I want to do big things--romantic
things--if I get the chance.'
'What a delightful subject!' said Cuningham, stooping suddenly over
the book.
Fenwick started, made a half-movement as though to reclaim his
property, and then withdrew his hand. Cuningham was looking at a
charcoal study of a cottage interior. The round table of rude black
oak was set for a meal, and a young woman was feeding a child in a
pinafore who sat in a high-chair. The sketch might have been a mere
piece of domestic prettiness; but the handling of it was so strong
and free that it became a significant, typical thing. It breathed
the North, a life rustic and withdrawn--the sweetness of home and
motherhood.
'Are you going to make a picture of that?' said Watson, putting on his
spectacles, and peering into it. 'You'd better.'
Fenwick replied that he might some day, but had too many things on
hand to think of it yet a while. Then with no explanation and a rather
hasty hand he turned the page. Cuningham looked at him curiously.
They were still busy with the sketch-book when a voice was heard on
the stairs outside.
'Lord Findon,' said Cunningham.
He coloured a little, ran to his picture, arranged it in the best
light, and removed a small fly which had stuck to one corner.
'Shall I go?' said Fenwick.
He too had been clearly fluttered by the name, which was that of one
of the best-known buyers of the day.
Watson in reply beckoned him on to the leads, upon which the Georgian
bow-window at the end of the room opened. They found themselves on
a railed terrace looking to right and left on a row of gardens, each
glorified by one of the plane-trees which even still make the charm of
Bloomsbury.
Watson hung over the rail, smoking. He explained that Lord Findon had
come to see Cuningham's picture, which he had commissioned, but not
without leaving himself a loophole, in case he didn't like it.
'He will like it,' said Fenwick. 'It's just the kind of thing people
want.'
Watson said nothing, but smoked with energy. Fenwick went on talking,
letting it be clearly understood that he personally thought the
picture of no account, but that he knew very well that it was of a
kind to catch buyers. In a few minutes Watson resented his attitude
as offensive; he fell into a cold silence; Fenwick's half-concealed
contempt threw him fiercely on his friend's side.
'Well, I've done the trick!' said Cuningham, coming out jauntily, his
hands in his trousers pockets; then, with a jerk of the head towards
the studio, and a lowered voice, 'He's writing the cheque.'
'How much?' said Watson, without turning his head. Fenwick thought it
decent to walk away, but he could not prevent himself from listening.
It seemed to him that he heard the words 'Two hundred and fifty,' but
he could not be sure. What a price!--for such a thing. His own blood
ran warm and quick.
As he stood at the further end of the little terrace ruminating,
Cuningham touched him on the shoulder.
'I say, have you got anything to show upstairs?'
Fenwick turned to see in the sparkling eyes and confident bearing of
the Scotchman, success writ large, expressing itself in an impulse of
generosity.
'Yes--I've got a picture nearly finished.'
'Come and be introduced to Findon. He's a crank--but a good sort--lots
of money--thinks he knows everything about art--they all do--give him
his head when he talks.'
Fenwick nodded, and followed Cuningham back to the studio, where Lord
Findon was now examining Watson's picture with no assistance whatever
from the artist, who seemed to have been struck with dumbness.
Fenwick was introduced to a remarkably tall and handsome man, with the
bearing of a sportsman or a soldier, who greeted him with a cordial
shake of the hand, and a look of scrutiny so human and kindly that the
very sharp curiosity which was in truth the foundation of it passed
without offence. Lord Findon was indeed curious about everything;
interested in everything; and a dabbler in most artistic pursuits.
He liked the society of artists; and he was accustomed to spend some
hundreds, or even thousands, a year out of his enormous income, in the
purchase of modern pictures. Possibly the sense of power over human
lives which these acquisitions gave him pleased him even more than the
acquisitions themselves.
He asked Fenwick a few easy questions, sitting rakishly on the edge of
a tilted chair, his hat slipping back on his handsome, grizzled head.
Where did he come from--with whom had he studied--what were his plans?
Had he ever been abroad? No. Strange! The artists nowadays neglected
travel. 'But you go! Beg your way, paint your way--but go! Go before
the wife and the babies come! Matrimony is the deuce. Don't you agree
with me, Philip?' He laid a familiar hand on the artist's arm.
'Take care!' said Cuningham, laughing. 'You don't know what I may have
been up to this summer.'
Findon shrugged his shoulders. 'I know a wise man when I see him. But
the fools there are about! Well, I take a strong line'--he waved his
hand, with a kind of laughing pomposity, rolling his words--'whenever
I see a young fellow marrying before he has got his training--before
he has seen a foreign gallery--before he can be sure of a year's
income ahead--above all, before he knows anything at all about
_women_, and the different ways in which they can play the devil with
you!--well, I give him up--I don't go to see his pictures--I don't
bother about him any more. The man's an ass--must be an ass!--let him
bray his bray! Why, you remember Perry?--Marindin?'
On which there followed a rattling catalogue of matrimonial failures
in the artist world, amusing enough--perhaps a little cruel. Cuningham
laughed. Watson, on whom Lord Findon's whole personality seemed to
have an effect more irritating than agreeable, fidgeted with his
brushes. He struck in presently with the dry remark that artists were
not the only persons who made imprudent marriages.
Lord Findon sprang up at once, and changed the subject. His youngest
son, the year before, had married the nurse who had pulled him through
typhoid--and was still in exile, and unforgiven.
Meanwhile no one had noticed John Fenwick. He stood behind the other
two while Lord Findon was talking--frowning sometimes and restless--a
movement now and then in lips and body, as though he were about to
speak--yet not speaking. It was one of those moments when a man feels
a band about his tongue, woven by shyness or false shame, or social
timidity. He knows that he ought to speak; but the moment passes and
he has not spoken. And between him and the word unsaid there rises on
the instant a tiny streamlet of division, which is to grow and broaden
with the nights and days, till it flows, a stream of fate, not to be
turned back or crossed; and all the familiar fields of life are ruined
and blotted out.
Finally, as the great patron was going, Cuningham whispered a word in
his ear. Lord Findon turned to Fenwick.
'You're in this house, too? Have you anything you'd let me see?'
Fenwick, flushed and stammering, begged him to walk upstairs.
Cuningham's puzzled impression was that he gave the invitation
reluctantly, but could not make up his mind not to give it.
They marched upstairs, Lord Findon and Cuningham behind.
'Does he ever sell?' said Lord Findon, in Cuningham's ear, nodding
towards the broad shoulders and black head of Watson just in front.
'Not often,' said Cuningham, after a pause.
'How, then, does he afford himself?' said the other, smiling.
'Oh! he has means--just enough to keep him from starving. He's a dear
old fellow! He has too many ideas for this wicked world.'
Cuningham spoke with a pleasant loyalty. Lord Findon shrugged his
shoulders.
'The ideas are too lugubrious! And this young fellow--this
Fenwick--where did you pick him up?'
Cuningham explained.
'A character!--perhaps a genius?' said Findon. 'He has a clever,
quarrelsome eye. Unmarried? Good Lord, I hope so, after the way I've
been going on.'
Cuningham laughed. 'We've seen no sign of a wife. But I really know
nothing about him.'
They were entering the upper room, and at sight of the large picture
it contained, Lord Findon exclaimed:
'My goodness!--what an ambitious thing!'
The three men gathered in front of the picture. Fenwick lingered
nervously behind them.
'What do you call it?' said Lord Findon, putting up his glasses.
'The "Genius Loci,"' said Fenwick, fumbling a little with the words.
It represented a young woman seated on the edge of a Westmoreland
ghyll or ravine. Behind her the white water of the beck flowed steeply
down from shelf to shelf; beyond the beck rose far-receding walls of
mountain, purple on purple, blue on blue. Light, scantily nourished
trees, sycamore or mountain-ash, climbed the green sides of the ghyll,
and framed the woman's form. She sat on a stone, bending over a frail
new-born lamb upon her lap, whereof the mother lay beside her. Against
her knee leaned a fair-haired child. The pitiful concern in the
woman's lovely eyes was reflected in the soft wonder of the child's.
Both, it seemed, were of the people. The drawing was full of rustical
suggestion, touched here and there by a harsh realism that did but
heighten the general harmony. The woman's grave comeliness flowered
naturally, as it were, out of the scene. She was no model posing with
a Westmoreland stream for background. She seemed a part of the fells;
their silences, their breezes, their pure waters, had passed into her
face.
But it was the execution of the picture which perhaps specially
arrested the attention of the men examining it.
'Eclectic stuff!' said Watson to himself, presently, as he turned
away--'seen with other men's eyes!'
But on Lord Findon and on Cuningham the effect was of another kind.
The picture seemed to them also a combination of many things, or
rather of attempts at many things--Burne-Jones' mystical colour--the
rustic character of a Bastien-Lepage or a Millet--with the jewelled
detail of a fourteenth-century Florentine, so wonderful were the
harebells in the foreground, the lichened rocks, the dabbled fleece
of the lamb: but they realised that it was a combination that only a
remarkable talent could have achieved.
'By Jove!' said Findon, turning on the artist with animation, 'where
did you learn all this?'
'I've been painting a good many years,' said Fenwick, his cheeks
aglow. 'But I've got on a lot this last six months.'
'I suppose, in the country, you couldn't get properly at the model?'
'No. I've had no chances.'
'Let's all pray to have none,' said Cuningham, good-naturedly. 'I had
no notion you were such a swell.'
But his light-blue eyes as they rested on Fenwick were less friendly.
His Scotch prudence was alarmed. Had he in truth introduced a genius
unawares to his only profitable patron?
'Who is the model, if I may ask?' said Lord Findon, still examining
the picture.
The reply came haltingly, after a pause.
'Oh!--some one I knew in Westmoreland.'
The speaker had turned red. Naturally no one asked any further
questions. Cuningham noticed that the face was certainly from the same
original as the face in the sketch-book, but he kept his observation
to himself.
Lord Findon, with the eagerness of a Londoner discovering some new
thing, fell into quick talk with Fenwick; looked him meanwhile up
and down, his features, bearing, clothes; noticed his North-Country
accent, and all the other signs of the plebeian. And presently
Fenwick, placed at his ease, began for the first time to expand,
became argumentative and explosive. In a few minutes he was
laying down the law in his Westmoreland manner--attacking the
Academy--denouncing certain pictures of the year--with a flushed,
confident face and a gesticulating hand. Watson observed him with some
astonishment; Lord Findon looked amused--and pulled out his watch.
'Oh, well, everybody kicks the Academy--but it's pretty strong, as
you'll find when you have to do with it.'
'Have you been writing those articles in the _Mirror_?' said Watson,
abruptly.
'I'm not a journalist.' The young man's tone was sulky. He got up and
his loquacity disappeared.
'Well, I must be off,' said Lord Findon. 'But you're coming to dinner
with me to-morrow night, Cuningham, aren't you? Will you excuse a
short invitation'--he turned, after a moment's pause, to Fenwick--'and
accompany him? Lady Findon would, I'm sure, be glad to make your
acquaintance. St. James's Square--102. All right'--as Fenwick,
colouring violently, stammered an acceptance--'we shall expect you.
Aurevoir! I'm afraid it's no good to ask _you_!' The last words were
addressed smilingly to Watson, as Lord Findon, with outstretched hand,
passed through the door, which Cuningham opened for him.
'Thank you,' said Watson, with a grave inclination--'I'm a hermit.'
The door closed on a gay and handsome presence. Lord Findon could not
possibly have been accused of anything so ill-mannered as patronage.
But there was in his manner a certain consciousness of power--of
vantage-ground; a certain breath of autocracy. The face of Watson
showed it as he returned to look closely into Fenwick's picture.
A few minutes later Fenwick found himself alone. He stood in front of
the picture, staring into Phoebe's eyes. A wave of passionate remorse
broke upon him. He had as good as denied her; and she sat there before
him like some wronged, helpless thing. He seemed to hear her voice, to
see her lips moving.
Hastily he took her last letter out of his pocket.
'I _am_ glad you're getting on so well, and I'm counting the weeks to
Christmas. Carrie kisses your photograph morning and night, but I'm
afraid she'll have forgotten you a good deal. Sometimes I'm very weary
here--but I don't mind if you're getting on, and if it won't be much
longer. Miss Anna has sent me some new patterns for my tatting, and
I'm getting a fine lot done. All the visitors are quite gone now, and
it's that quiet at nights! Sometimes when it's been raining I think I
can hear the Dungeon Ghyll stream, though it's more than a mile away.'
Fenwick put up the letter. He had a sudden vision of Phoebe in her
white night-dress, opening the casement-window of the little cottage
on a starry night, and listening to the sounds of distant water.
Behind her was the small room with its candle--the baby's
cot--the white bed, with his vacant place. A pang of longing--of
homesickness--stirred him.
Then he began to pace his room, driven by the stress of feeling to
take stock of his whole position. He had reached London in May; it was
now November. Six months--of the hardest effort, the most strenuous
labour he had ever passed through. He looked back upon it with
exultation. Never had he been so conscious of expanding power and
justified ambition. Through the Berners Street life-school he had
obtained some valuable coaching and advice which had corrected faults
and put him on the track of new methods. But it was his own right
hand and his own brain he had mostly to thank, together with the
opportunities of London. Up early, and to bed late--drawing from the
model, the antique, still life, drapery, landscape; studying pictures,
old and new, and filling his sketch-book in every moment of so-called
leisure with the figures and actions of the great city--he had made
magnificent use of his time; Phoebe could find no fault with him
there.
Had he forgotten her and the babe?--found letters to her sometimes a
burden, and his heart towards her dry often and barren? Well, he _had_
written regularly; and she had never complained. Men cannot be like
women, absorbed for ever in the personal affections. For him it was
the day of battle, in which a man must strain all his powers to the
uttermost if any laurels are to be won before evening. His whole soul
was absorbed in the stress of it, in the hungry eagerness for fame,
and--though in a lesser degree--for money.
Money! The very thought of it filled him with impatient worry.
Morrison's hundred was nearly gone. He knew well enough that Phoebe
was right when she accused him of managing his money badly. It ran
through his fingers loosely, incessantly. He hardly knew now where the
next remittances to Phoebe were to come from. At first he had done
a certain amount of illustrating work and had generally sent her the
proceeds of it. But of late he had been absorbed in his big picture,
and there had been few or no small earnings. Perhaps, if he hadn't
written those articles to the _Mirror_, there would have been time for
some? Well, why shouldn't he write them? His irritable pride took fire
at once at the thought of blame.
No one could say, anyway, that he had spent money in amusement. Why,
he had scarcely been out of Bloomsbury!--the rest of London might not
have existed for him. A gallery-seat at the Lyceum Theatre, then in
its early fame, and hot discussions of Irving and Ellen Terry with
such artistic or literary acquaintance as he had made through the
life-school or elsewhere--these had been his only distractions. He
stood amazed before his own virtues. He drank little--smoked little.
As for women--he thought with laughter or wrath of Phoebe's touch of
jealousy! There was an extremely pretty girl--a fair-haired, conscious
minx--drawing in the same room with him at the British Museum.
Evidently she would have been glad to capture him; and he had loftily
denied her. If he had ever been as susceptible as Phoebe thought him,
he was susceptible no more. Life burned with sterner fire!
And yet, for all these self-denials, Morrison's money and his own
savings were nearly gone. Funds might hold out till after Christmas.
What then?
He had heard once or twice from Morrison, asking for news of the
pictures promised. Lately he had left the letters unanswered; but he
lived in terror of a visit. For he had nothing to offer him--neither
money nor pictures. His only picture so far--as distinguished from
exercises--was the 'Genius Loci.' He had begun that in a moment of
weariness with his student work, basing it on a number of studies
of Phoebe's head and face he had brought South with him. He had been
lucky enough to find a model very much resembling Phoebe in figure;
and now, suddenly, the picture had become his passion, the centre of
all his hopes. It astonished himself; he saw his artistic advance in
it writ large; of late he had been devoting himself entirely to it,
wrapt, like the body of Hector, in a heavenly cloud that lifted him
from the earth! If the picture sold--and it would surely sell--then
all paths were clear. Morrison should be paid; and Phoebe have her
rights. Let it only be well hung at the Academy, and well sold to some
discriminating buyer--and John Fenwick henceforward would owe no man
anything--whether money or favour.
At this point he returned to his picture, grappling with it afresh in
a feverish pleasure. He caught up a mirror and looked at it reversed;
he put in a bold accent or two; fumed over the lack of brilliancy in
some colour he had bought the day before; and ended in a fresh burst
of satisfaction. By Jove, it was good! Lord Findon had been evidently
'bowled over' by it--Cuningham too. As for that sour-faced fellow,
Watson, what did it matter what he thought?
It _must_ succeed! Suddenly he found himself on his knees beside his
picture, praying that he might finish it prosperously, that it might
be given a good place in the Academy, and bring him fame and fortune.
Then he got up sheepishly, looking furtively round the room to be sure
that the door was shut, and no one had seen him. He was a good deal
ashamed of himself, for he was not in truth of a religious mind,
and he had, by now, few or no orthodox beliefs. But in all matters
connected with his pictures the Evangelical tradition of his youth
still held him. He was the descendant of generations of men and women
who had prayed on all possible occasions--that customers might be
plentiful and business good--that the young cattle might do well, and
the hay be got in dry--that their children might prosper--and they
themselves be delivered from rheumatism, or toothache, or indigestion.
Fenwick's prayer to some 'magnified non-natural man' afar off, to come
and help him with his picture, was of the same kind. Only he was no
longer whole-hearted and simple about it, as he had been when Phoebe
married him, as she was still.
He put on his studio coat and sat down to his work again, in a very
tender, repentant mood. What on earth had possessed him to make that
answer to Lord Findon--to let him and those other fellows take him
for unmarried? He protested, in excuse, that Westmoreland folk are
'close,' and don't like talking about their own affairs. He came of a
secretive, suspicious stock; and had no mind at any time to part with
unnecessary facts about himself. As talkative as you please about art
and opinion; of his own concerns not a word! London had made him all
the more cautious and reticent. No one knew anything about him except
as an artist. He always posted his letters himself; and he believed
that neither his landlady nor anybody else suspected him of a wife.
But to-day he had carried things too far--and a guilty discomfort
weighed upon him. What was to be done? Should he on the first
opportunity set himself right with Lord Findon--speak easily and
unexpectedly of Phoebe and the child? Clearly what would have been
simplicity itself at first was now an awkwardness. Lord Findon would
be puzzled--chilled. He would suppose there was something to be
ashamed of--some skeleton in the cupboard. And especially would he
take it ill that Fenwick had allowed him to run on with his diatribes
against matrimony as though he were talking to a bachelor. Then the
lie about the picture. It had been the shy, foolish impulse of a
moment. But how explain it to Lord Findon?
Fenwick stood there tortured by an intense and morbid distress;
realising how much this rich and illustrious person had already
entered into his day dream. For all his pride as an artist--and he was
full of it--his trembling, crude ambition had already seized on Lord
Findon as a stepping-stone. He did not know whether he could stoop to
court a patron. His own temper had to be reckoned with. But to lose
him at the outset by a silly falsehood would be galling. A man who
has to live in the world as a married man must not begin by making a
mystery of his wife. He felt the social stupidity of what he had done,
yet could not find in himself the courage to set it right.
Well, well, let him only make a hit in the Academy, sell his picture,
and get some commissions. Then Phoebe should appear, and smile down
astonishment. His _gaucherie_ should be lost in his success.
He tossed about that night, sleepless, and thinking of Cuningham's two
hundred and fifty pounds--for a picture so cheaply, commonly clever.
It filled him with the thirst to _arrive_. He had more brains, more
drawing, more execution--more everything!--than Cuningham. No doubt a
certain prudence and tact were wanted--tact in managing yourself and
your gifts.
Well!--in spite of Watson's rude remark, what human being _knew_ he
was writing those articles in the _Mirror_? He threw out his challenge
to the darkness, and so fell asleep.