It was Christmas Eve, and the dark had fallen. The train from Euston
had just drawn up in Windermere Station, and John Fenwick, carrying
his bag, was making his way among the vehicles outside the station,
inquiring whether any one was going in the direction of Great
Langdale, who could give him a lift. He presently found a farmer's
cart bound for a village on the road, and made a bargain with the lad
driving it to carry him to his destination.
They set off in bitter weather. The driver was a farmer's son who had
come to the station to fetch his small brother. Fenwick and he took
the little school-boy between them, to protect him as best they could
from the wind and sleet. They piled some empty sacks, from the back
of the cart, on their knees and shoulders; and the old grey horse
set forward cautiously, feeling its way down the many hills of the
Ambleside road.
The night was not yet wholly in possession. The limestone road shone
dimly white, the forms of the leafless trees passed them in a windy
procession, and afar on the horizon, beyond the dark gulf of the lake,
there was visible at intervals a persistent dimness, something less
black than the sky above and the veiled earth below, which Fenwick
knew must be the snowy tops of the mountains. But it was a twilight
more mournful than a total darkness; the damp air was nipping cold,
and every few minutes gusts of sleet drove in their faces.
The two brothers talked to each other sometimes, in a broad
Westmoreland speech. To Fenwick the dialect of his childhood was
already strange and disagreeable. So, too, was the wild roughness of
the Northern night, the length of the road, the sense of increasing
distance from all that most held his mind. He longed, indeed, to see
Phoebe and the child, but it was as though he had wilfully set up some
barrier between himself and them, which spoiled his natural pleasure.
Moreover, he was afraid of Phoebe, of her quick jealous love, and of
certain passionate possibilities in her character that he had long
ago discerned. If she discovered that he had made a mystery of his
marriage--that he had passed in London as unmarried? It was an ugly
and uncomfortable 'if.' Did he shrink from the possible blow to
her--or the possible trouble to himself? Well, she must not find it
out! It had been a wretched sort of accident, and before it could do
any harm it should be amended.
Suddenly, a sound of angry water. They were close on the lake, and
waves driven by the wind were plashing on the shore. Across the lake,
a light in a house-window shone through the storm, the only reminder
of human life amid a dark wilderness of mountains. Wild sounds crashed
through the trees; and accompanying the tumult of water came the
rattle of a bitter rain lashing the road, the cart, and their bent
shoulders.
'There'll not be a dry stitch on us soon,' said Fenwick, presently, to
the young man beside him.
'Aye, it's dampish,' said his companion, cheerfully.
The caution of the adjective set Fenwick grinning. The North found and
gripped him; these are not the ways of the South.
And in a moment the sense of contrast, thus provoked, had carried him
far--out of the Westmoreland night, back to London, and his shabby
studio in Bernard Street. There, throned on a low platform, sat Madame
de Pastourelles; and to her right, himself, sitting crouched before
his easel, working with all his eyes and all his mind. The memory of
her was, as it were, physically stamped upon his sight, his hands;
such an intensity of study had he given to every detail of her face
and form. Did he like her? He didn't know. There were a number of
curious resentments in his mind with regard to her. Several times in
the course of their acquaintance she had cheapened or humiliated him
in his own eyes; and the sensation had been of a sharpness as yet
unknown to him.
Of course, there was in it, one way or another, an aristocratic
insolence! There must be: to move so delicately and immaculately
through life, with such superfine perceptions, must mean that you were
brought up to scorn the common way, and those who walk in it. 'The
poor in a lump are bad'--coarse and ill-mannered at any rate--that
must be the real meaning of her soft dignity, so friendly yet so
remote, her impossibly ethereal standards, her light words that so
often abashed a man for no reasonable cause.
She had been sitting to him, off and on, for about six weeks.
Originally she had meant him to make a three-hour sketch of her. He
triumphed in the remembrance that she and Lord Findon had found the
sketch so remarkable that, when he had timidly proposed a portrait in
oils, Lord Findon himself had persuaded her to sit. Since that moment
his work on the portrait, immediately begun, had absorbed him to such
a degree that the 'Genius Loci,' still unfinished, had been put aside,
and must have its last touches when he returned to town.
But in the middle of the sittings, Madame de Pastourelles being away,
and he in a mood to destroy all that he had done, he had suddenly
spent a stray earning on a railway ticket to Paris.
There--excitement!--illumination!--and a whole fresh growth of
ambition! Some of the mid-century portraits in the Luxembourg, and in
a loan exhibition then open in the Rue Royale, excited him so that
he lost sleep and appetite. The work of Bastien-Lepage was also to
be seen; and the air rang with the cries of Impressionism. But the
beautiful surface of the older men held him. How to combine the
breadth of the new with the keeping, the sheer _pleasure_ of the old!
He rushed home--aflame!--and fell to work again.
And now he found himself a little more able to cope with his sitter.
He was in possession, at any rate, of fresh topics--need not feel
himself so tongue-tied in the presence of this cosmopolitan culture of
hers, which she did her feminine best to disguise--which nevertheless
made the atmosphere of her personality. She had lived some six years
in Paris, it appeared; and had known most of the chief artists and
men of letters. Fenwick writhed under his ignorance of the French
language; it was a disadvantage not to be made up.
However, he talked much, and sometimes arrogantly; he gave his views,
compared one man with another; if he felt any diffidence, he showed
little. And indeed she led him on. Upon his art he had a right
to speak, and the keen intellectual interest she betrayed in his
impressions--the three days impressions of a painter--stirred and
flattered him.
But he made a great many rather ludicrous mistakes, inevitable to one
who had just taken a first canter through the vast field of French
art; mistakes in names and dates, in the order of men and generations.
And when he made a blunder he was apt to stick to it absurdly, or
excuse it elaborately. She soon gave up correcting him, even in the
gentle, hesitating way she at first made use of. She said nothing; but
there was sometimes mischief, perhaps mockery, in her eyes. Fenwick
knew it; and would either make fresh plunges, or paint on in a sulky
silence.
How on earth had she guessed the authorship of those articles in the
_Mirror_? He supposed he must have talked the same kind of stuff to
her. At any rate, she had made him feel in some intangible way that
it seemed to her a dishonourable thing to be writing anonymous attacks
upon a body from whom you were asking, or intending to ask, exhibition
space for your pictures and the chance of selling your work. His
authorship was never avowed between them. Nevertheless this criticism
annoyed and pricked him. He said to himself that it was just like a
woman--who always took the personal view. But he had not yet begun on
his last two articles, which were overdue.
On one occasion, encouraged perhaps by some kindness of expression
on her part, he had ventured an indirect question or two, meant to
procure him some information about her past history and present way
of life. She had rebuffed him at once; and he had said to himself
fiercely that it was of course because he was a man of the people
and she one of 'the upper ten.' He might paint her; but he must not
presume to know her!
On the other hand, his mind was still warm with memories of her
encouragement, her praise. Sometimes in their talks he would put the
portrait aside, and fall to sketching for her--either to illustrate
his memories of pictures, or things noticed in French life and
landscapes. And as the charcoal worked; as he forgot himself in
hurried speech, and those remarks fell from him which are the natural
outcome of a painter's experience, vivacious also and touched with
literature; then her brown eyes would lighten and soften, and for
once his mind would feel exultant that it moved with hers on equal
terms--nay, that he was teacher and she taught. Whenever there emerged
in him the signs of that demonic something that makes greatness
she would be receptive, eager, humble even. But again his commoner,
coarser side, his mere lack of breeding, would reappear; and she would
fall back on her cold or gentle defensiveness. Thus protected by what
his wrath called 'airs,' she was a mystery to him, yet a mystery that
tamed and curbed him. He had never dreamt that such women existed.
His own views of women were those of the shopkeeping middle class,
practical, selfish, or sensual. But he had been a reader of books; and
through Madame de Pastourelles certain sublimities or delicacies of
poetry began to seem to him either less fantastic or more real.
All the same:--he was not sure that he liked her, and while one hour
he was all restlessness to resume his task, the next it was a relief
to be temporarily quit of it. As for Lord Findon, except for a certain
teasing vagueness on the business side of things, he had shown himself
a good friend. Several times since the first variegated evening had
Fenwick dined with them, mostly _en famille_. Lady Findon, indeed, had
been away, nursing an invalid father; Madame de Pastourelles
filled her place. The old fellow would talk freely--politics,
connoisseurship, art. Fenwick too was allowed his head, and said
his say; though always surrounded and sometimes chafing under
that discipline of good society which is its only or its best
justification. It flattered his vanity enormously, however, to be thus
within touch of the inner circle in politics and art; for the Findons
had relations and friends in all the foremost groups of both; and
incidentally Fenwick, who had the grudges and some of the dreams of
the democrat, was beginning to have a glimpse of the hidden springs
and powers of English society--to his no small bewilderment often!
Great luck--he admitted--all this--for a nameless artist of the
people, only six months in London. He owed it to Cuningham, and
believed himself grateful. Cuningham was often at the Findons, made a
point, indeed, of going. Was it to maintain his place with them, and
to keep Fenwick under observation? Fenwick triumphantly believed
that Lord Findon greatly preferred his work--and even, by now, his
conversation--to Cuningham's. But he was still envious of Cuningham's
smooth tact, and agreeable, serviceable ways.
As to Welby and his place in the Findon circle, that was another
matter altogether. He came and went as he pleased, on brotherly terms
with the son and the younger daughters, clearly an object of great
affection to Lord Findon, and often made use of by her ladyship.
What was the degree of friendship between him and Madame de
Pastourelles?--that had been already the subject of many meditations
on Fenwick's part.
The cart deposited the school-boy in Brathay and started again for
Langdale.
'Yo couldna get at Langdale for t' snaw lasst week,' said the young
farmer, as they turned a corner into the Skelwith Valley. 'T' roads
were fair choked wi't.'
'It's been an early winter,' said Fenwick.
'Aye, and t' Langdales get t' brunt o't. It's wild livin there,
soomtimes, i' winter.'
They began to climb the first steep hill of the old road to Langdale.
The snow lay piled on either side of the road, the rain beat down, and
the trees clashed and moaned overhead. Not a house, not a light, upon
their path--only swirling darkness, opening now and then on that high
glimmer of the snow. Fresh from London streets, where winter, even if
it attack in force, is so soon tamed and conquered, Fenwick was for
the first time conscious of the harsher, wilder aspects of his native
land. Poor Phoebe! Had she been a bit lonesome in the snow and rain?
The steep lane to the cottage was still deep in snow. The cart could
not attempt it. Fenwick made his way up, fighting the eddying sleet.
As he let fall the latch of the outer gate, the cottage door opened,
and Phoebe, with the child in her arms, stood on the threshold.
'John!'
'Yes! God bless my soul, what a night!' He reached the door, put down
his umbrella with difficulty, and dragged his bag into the passage.
Then, in a moment, his coat was off and he had thrown his arm round
her and the child. It seemed to him that she was curiously quiet and
restrained. But she kissed him in return, drew him further within the
little passage, and shut the outer door, shivering.
'The kitchen's warm,' she said, at last.
She led him in, and he found the low-ceiled room bright with fire and
lamp, the table spread, and his chair beside the blaze. Kneeling down,
she tried to unlace his wet boots.
'No, no!' he said, holding her away--'I'll do that, Phoebe. What's
wrong with you?--you look so--so queer!'
She straightened herself, and with a laugh put back her fair hair. Her
face was very pale--a greyish pallor--and her wonderful eyes stared
from it in an odd, strained way.
'Oh, I'm all right,' she said; and she turned away from him to the
fire, opening the oven-door to see whether the meat-pie was done.
'How have you kept in this weather?' he said, watching her. 'I'd no
notion you'd had it so bad.'
'Oh, I don't know. I suppose I've had a chill or something. It's been
rather weariful.'
'You didn't tell me anything about your chill.'
'Didn't I? It seems hardly worth while telling such things, from such
a distance. Will you have supper at once?'
He drew up to the table, and she fed him and hovered round him, asking
the while about his work, in a rather perfunctory way, about his rooms
and the price of them, inquiring after the state of his clothes. But
her tone and manner were unlike herself, and there was in his mind a
protesting consciousness that she had not welcomed him as a young wife
should after a long separation. Her manner too was extraordinarily
nervous; her hand shook as she touched a plate; her movements were
full of starts, and checks, as though, often, she intended a thing and
then forgot it.
They avoided talking about money, and he did not mention the name of
Madame de Pastourelles; though of course his letters had reported the
external history of the portrait. But Phoebe presently inquired after
it.
'Have you nearly done painting that lady, John?--I don't know how to
say her name.'
As she spoke, she lifted a bit of bread-and-butter to her mouth and
put it down untasted. In the same way she had tried to drink some tea,
and had not apparently succeeded. Fenwick rose and went over to her.
'Look here, Phoebe,' he said, putting his hand on her beautiful hair
and turning her face to him--'what's the matter?'
Her eyelids closed, and a quiver went through the face.
'I don't know. I--I had a fright a few days ago--at night--and I
suppose I haven't got over it.'
'A fright?'
'Yes. There was a tramp one night came to the door. I half-opened
it--and his face was so horrible I tried to shut it again at once. And
he struggled with me, but I was strongest. Then he tried to get in
at the window, but luckily I had fastened the iron bar across the
shutter--and the back door. But it all held, mercifully. He couldn't
get in. Then he abused me through the door, and said he would have
killed me and the child, if he could have got in--and some day he
would come again.' She shuddered.
Fenwick had turned pale. With his painter's imagination he saw the
thing--the bestial man outside, the winter night, the slender form
within pressing against the door and the bolt--
'Look here,' he said, abruptly. 'We can't have this. Somebody must
sleep here. Did you tell the police?'
'Yes, I wrote--to Ambleside. They sent a man over to see me. But they
couldn't catch him. He's probably left the country. I got a bell'--she
opened her eyes, and pointed to it. 'If I rang it, they might hear it
down at Brow Farm. They _might_--if the wind was that way.'
There was silence a moment. Then Fenwick stooped and kissed her.
'Poor old girl!' he said, softly. She made but slight response. He
returned to his place, repeating with a frowning energy--'You must
have some one to sleep here.'
'Daisy would come--if I'd pay her.'
Daisy was their little servant of the summer, the daughter of a
quarryman near by.
'Well, pay her!'
She drew herself up sharply. 'I haven't got the money--and you always
say, when you write, you haven't any either.'
'I'll find some for that. I can't have you scared like this.'
But, though his tone was vehement, it was not particularly
affectionate. He was horribly discomposed indeed, could not get the
terrible image out of his mind. But as he went on with his supper, the
shock of it mingled with a good many critical or reproachful thoughts.
Why had she persisted in staying on in Langdale, instead of going to
her father? All that foolish dislike of her stepmother! It had been
open to her to stay in her father's farm, with plenty of company. If
she wouldn't, was _he_ to blame if the cottage was lonesome?
But as though she divined this secret debate she presently said:
'I went to Keswick last week.'
He looked up, startled. 'Well?'
'Father's ill--he's got a bad chest, and the doctor says he may be
going into a consumption.'
'Doctors'll say anything!' cried Fenwick, wrathfully. 'If ever there
was a strong man, it's your father. Don't you believe any croaking of
that sort, Phoebe.'
She shook her head.
'He looks so changed,' she said; and began drawing with her finger on
the tablecloth. He saw that her lips were trembling. A strong impulse
worked in him, bidding him go to her again, kiss away her tears, and
say--'Hang everything! Come with me to London, and let's sink or swim
together.'
Instead of which some perverse cross-current hurried him into the
words:
'He'd be all right if you'd go and nurse him, Phoebe.'
'No, not at all. They didn't want me--and Mrs. Gibson, poor creature,
was real glad when I said I was going. She was jealous of me all the
time.'
'I expect you imagined that.'
Phoebe's face flushed angrily.
'I didn't!' she said, shortly. 'Everybody in the house knew it.'
The meal went on rather silently. Fenwick's conscience said
to him, 'Take her back with you!--whatever happens, take her to
London--she's moping her life out here.' And an inner voice clamoured
in reply--'Take her to those rooms?--in the very middle of the
struggle with those two pictures?--go through all the agitation
and discomfort of explanations with Lord Findon and Madame de
Pastourelles?--run the risk of estranging them, and of distracting
your own mind from your work at this critical moment?--the further
risk, moreover, of Phoebe's jealousy?'
For in her present nervous and fidgety state she would very likely be
jealous of his sitter, and of the way in which Madame de Pastourelles'
portrait possessed his mind. No, it really couldn't be done!--it
really _couldn't!_ He must finish the two pictures--persuade Lord
Findon to buy the 'Genius Loci,' and make the portrait such a success
that he must needs buy that too. Then let discovery come on; it should
find him steeled.
Meanwhile, Phoebe must have a servant, and not any mere slip of a
girl, but some one who would be a companion and comfort. He began
to talk of it, eagerly, only to find that Phoebe took but a languid
interest in the idea.
She could think of no one--wanted no one, but Daisy. Again his secret
ill-humour waxed and justified itself. It was unreasonable and selfish
that she should not be able to think for herself and the child better;
after all, he was slaving for her as much as for himself.
Meanwhile, Carrie sat very silent beside her father, observing him,
and every now and then applying her pink lips to some morsel he held
out to her on his fork. He had kissed her, and tossed her, and she was
now sitting in his pocket. But after these eight months the child of
four was shy and timid with this unfamiliar father. He on his side saw
that she was prettier than before; his eye delighted in some of the
rarer and lovelier lines of her little face; and he felt a fatherly
pride. He must make some fresh studies of her; the child in the
'Genius Loci' might be improved.
After supper, Phoebe seemed to him so pale and tottering that he made
her rest beside the fire, while he himself cleared the supper-things
away. She lay back in her chair, laughing at his awkwardness, or
starting up when china clashed.
Meanwhile, as in their farewell talk beside the ghyll eight months
before, her mood gradually and insensibly changed. Whatever unloving
thoughts or resentments had held her in the first hour of their
meeting, however strong had been the wish to show him that she had
been lonely and suffering, she could not resist what to her was the
magic of his presence. As he moved about in the low, firelit room, and
she watched him, her whole nature melted; and he knew it.
Presently she took the child upstairs. He waited for her, hanging over
the fire--listening to the storm outside--and thinking, thinking--
When she reappeared, and he, looking round, saw her standing in the
doorway, so tall and slender, her pale face and hair coloured by the
glow of the fire, passion and youth spoke in him once more.
He sprang up and caught her in his arms. Presently, sitting in the old
armchair beside the blaze, he had gathered her on his knee, and she
had clasped her hands round his neck, and buried her face against him.
All things were forgotten, save that they were man and wife together,
within this 'wind-warm space'--ringed by night, and pattering sleet,
and gusts that rushed in vain upon the roof that sheltered them.
But next morning, within the little cottage--beating rain on the
windows, and a cheerless storm-light in the tiny rooms--the hard
facts of the situation resumed their sway. In the first place money
questions had to be faced. Fenwick made the most of his expectations;
but at best they were no more, and how to live till they became
certainties was the problem. If Lord Findon had commissioned the
portrait, or definitely said he would purchase the 'Genius Loci,'
some advance might have been asked for. As it was, how could money
be mentioned yet a while? Phoebe had a fine and costly piece of
embroidery on hand, commissioned through an 'Art Industry' started at
Windermere the summer before; but it could not be finished for some
weeks, possibly months, and the money Fenwick proposed to earn during
his fortnight in the North by some illustrations long overdue had been
already largely forestalled. He gloomily made up his mind to appeal
to an old cousin in Kendal, the widow of a grocer, said to be richly
left, who had once in his boyhood given him five shillings. With much
distaste he wrote the letter and walked to Elterwater in the rain
to post it. Then he tried to work; but little Carrie, fractious from
confinement indoors, was troublesome and disturbed him. Phoebe, too,
would make remarks on his drawing which seemed to him inept. In old
days he would have laughed at her for pretending to know, and turned
it off with a kiss. Now what she said set him on edge. The talk he had
been living amongst had spoilt him for silly criticisms. Moreover,
for the first time he detected in her a slight tone of the
'schoolmarm'--didactic and self-satisfied, without knowledge. The
measure Madame de Pastourelles had dealt out to him, he in some sort
avenged on Phoebe.
At the same time there were much more serious causes of difference.
Each had a secret from the other. Fenwick's secret was that he had
foolishly passed in London as an unmarried man, and that he could not
take Phoebe back with him, because of the discomforts and risks in
which a too early avowal of her would involve him. He was morbidly
conscious of this; brooded over it, and magnified it.
She on the other hand was tormented by a fixed idea--already in
existence at the time of their first parting, but much strengthened by
loneliness and fretting--that he was tired of her and not unwilling to
be without her. The joy of their meeting banished it for a time, but
it soon came back. She had never acquiesced in the wisdom of their
separation; and to question it was to resent it more and more
deeply--to feel his persistence in it a more cruel offence, month by
month. Her pride prevented her from talking of it; but the soreness
of her grievance invaded their whole relation. And in her moral unrest
she showed faults which had been scarcely visible in their early
married years--impatience, temper, suspicion, a readiness to magnify
small troubles whether of health or circumstance.
During her months alone she had been reading many novels of an
indifferent sort, which the carrier brought her from the lending
library at Windermere. She talked excitedly of some of them, had
'cried her eyes out' over this or that. Fenwick picked up one or two,
and threw them away for 'trash.' He scornfully thought that they had
done her harm, made her more nervous and difficult. But at night, when
he had done his work, he never took any trouble to read to her, or to
talk to her about other than household things. He smoked or drew in
silence; and she sat over her embroidery, lost in morbid reverie.
One morning he discovered amongst her books a paper-covered 'Life of
Romney'--a short compilation issued by a local bookseller.
'Why, whatever did you get this for, Phoebe?' he said, holding it up.
She looked up from her mending, and coloured. 'I wanted to read it.'
'But why?'
'Well'--she hesitated--'I thought it was like you.'
'Like me?--you little goose!'
'I don't know,' she said, doggedly, looking hard at her work--'there
was the hundred pounds that he got to go to London with--and then,
marrying a wife in Kendal--and'--she looked up with a half-defiant
smile--'and leaving her behind!'
'Oh! so you think that's like me?' he said, seating himself again at
his drawing.
'It's rather like.'
'You suppose you're going to be left here for thirty years?' He
laughed as he spoke.
She laughed too, but not gaily--with a kind of defiance.
'Well, it wouldn't be quite as easy now, would it?--with trains, and
all that. There were only coaches then, I suppose. Now, London's so
near.'
'I wish you'd always think so!' he cried. 'Why, of course it's near.
I'm only seven hours away. What's that, in these days? And in three
months' time, things will be all right and square again.'
'I dare say,' she said, sighing.
'Why can't you wait cheerfully?' he asked, rather
exasperated--'instead of being so down.'
'Because'--she broke out--'I don't see the reason of it--there! No,
I don't!--However!'--she pressed back her hair from her eyes and drew
herself together. 'You've never shown me your studies of that--that
lady--John; you said you would.'
Relieved at the change of subject, he took a sketch-book out of his
pocket and gave it to her. It contained a number of 'notes' for his
portrait of Madame de Pastourelles--sketches of various poses, aspects
of the head and face, arrangements of the hands, and so forth. Phoebe
pondered it in silence.
'She's pretty--I think,' she said, at last, doubtfully.
'I'm not sure that she is,' said Fenwick. 'She's very pale.'
'That doesn't matter. The shape of her face is awfully pretty--and her
eyes. Is her hair like mine?'
'No, not nearly so good.'
'Ah, if I could only do it as prettily as she does!' said Phoebe,
faintly smiling. 'I suppose, John, she's very smart and fashionable?'
'Well, she's Lord Findon's daughter--that tells you. They're pretty
well at the top.'
Phoebe asked various other questions, then fell silent, still
pondering the sketches. After a while she put down her work and came
to sit on a stool beside Fenwick, sometimes laying her golden
head against his knee, or stretching out her hand to touch his. He
responded affectionately enough; but as the winter twilight deepened
in the little room, Phoebe's eyes, fixed upon the fire, resumed their
melancholy discontent. She was less necessary to him even than before;
she knew by a thousand small signs that the forces which possessed his
mind--perhaps his heart!--were not now much concerned with her.
She tried to control, to school herself. But the flame within was
not to be quenched--was, indeed, perpetually finding fresh fuel. How
quietly he had taken the story of the tramp's attack upon her!--which
still, whenever she thought of it, thrilled her own veins with horror.
No doubt he had been over to Ambleside to speak to the police; and he
had arranged that the little servant, Daisy, should come to her when
he left. But if he had merely caught her to him with one
shuddering cry of love and rage--that would have been worth all his
precautions!--would have effaced the nightmare, and filled her heart.
As to his intellectual life, she was now much more conscious of her
exclusion from it than she ever had been in their old life together.
For it was a consciousness quickened by jealousy. Little as Fenwick
talked about Madame de Pastourelles, Phoebe understood perfectly that
she was a woman of high education and refinement, and that her stored
and subtle mind was at once an attraction and a cause of humiliation
to John. And through his rare stories of the Findon household and the
Findon dinner-parties, the wife dimly perceived a formidable world,
bristling with strange acquirements and accomplishments, in which he,
perhaps, was beginning to find a place, thanks to his art; while she,
his obscure and ignorant wife, must resign herself to being for ever
shut out from it--to knowing it from his report only. How could she
ever hold her own with such people? He would talk with them, paint
them, dine with them, while she sat at home--Carrie's nurse, and the
domestic drudge.
And yet she was of that type which represents perhaps the most
ambitious element in the lower middle class. It had been a great
matter that she, a small farmer's daughter, should pass her
examinations and rise to be a teacher in Miss Mason's school. She had
had her triumphs and conceits; had been accustomed to think herself
clever and successful, to hold her head high amongst her schoolmates.
Whereas now, if she tried to talk of art or books, she was hotly aware
that everything she said was, in John's eyes, pretentious or
absurd. He was comparing her with others all the time, with men
and women--women especially--in whose presence he felt himself as
diffident as she did in his. He was thinking of ladies in velvet
dresses and diamonds, who could talk wittily of pictures and theatres
and books, who could amuse him and distract him. And meanwhile _she_
went about in her old stuff dress, her cotton apron and rolled-up
sleeves, cooking and washing and cleaning--for her child and for him.
She felt through every nerve that he was constantly aware of details
of dress or _ménage_ that jarred upon him; she suspected miserably
that all her little personal ways and habits seemed to him ugly and
common; and the suspicion showed itself in pride or _brusquerie_.
Meanwhile, if she had been _restful_, if he could only have forgotten
his cares in her mere youth and prettiness, Fenwick would have been
easily master of his discontents. For he was naturally of a warm,
sensuous temper. Had the woman understood her own arts, she could have
held him.
But she was not restful, she was exacting and self-conscious; and,
moreover, a certain new growth of Puritanism in her repelled him.
While he had been passing under the transforming influences of
an all-questioning thought and culture, she had been turning to
Evangelical religion for consolation. There was a new minister in a
Baptist chapel a mile or two away, of whom she talked, whose services
she attended. The very mention of him presently became a boredom
to Fenwick. The new influence had no effect upon her jealousies and
discontents; but it re-enforced a natural asceticism, and weakened
whatever power she possessed of playing on a husband's passion.
Meanwhile, Fenwick was partly aware of her state of mind, and far
from happy himself. His conscience pricked him; but such prickings are
small help to love. Often he found himself guiltily brooding over Lord
Findon's tirades against the early marriages of artists. There was
a horrid truth in them. No doubt an artist should wait till his
circumstances were worthy of his gifts; and then marry a woman who
could understand and help him on.
Nor was even the child a binding influence. Fenwick in this visit
became for the first time a fond father. A certain magic in the little
Carrie flattered his vanity and excited his hopes. He drew her many
times, and prophesied confidently that she would be a beauty. But,
in his secret opinion, she was spoilt and mismanaged; and he talked a
good deal to Phoebe about her bringing-up, theorising and haranguing
in his usual way. Phoebe listened generally with impatience, resenting
interference with her special domain. And often, when she saw the
father and child together, a fresh and ugly misery would raise its
head. Would he in time set even Carrie against her--teach the child to
look down upon its mother?
One day he returned from Ambleside, pale and excited--bringing a
Manchester paper.
'Phoebe!' he called, from the gate.
Startled by something in his voice, Phoebe ran out to him.
'Phoebe, an awful thing's happened! Old Morrison's--dead! Look here!'
And he showed her a paragraph headed 'Defalcations and suicide.' It
described how Mr. James Morrison, the chief cashier of the Bartonbury
Bank, had committed suicide immediately after the discovery by the
bank authorities of large falsifications in the bank accounts. Mr.
Morrison had shot himself, leaving a statement acknowledging a long
course of fraudulent dealings with the funds entrusted to him,
and pleading with his employers for his wife and daughter. 'Great
sympathy,' said the _Guardian_ reporter, 'is felt in Bartonbury with
Mrs. Morrison, whose character has always been highly respected. But,
indeed, the whole family occupied a high position, and the shock to
the locality has been great.' On which followed particulars of the
frauds and a long report of the inquest.
Phoebe was struck with horror. She lingered over the paper,
commenting, exclaiming; while Fenwick sat staring into the fire, his
hands on his knees.
Presently she came to him and said in a low voice:
'And what about the money, John--the loan?'
'I am not obliged to return it in money,' he said, sharply.
'Well, the pictures?'
'That'll be all right. I must think about it. There'll be no hurry.'
'Did Mrs. Morrison know--about the loan?'
'I dare say. I never heard.'
'I suppose she and the daughter'll have nothing?'
'That doesn't follow at all. Very likely he'd settled something on
them, which can't be touched. A man like that generally does.'
'Poor things!' she said, shuddering. 'But, John--you'll pay it back to
Mrs. Morrison?'
'Of course I shall,' he said, impatiently--'in due time. But please
remember, Phoebe, that's my affair. Don't you talk of it--_to any
one_.'
He looked up to emphasise his words.
Phoebe flushed.
'I wasn't going to talk of it to any one,' she said, proudly, as she
moved away.
Presently he took up his hat again and went out, that he might be
alone with his thoughts. The rain had vanished; and a frosty sunshine
sparkled on the fells, on the red bracken and the foaming becks. He
took the mountain-path which led past the ghyll, up to the ridge
which separates Langdale from Grasmere and Easedale. Morrison's finely
wrinkled face, with its blue, complacent eyes and thin nose, hovered
before him--now as he remembered it in life, and now as he imagined it
in death. Hard fate! There had been an adventurous, poetic element in
Morrison--something beyond the ken of the ordinary Philistine--and
it had come to this. Fenwick remembered him among the drawings he had
collected. Real taste--real sense of beauty--combined no doubt with
the bargaining instinct and a natural love of chicanery. Moreover,
Fenwick believed that, so far as a grasping temper would allow, there
had been a genuine wish to help undiscovered talent. He thought of the
hand which had given him the check, and had a vision of it holding
the revolver--of the ghastly, solitary end. And no one had
guessed--unless, indeed, it were his wife? Perhaps that look of
hers--as of a creature hunted by secret fears--was now explained.
How common such things are!--and probably, so ran his thoughts,
will always be. We are all acting. Each man or woman carries this
potentiality of a double life--it is only a question of less or more.
Suddenly he coloured, as he saw _himself_ thus writ double--first
as he appeared to Madame de Pastourelles, and then as he appeared to
Phoebe. Masquerading was easy, it seemed; and conscience made little
fuss! Instantly, however, the inner man rebelled against the implied
comparison of himself with Morrison. An accidental concealment,
acquiesced in temporarily, for business reasons--what had that in
common with villainy like Morrison's? An awkward affair, no doubt; and
he had been a fool to slip into it. But in a few weeks he would put it
right--come what would.
As to the debt--he tried to fight against a feeling of
deliverance--but clearly he need be in no hurry to pay it. He had been
living in dread of Morrison's appearing in Bernard Street to claim
his bond--revealing Phoebe's existence perhaps to ears unprepared--and
laying greedy hands upon the 'Genius Loci.' It would have been hard to
keep him off it--unless Lord Findon had promptly come forward--and it
would have been odious to yield it to him. 'Now I shall take my time.'
Of course, ultimately, he would repay the money to Mrs. Morrison and
Bella. But better, even in their interests, to wait a while, till
there could be no question of any other claim to it.
So from horror he passed to a personal relief, of which he was rather
ashamed, and then again to a real uneasy pity for the wife and for
the vulgar daughter who had so bitterly resented his handling of her
charms. He remembered the note in which she had acknowledged the final
delivery of her portrait. In obedience to Morrison's suggestion, he
had kept it by him a few days; and then, either unable or proudly
unwilling to alter it, he had returned it to its owner. Whereupon a
furious note from Miss Bella, which--knowing that her father took no
account of her tempers--Fenwick had torn up with a laugh. It was clear
that she had heard of her father's invitation to him to 'beautify' it,
and when the picture reappeared unaltered she took it as a direct and
personal insult--a sign that he disliked her and meant to humiliate
her. It was an odd variety of the _spretae injuria formae_. Fenwick
had never been in the least penitent for his behaviour. The picture
was true, clever--and the best he could do. It was no painter's
business to endow Miss Bella with beauty, if she did not possess it.
As a piece of paint, the picture _had_ beauty--if she had only eyes to
find it out.
Poor girl!--what husband now would venture on such a termagant
wife?--penniless too, and disgraced! He would like to help her, and
her mother--for Morrison's sake. Stirred by a fleeting impulse, he
began to scheme how he might become their benefactor, as Morrison had
been his.
Then, as he raised his eyes from the path--with a rush of delight
he noticed the flood of afternoon sunlight pouring on the steep
fell-side, the sharp black shadows thrown by wall and tree, the
brilliance of the snow along the topmost ridge. He raced along,
casting the Morrisons out of his thoughts, forgetting everything
but the joy of atmosphere and light--the pleasure of his physical
strength. Near one of the highest crags he came upon a shepherd-boy
and his dog collecting some sheep. The collie ran hither and thither
with the marvellous shrewdness of his breed, circling, heading,
driving; the stampede of the sheep, as they fled before him, could be
heard along the fell. The sun played upon the flock, turning its dirty
grey to white, caught the little figure of the shepherd-boy, as he
stood shouting and waving, or glittered on the foaming stream beside
him. Purple shadows bathed the fell beyond--and on its bosom the
rustic scene emerged--a winter idyl.
Fenwick sat down upon a rock, ransacked his pockets for sketch-book
and paints, and began to sketch. When he had made his 'note,' he sat
lost a while in the pleasure of his own growing skill and sharpening
perceptions, and dreaming of future 'subjects.' A series of
'Westmoreland months,' illustrating the seasons among the fells and
the life of the dalesmen, ran through his mind. Nature appeared to his
exultant sense as a vast treasure-house stored for him only--a mine
inexhaustible offered to his craftsman's hand. For him the sweeping
hues, the intricate broideries--green or russet, red or purple--of
this winter world!--for him the delicacy of the snow, the pale azure
of the sky, the cloud-shadows, the white becks, the winding river in
the valley floor, the purple crags, the lovely accents of light and
shade, the hints of composition that wooed his eager eye. Who was it
that said 'Composition is the art of preserving the accidental look'?
Clever fellow!--there was the right thing said, for once! And so he
slipped into a reverie, which was really one of those moments--plastic
and fruitful--by which the artist makes good his kinship with 'the
great of old,' his right to his own place in the unending chain.
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.