'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.'
[Illustration: _Eugénie_]
'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. Eugénie, 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, Eugénie,' 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, Eugénie,' 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.
'Eugénie, 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.'
Eugénie'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 _entrée_ 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.