CHAPTER VIII

When Fenwick was alone, he walked to a chest of drawers in which he

kept a disorderly multitude of possessions, and took out a mingled

handful of letters, photographs, and sketches. Throwing them on a

table, he looked for and found a photograph of Phoebe with Carrie on

her knee, and a little sketch of Phoebe--one of the first ideas for

the 'Genius Loci.' He propped them up against some books, and looked

at them in a passion of triumph.

'It's all right, old woman--it's all right!' he murmured, smiling.

Then he spread out Lord Findon's cheque before the photograph, as

though he offered it at Phoebe's shrine.

Five hundred pounds! Well, it was only what his work was worth--what

he had every right to expect. None the less, the actual possession of

the money seemed to change his whole being. What would his old

father say? He gave a laugh, half-scornful, half-good-humoured, as

he admitted to himself that not even now--probably--would the old man

relent.

And Phoebe!--he imagined the happy wonder in her eyes--the rolling

away of all clouds between them. For six weeks now he had been a

veritable brute about letters! First, the strain of his work (and the

final wrestle with the 'Genius Loci,' including the misfortune of

the paints, had really been a terrible affair!)--then--he confessed

it--the intellectual excitement of the correspondence with Madame de

Pastourelles: between these two obsessions, or emotions, poor Phoebe

had fared ill.

'But you'll forgive me now, old girl--won't you?' he said, kissing her

photograph in an effusion that brought the moisture to his eyes. Then

he replaced it, with the sketches, in the drawer, forgetting in his

excitement the letters which lay scattered on the table.

What should he do now? Impossible to settle down to any work! The

North post had gone, but he might telegraph to Phoebe and write

later. Meanwhile he would go over to Chelsea, and see Cuningham and

Watson--repay Watson his debt!--or promise it at least for the morrow,

when he should have had time to cash the cheque--perhaps even--pompous

thought!--to open a banking account.

Suddenly a remembrance of Morrison crossed his mind and he stood a

moment with bent head--sobered--as though a ghost passed through the

room. Must he send a hundred pounds to Mrs. Morrison? He envisaged

it, unwillingly. Already his treasure seemed to be melting away. Time

enough, surely, for that. He and Phoebe had so much to do--to get a

house and furnish it, to pay pressing bills, to provide models for the

new picture! Why, it would be all gone directly!

He locked up the cheque safely, took his hat, and was just running

out when his eye fell on the three-hours' sketch of Madame de

Pastourelles, which had been the foundation of the portrait. He had

recently framed it, but had not yet found a place for it. It stood

on the floor, against the wall. He took it up, looked at it with

delight--by Jove! it was a brilliant thing!--and placing it on a small

easel, he arranged two lamps with moveable shades, which he often used

for drawing in the evening, so as to show it off. There was in him

more than a touch of theatricality, and as he stood back from this

little arrangement to study its effect, he was charmed with his own

fancy. There she queened it, in the centre of the room--his patron

saint, and Phoebe's. He knew well what he owed her--and Phoebe should

soon know. He was in a hurry to be off; but he could not make up his

mind--superstitiously--to put out the lights. So, after lingering a

few moments before her, in this tremor of imagination and of pleasure,

he left her thus, radiant and haloed!--the patron saint in charge.

On his way out he found an anxious landlady upon his path. Mrs. Gibbs

was soon made happy, so far as promises could do it, and in another

minute he was in a hansom speeding westward. It was nearly seven

o'clock on a mild April evening. The streets were full, the shops

still open. As he passed along Oxford Street, monarch it seemed of all

he beheld, his eyes fell on Peter Robinson's windows, glittering with

lights, and gay with spring ribbons, laces, and bright silks. An idea

rushed into his mind. Only the week before, on his first visit to

the new Chelsea quarters whither Cuningham and Watson had betaken

themselves, he had stumbled upon an odd little scene in the still

bare, ungarnished studio. Cuningham, who had been making money with

some rapidity of late, was displaying before the half-sympathetic,

half-sarcastic eyes of Watson, some presents that he was just sending

off to his mother and sisters in Scotland. A white dress, a lace

shawl, some handkerchiefs, a sash, a fan--there they lay, ranged on

brown paper on the studio floor. Cuningham was immensely proud of

them, and had been quite ready to show them to Fenwick also, fingering

their fresh folds, enlarging on their beauties. And Fenwick had

thought sorely of Phoebe as he watched Cuningham turn the pretty

things over. When had he ever been able to give her any feminine

gauds? Always this damned poverty, pressing them down!

But now--by Jove!--

He made the hansom stop, rushed into Peter Robinson's, bought a

dress-length of pink-and-white cotton, a blue sash for Carrie, and a

fichu of Indian muslin and lace. Thrusting his hand into his pocket

for money, he found only a sovereign--pretty nearly his last!--and

some silver. 'That's on account,' he said loftily, giving

the sovereign to the shopman; 'send the things home to-morrow

afternoon--to-morrow _afternoon_, mind--and I'll pay for them on

delivery.'

Then he jumped into his hansom again, and for sheer excitement told

the man to hurry, and he should have an extra shilling. On they sped

down Park Lane. The beds of many-coloured hyacinths in the Park shone

through the cheerful dusk; the street was crowded, and beyond, the

railings, the seats under the trees were full of idlers. There was a

sparkle of flowers in the windows of the Park Lane houses, together

with golden sunset touches on the glass; and pretty faces wrapt in

lace or gauze looked out from the hansoms as they passed him by. Again

the London of the rich laid hold on him; not threateningly this time,

but rather as though a door were opened and a hand beckoned. His own

upward progress had begun; he was no longer jealous of the people who

stood higher.

Dorchester House, Dudley House;--he looked at them with a

good-humoured tolerance. After all, London was pleasant; there

was some recognition of merit; and even something to be said for

Academies.

Then his picture began to hover before him. It was a big thing;

suppose it took him years? Well, there would be portraits to keep

him alive. Meanwhile it was true enough what he had said to Madame de

Pastourelles. As a _painter_ he had never been properly trained. His

values were uncertain; and he had none of the sureness of method which

men with half his talent had got out of study under a man like, say,

Carolus Duran.

Supposing now, he went to Paris for a year? No, no!--too many of

the Englishmen who went to Paris lost their individuality and became

third-rate Frenchmen. He would puzzle out things for himself--stick to

his own programme and ideas.

English poetic feeling, combined with as much of French technique as

it could assimilate--there was the line of progress. Not the technique

of these clever madmen--Manet, Degas, Monet, and the rest--with the

mean view of life of some, and the hideous surface of others. No!--but

the Barbizon men--and Mother Nature, first and foremost! Beauty too,

beauty of idea and selection--not mere beauty of paint, to which

everything else--line, modelling, construction--was to be vilely

sacrificed.

In his exaltation he began an imaginary article denouncing the

Impressionists, spouting it aloud as he went along; so that the

passers-by caught a word or two, through the traffic, now and then,

and turned to look, astonished, at the handsome, gesticulating fellow

in the hansom. Till he stopped abruptly, first to laugh at himself,

and then to chuckle over the thought of Phoebe, and the presents he

had just bought.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, at the very moment, probably, that Fenwick was in Peter

Robinson's shop, an omnibus coming from Euston passed through Russell

Square, and a woman, volubly advised by the conductor, alighted from

it at the corner of Bernard Street. She was very tall and slender; her

dress was dusty and travel-stained, and as she left the omnibus she

drew down a thickly spotted veil over a weary face. She walked quickly

down Bernard Street, looking at the numbers, and stopped before the

door of Fenwick's lodgings.

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

'Is Mr. Fenwick at home?'

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

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

into the hall.

'I've got a parcel for him'--she showed it under her arm. 'If you'll

allow me, I'll go up, and leave it in his room. It's important.'

'And what name, Miss--if I may ask?'

The visitor hesitated again--then she said, quietly:

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

'His wife!' cried the other, startled. 'Oh no; there is some

mistake--he hasn't got no wife!'

Phoebe drew herself up fiercely.

'You mustn't say such things to me, please! I _am_ Mr. Fenwick's

wife--and you must please show me his rooms.'

The emphasis and the passion with which these words were said left

Mrs. Gibbs gaping. She was a worthy woman, for whom the world--so far

as it could be studied from a Bernard Street lodging-house--had few

surprises; and a number of alternative conjectures ran through her

mind as she studied Phoebe's appearance.

'I'm sure, ma'am, I meant no offence,' she said, hurriedly; 'but, you

see, Mr. Fenwick has never--as you might say--'

'No,' said Phoebe, proudly, interrupting her; 'there was no reason why

he should speak of his private affairs. I have been in the country,

waiting till he could make a home for me. Now will you show me his

room?'

But Mrs. Gibbs did not move. She stood staring at Phoebe,

irresolute--thinking, no doubt, of the penny novelettes on which she

fed her leisure moments--till Phoebe impatiently drew a letter from

her pocket.

'I see you doubt what I say. Of course it is quite right that you

should be careful about admitting anybody to my husband's rooms in his

absence. But here is the last letter I received from him a week or two

ago.'

And, drawing it from its envelope, Phoebe showed first the signature,

'John Fenwick,' and then pointed to the address on the envelope--'Mrs.

John Fenwick, Green Nab Cottage, Great Langdale.'

'Well, I never!' said Mrs. Gibbs, staring still more widely, and

slowly retreating--'and he never lettin' me post a letter since he

came here--not once--no confidence nowhere--and I'm sure I have been

his good friend!'

Phoebe moved towards the staircase.

'Is Mr. Fenwick's room on the first floor or the second?'

Lost in protesting wonder, Mrs. Gibbs wheezily mounted the stairs far

enough to point to the door of Fenwick's room.

'Here's matches'--she fumbled in her apron-pocket. 'There's a candle

on the mantelpiece. Though I dare say he's left his lamp going. He

generally does--he don't take no account of what I says to him about

it.'

Phoebe passed on. Mrs. Gibbs called after her:

'So I'm to say "Mrs. Fenwick," am I, madam--when Mr. Fenwick gets

back?'

She stood leaning against the banisters, one hand behind her, looking

her visitor up and down with impertinent eyes.

'Certainly,' said Phoebe. Then she put her hand to her head, and said,

in a low, bewildered voice, 'At least, if I'm here--if he comes back

soon--but I can't stay.'

Mrs. Gibbs went downstairs again, consumed with conjecture and

excitement.

'Wife indeed!--that's what they all say--bound to. But of all the

cool young women! I hope I haven't done no harm, letting her into the

studio. But that letter and all--it was enough to make a jelly of you

things a-turnin' out like this. And me all a-tremblin', and givin'

in!'

* * * * *

Phoebe opened the studio door, noticed the bright light with

amazement, and shut the door behind her. She stood there, with her

back to it, sharply arrested, her eyes held by the spectacle before

her.

Close to her, in the centre of the freest portion of the floor, rose

the sketch of Eugénie de Pastourelles, lit by the two lamps, which

threw a concentrated glow upon the picture, and left all the rest of

the room shadowy. Nothing could have been more strange than the aspect

of the drawing, thus solitary, and brightly illuminated. Phoebe looked

at it in bewilderment, then round the littered studio. Beyond

the lamps, she saw the large new canvas, showing dimly the first

'laying-in' of its important subject. On the floor, and running round

the walls, was a thin line of sketches and canvases. The shallow,

semi-circular window at the further end of the room was not yet

curtained, and the branches of the still leafless plane-tree outside

showed darkly in the gathering dusk. The room, apart from its one spot

of light, struck bare and chill. Except for the 'throne' and a few

chairs, it contained scarcely any furniture. But, for Phoebe, it was

held by two presences. Everything around her spoke of John. Here

was his familiar belongings--his clothes that she had mended--his

books--his painting-things. And over John's room--her husband's

room--the woman in the picture held sway.

She slowly approached the drawing, while a sob mounted in her throat.

She was still in the grip of that violent half-hysterical impulse

which had possessed her since the evening of Bella Morrison's visit.

Nights almost sleepless, arrangements made and carried out in a tumult

of excitement, a sense of impending tragedy, accepted, and almost

welcomed, as the end of long weeks of doubt and self-torment, which

had become at last unbearable--into this fatal coil of actions and

impressions, the young wife had been sinking deeper and deeper with

each successive hour. She had neither friend nor adviser. Her father,

a weak inarticulate man, was dying; her stepmother hated her; and

she had long ceased to write to Miss Anna, because it was she who had

urged John to go to London! All sane inference and normal reasoning

were now indeed, and had been for some time, impossible to her.

Fenwick, possessed by the imaginations of his art, had had no

imagination--alack!--to spend upon his wife's case, and those morbid

processes of brain developed in her by solitude, and wounded love,

and mortified vanity. One hour with him!--one hour of love, scolding,

tears--would have saved them both. Alone, she was incapable of the

merest common sense. She came prepared to discover the worst--to find

evidence for all her fears. And for the worst she had elaborately laid

her plans. Only if it should turn out that she had been an unkind,

unreasonable wife, wrongly suspicious of her husband, was she

uncertain what she would do.

With dry, reddened eyes, she stared at the portrait of the woman

who must have stolen John from her. The mere arrangement of the room

seemed to her excited nerves a second outrage;--Mrs. Gibbs's reception

of her and all that it had implied, had been the first. What could

this strange illumination mean but that John's thoughts were taken

up with his sitter in an unusual and unlawful way? For weeks he could

leave his wife without a letter, a word of affection. But before going

out for an hour, he must needs light these lamps and place them so--in

order that this finicking lady should not feel herself deserted, that

he should still seem to be admiring and adoring her!

And after all, was she so pretty? Phoebe looked at the pale and subtle

face, at the hair and eyes so much less brilliant than her own, at the

thin figure, and the repose of the hands. Not pretty at all!--she said

to herself, violently--but selfish, and artful, and full, of course,

of all the tricks and wiles of 'society people.' _Didn't_ she know

that John was married? Phoebe scornfully refused to believe it. Such

women simply didn't care what stood in their way. If they took a

fancy to a man, what did it matter whether he were married or no?

The poor girl stood there, seething with passion, pluming herself on

a knowledge of the world which enabled her to 'see through' these

abominable great ladies.

But if she didn't know, if Bella Morrison's tale were true, then it

was John, on whom Phoebe's rage returned to fling itself with fresh

and maddened bitterness. That he should have thus utterly ignored

her in his new surroundings--have never said a word about her to the

landlady with whom he had lodged for nearly a year, or to any of his

new acquaintances and friends--should have deliberately hidden the

very fact of his marriage--could a husband give a wife any more

humiliating proof of his indifference, or of her insignificance in his

life?

[Illustration: _Phoebe's Rival_]

Meanwhile the picture possessed her more and more. Closer and closer

she came, her chest heaving. Was it not as though John had foreseen

her coming, her complaints--and had prepared for her this silent, this

cruel answer? The big picture of course was gone in to the Academy,

but his wife, if she came, was to see that he could not do without

Madame de Pastourelles. So the sketch, with which he had finished,

really, months ago, was dragged out, and made queen of all it

surveyed, because, no doubt, he was miserable at parting with the

picture. Ingenuity and self-torment grew with what they fed on.

The burning lamps--the solitude--the graceful woman, with her slim,

fine-lady hands--with every moment they became in Phoebe's eyes a more

bitter, a more significant offence. Presently, in her foolish agony,

she did actually believe that he had thought she might descend upon

him, provoked beyond bearing by his silence and neglect, and had

carefully planned this infamous way of telling her--what he wanted her

to know!

Waves of unreasoning passion swept across her. The gentleness and

docility of her youth had been perhaps mechanical, half-conscious; she

came in truth of a hard stock, capable of violence. She put her hands

to her face, trembled, and turned away. She began to be afraid of

herself.

With a restless hand, as though she caught hold of anything that might

distract her from the picture, she began to rummage among the papers

on the table. Suddenly her attention pounced upon them; she bent her

head, took up some and carried them to the lamp. Five or six large

envelopes, bearing a crest and monogram, addressed in a clear hand,

and containing each a long letter--she found a packet, of these, tied

round with string. Throwing off her hat and veil, she sat down under

the lamp, and, without an instant's demur, began to read.

First, indeed, she turned to the signature--'Eugénie de Pastourelles.'

Why, pray, should Madame de Pastourelles write these long letters to

another woman's husband? The hands which held them shook with anger

and misery. These pages filled with discussion of art and books, which

had seemed to the woman of European culture, and French associations,

so natural to write, which had been written as the harmless and kindly

occupation of an idle hour, with the shades of Madame de Sévigné and

Madame du Deffand standing by, were messengers of terror and despair

to this ignorant and yet sentimental Westmoreland girl. Why should

they be written at all to _her_ John, her own husband? No nice woman

that she had ever known wrote long letters to married men. What could

have been the object of writing these pages and pages about John's

pictures and John's prospects?--affected stuff!--and what was the

meaning of these appointments to see pictures, these invitations to

St. James's Square, these thanks 'for the kind and charming things you

say'--above all, of the constant and crying omission, throughout these

delicately written sheets, of any mention whatever of Fenwick's wife

and child? But of course for the two correspondents whom these letters

implied, such dull, stupid creatures did not exist.

Ah! but wait a moment. Her eye caught a sentence--then fastened

greedily on the following passage:

'I hardly like to repeat what I said the other day--you will think

me a very intrusive person!--but when you talk of melancholy and

loneliness, of feeling the strain of competition, and the nervous

burden of work, so that you are sometimes tempted to give it up

altogether, I can't help repeating that some day a wife will save you

from all this. I have seen so much of artists!--they of all men

should marry. It is quite a delusion to suppose that art--whatever

art means--is enough for them, or for anybody. Imagination is the most

exhausting of all professions!--and if we women are good for nothing

else we _can_ be cushions--we can "stop a chink and keep the wind

away." So pay no attention, please, to my father's diatribes. You will

very soon be prosperous--sooner perhaps than you think. A _home_ is

what you want.'

Kind and simple sentences!--written so innocently and interpreted

so perversely! And yet the fierce and blind bewilderment with which

Phoebe read or misread them was natural enough. She never doubted for

a moment but that the bad woman who wrote them meant to offer herself

to John. She was separated from her husband, John had said, declaring

of course that it was not her fault. As if any one could be sure

of that! But, at any rate, if she were separated, she might be

divorced--some time. And then--_then_!--_she_ would be so obliging as

to make a 'cushion,' and a home, for Phoebe Fenwick's husband! As to

his not being grand enough for her, that was all nonsense. When a man

was as clever as John, he was anybodies equal--one saw that every day.

No, this creature would make people buy his pictures--she would push

him on--and after a while--

With a morbid and devastating rapidity, a whole scheme, by which the

woman before her might possess herself of John, unfolded itself in

Phoebe's furious mind.

Yet, surely, it would only want one word from her--from her, his

wife?--

She felt herself trembling. Her limbs began to sink under her. She

dropped upon a chair, sobbing. What was the use of fighting, of

protesting? John had forgotten her--John's heart had grown cold to

her. She might dismay and trample on her rival--how would that give

her back her husband?

Oh, how could he, how _could_ he have treated her so! 'I know I

was ill-tempered and cross, John,--I couldn't write letters like

that--but I did, _did_ love you--you know, you know--I did!'

It seemed as though she twined her arms round him, and he sat rigid as

a stone, with a hard, contemptuous mouth. A lonely agony, a blackness

of despair, seized on Phoebe, as she crouched there, the letters on

her lap, her hands hanging, her beautiful eyes, blurred with tears and

sleeplessness, fixed on the picture. What she felt was absurd; but how

many tragedies--aye, the deepest--are at bottom ridiculous! She had

lost him; he cared no more for her; he had passed into another world

out of her ken; and what was to become of her?

She started up, goaded by a blind instinct of revenge, seizing she

scarcely knew what. On the table lay a palette, laden with some dark

pigment with which Fenwick had just been sketching in part of his new

picture. In a pot beside it were brushes.

She caught up a large brush, dipped it in the paint, and going to

the picture--panting and crimson--she daubed it from top to bottom,

blotting out the eyes, the mouth, the beautiful outline of the

head--above all, the hands, whose delicate whiteness specially enraged

her.

When the work of wreck was done, she stood a moment gazing at it.

Then, violently, she looked for writing-paper. She could see none:

but there was an unused half-sheet at the back of one of Madame de

Pastourelles' letters, and she roughly tore it off. Making use of a

book held on her knee, and finding the pen and ink with which, only

half an hour before, Lord Findon had written his cheque, she began to

write:

Good-bye, John,--I have found out all I want to know, and you will

never see me again. I will never be a burden on a man who is ashamed

of me, and has behaved as though I were dead. It is no good wasting

words--you know it's true. Perhaps you may think I have no right to

take Carrie. But I can't be alone--and, after all, she is more mine

than yours. Don't trouble about me. I have some money, and I mean to

support myself and Carrie. It was only last night this idea came to

me, though it was the night before that--Never mind--I can't write

about it, it would take too long, and it doesn't really matter to

either of us. I don't want you to find me here; you might persuade me

to come back to you, and I know it would be for the misery of both of

us. What was I saying?--oh, the money--Well, last night, a cousin of

mine, from Keswick, perhaps you remember him--Freddie Tolson--came

to see me. Father sent him. You didn't believe what I told you about

father--you thought I was making up. You'll be sorry, I think, when

you read this, for by now, most likely, father has passed away.

Freddie told me the doctor had given him up, and he was very near

going. But he sent Freddie to me, with some money he had really left

me in his will--only he was afraid Mrs. Gibson would get hold of it,

and never let me have it. So he sent it by hand, with his love and

blessing--and Freddie was to say he was sorry you had left me so long,

and he didn't think it was a right thing for a man to do. Never mind

how much it was. It's my very own, and I'm glad it comes from my

father, and not from you. I have my embroidery money too, and I shall

be all right--though very, very miserable. The idea of what I would do

came into my head while I was talking with Freddie--and since I came

into this room, I have made up my mind. I'm sorry I can't set you free

altogether. There's Carrie to think of, and I must live for her sake.

But at any rate you won't have to look after me, or to feel that I'm

disgracing you with the smart people who have taken you up--

Don't look for us, for you will never, never find us.

Good-bye, John. Do you remember that night in the ghyll, and all the

things we said?

I've spoiled your sketch--I couldn't help it--and I'm not sorry--not

yet, anyway. She has everything in the world, and I had nothing--but

you. Why did you leave the lamps?--just to mock at me?

Good-bye. I have left my wedding-ring on this paper. You'll know I

couldn't do that, if I ever meant to come back!

She rose, and moved a small table in front of the ruined picture.

On it she placed, first, the parcel she had brought with her, which

contained papers and small personal possessions belonging to her

husband; in front of the packet she laid the five letters of Madame de

Pastourelles, her own letter in an envelope addressed to him, and upon

it her ring.

Then she put on her hat and veil, tying the veil closely round her

face, and, with one last look round the room, she crept to the door

and unlocked it. So quietly did she descend the stairs that Mrs.

Gibbs, who was listening sharply, with the kitchen door open, for any

sound of her departure, heard nothing. The outer door opened and shut

without the smallest noise, and the slender, veiled figure was quickly

lost in the darkness and the traffic of the street.

PART III

AFTER TWELVE YEARS

'Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,

Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.'

CHAPTER IX

'Quand vous arriverez au troisième, monsieur, montez, montez toujours!

Vous trouverez un petit escalier tournant, en bois. Ça vous conduira à

l'atelier.'

Thus advised by the wife of the concierge, Fenwick crossed the

courtyard of an old house in the Rue du Bac, looked up a moment at the

sober and distinguished charm of its architecture, at the corniced,

many-paned windows, so solidly framed and plentifully lined in white,

upon the stone walls, and the high roof, with its lucarne windows just

touched with classical decoration; each line and tint contributing

to a seemly, restrained whole, as of something much worn by time, yet

merely enhanced thereby, something deliberately built, moreover, to

stand the years, and abide the judgement of posterity. The house in

Saint-Simon's day had belonged to one of those newly ennobled dukes,

his contemporaries and would-be brethren, whose monstrous claims to

rank with himself and the other real magnificences among the _ducs

et pairs de France_ drove him to distraction. It was now let out to a

multitude of families, who began downstairs in affluence and ended

in the genteel or artistic penury of the garrets. The first floor was

occupied by a deputy and ex-minister, one of the leaders of the Centre

Gauche--in the garrets it was possible for a _rapin_ to find a bedroom

at sixteen francs a month. But it was needful that he should be

a seemly _rapin_, orderly and quietly ambitious, like the house,

otherwise he would not have been long suffered within its tranquil and

self-respecting walls.

Fenwick climbed and climbed, discovered the little wooden staircase,

and still climbed. At the very top he found a long and narrow

corridor, along which he groped in darkness. Suddenly, at the end, a

door opened, and a figure appeared on the threshold.

'Fenwick!--that you? All right!--no steps! The floor was left _au

naturel_ about 1680--but you won't come to grief.'

Fenwick arrived at the open door, and Dick Watson drew him into the

large studio beyond. Fenwick looked round him in astonishment. The

room was a huge _grenier_ in the roof of the old house, roughly

adapted to the purposes of a studio. A large window to the north had

been put in, and the walls had been rudely plastered. But all the

blasts of heaven seemed still to blow through them, and through the

chinks or under the eaves of the roof; while in the middle of the

floor a pool of water, the remains of a recent heavy shower, testified

to the ease with which the weather could enter if it chose.

'I say'--said Fenwick, pointing to the water--'can you stand this kind

of thing?'

Watson shivered.

'Not in this weather. I'm off next week. In the summer it's pleasant

enough. Well, it's deuced lucky I caught sight of you at that show

yesterday! How are you? I believe it's nearly two years since we met

last.'

'I'm all right,' said Fenwick, accepting a shaky seat and a cigarette.

Watson lighted a fresh one for himself, and then with arms akimbo

surveyed his visitor.

'I've seen you look better. What's the matter? Have you been working

through the summer in London?'

'I'm all right,' Fenwick repeated; then, with a little grimace--'or

I should be, if I could pay my way, and paint the things I want to

paint.'

He looked up.

'Well, why don't you?'

'Because--somehow--one has to live.'

Watson climbed on to his high stool, still observing his visitor.

For a good many years now, Fenwick had been always well and carefully

dressed--an evident Londoner, accustomed to drawing-rooms and

frequenting expensive tailors. But to-day there was something in his

tired, dishevelled look, and comparatively shabby coat, which reminded

Watson of years long gone by--of a studio in Bernard Street, and a

broad-browed, handsome fellow, with queer manners and a North-Country

accent. As to good looks, Fenwick's face and head were now far finer

than they had been in first youth; Watson's critical eye took note of

it. The hair, touched lightly with grey, had receded slightly on the

temples, and the more ample brow, heavily lined, gave a nobler

shelter than of old to the still astonishing vivacity of the eyes.

The carriage of the head, too, was prouder and more assured. Fenwick,

indeed, as far as years went, was, as Watson knew, in the very prime

of life. Nevertheless, there was in his aspect, as he sat there, a

prophetic note of discouragement, of ebbing vitality which startled

his friend.

'I say,' said Watson, abruptly, 'you've been over-doing it. Have you

made it up with the Academy?'

Fenwick laughed.

'Goodness, no!'

'Where have you been exhibiting this year?'

'At the gallery I always take. And I sent some things to the

Grosvenor.'

Watson shook his head.

'It's an awful pity. You'd got in--you should have stayed in--and made

yourself a power.'

Fenwick's attitude stiffened.

'I have never regretted it for a single hour--except that the scene

itself was ridiculous.'

Watson knew very well to what he referred. Some two years before,

it had been the nine days wonder of artistic London. Fenwick, then a

newly elected Associate of the Academy, and at what seemed to be the

height of his first success as an artist, had sent in a picture to

the Spring Exhibition which appeared to the Hanging Committee of

the moment a perfunctory thing. They gave it a bad place, and an

Academician told Fenwick what had happened. He rushed to Burlington

House, tore down his picture from the wall, stormed at the astonished

members of the Hanging Committee, carried off his property, and vowed

that he would resign his Associateship. He was indeed called upon to

do so; and he signalised his withdrawal by a furious letter to the

_Times_ in which the rancours, grievances, and contempts of ten

chequered and ambitious years found full and rhetorical expression.

The letter naturally made a breach between the writer and England's

official art. Watson, who was abroad when the whole thing happened,

had heard of it with mingled feelings. 'It will either make him--or

finish him!' was his own judgement, founded on a fairly exhaustive

knowledge of John Fenwick; and he had waited anxiously for results.

So far no details had reached him since. Fenwick seemed to be still

exhibiting, still writing to the papers, and, as far as he knew, still

selling. But the aspect of the man before him was not an aspect of

prosperity.

Watson, however, having started a subject which he well knew to be

interminable, would instantly have liked to escape from it. He was

himself nervous, critical, and easily bored. He did not know what he

should do with Fenwick's outpourings when he had listened to them.

But Fenwick had come over--charged--and Watson had touched the spring.

He sat there, smoking and declaiming, his eyes blazing, one hand

playing with Watson's favourite dog, an Aberdeen terrier who was

softly smelling and pushing against him. All that litany of mockery

and bitterness, which the Comic Spirit kindles afresh on the lips of

each rising generation, only to quench it again on the lips of those

who 'arrive,' flowed from him copiously. He was the age indeed for

'arrival,' when, as so often happens, the man of middle life, appeased

by success, dismisses the revolts of his youth. But this was still the

language--and the fierce language--of revolt! The decadence of English

art and artists, the miserable commercialism of the Academy, the

absence of any first-rate teaching, of any commanding traditions, of

any 'school' worth the name--the vulgarity of the public, from royalty

downward, the snobbery of the rich world in its dealings with art:

all these jeremiads which he recited were much the same--_mutatis

mutandis_--as those with which, half a century before, poor Benjamin

Haydon had filled the 'autobiography' which is one of the capital

'documents' of the artistic life. This very resemblance, indeed,

occurred to Watson.

'Upon my word,' he said, with a queer smile, 'you remind me of

Haydon.'

Fenwick started; with an impatient movement he pushed away the dog,

who whimpered.

'Oh, come--I hope it's not as bad as that,' he said, roughly.

Watson sharply regretted his remark. Through the minds of both there

passed the same image of Haydon lying dead by his own hand beneath the

vast pictures that no one would buy.

'Why you talk like this, I'm sure I don't know,' Watson said, with an

impatient laugh. 'I'm always seeing your name in the papers. You have

a great reputation, and I don't expect the Academy matters to your

_clientèle_.'

Fenwick shook his head. 'I haven't sold a picture for more than a

year--except a beastly portrait--one of the worst things I ever did.'

'That's bad,' said Watson. 'Of course that's my state--perennially!

But you're not used to it.'

Fenwick said nothing, and the delicate sensibility of the other

instantly divined that, friends as they were, the comparison with

himself had not been at all welcome to his companion. And, indeed, at

the time when Watson left England to begin the wandering life he had

been leading for some three years, it would have been nothing less

than grotesque. Fenwick was then triumphant, in what, it was supposed,

would be his 'first period'--that 'young man's success,' brilliant,

contested, noisy, from which, indeed, many roads lead, to many goals;

but with him, at that time, the omens were of the best. His pictures

were always among the events of the spring exhibitions; he had

gathered round him a group of enthusiastic pupils who worked in the

studio of the new house; and he had already received a good many

honours at the hands of foreign juries. He was known to be on the

threshold of the Academy, and to be making, besides, a good deal

of money. 'Society' had first admitted him as the _protégé_ of Lord

Findon and the friend of Madame de Pastourelles, and was now ready to

amuse itself with him, independently, as a genius and an 'eccentric.'

He had many enemies; but so have all 'fighters.' The critics spoke

severely of certain radical defects in his work, due to insufficiency

of early training; defects which time might correct--or stereotype.

But the critics 'must be talking'; and the public, under the spell of

a new and daring talent, appeared to take no notice.

As these recollections passed through Watson's mind, another

expression showed itself in the hollow-cheeked, massive face. It was

the look of the visionary who sees in events the strange verification

of obscure instincts and divinations in which he himself perhaps

has only half-believed. He and Fenwick had been friends now--in some

respects, close friends--for a good many years. Of late, they had

met rarely, and neither of the men was a good correspondent. But the

friendship, the strong sense of congruity and liking, persisted. It

had sprung, originally--unexpectedly enough--from that loan made to

Fenwick in his days of stress and poverty; and there were many who

prophesied that it would come to an end with Fenwick's success.

Watson had no interest in and small tolerance for the prosperous. His

connexion with Cuningham, in spite of occasional letters, had dropped

long ago, ever since that clever Scotch painter had shown himself

finally possessed of the usual Scotch power to capture London and a

competence. But his liking for Fenwick had never wavered through all

the blare of Fenwick's success.

Was it that the older man with his melancholy Celtic instinct had

divined from the first that he and Fenwick were in truth of the same

race--the race of the [Greek: dusammoroi]--the ill-fated--those for

whom happiness is not written in the stars?

He sat staring at his companion, his eyes dreamily intent, taking

note of the restless depression of the man before him, and of the

disagreeable facts which emerged from his talk--declining reputation,

money difficulties, and--last and most serious--a new doubt of himself

and his powers, which Watson never remembered to have noticed in him

before.

'But you must have made a great deal of money!' he said to him once,

interrupting him.

Fenwick turned away uneasily.

'So I did. But there was the new house and studio. I have been trying

to sell the house. But it's a white elephant.'

'Building's the deuce,' said Watson, gloomily. 'It ruins everybody

from Louis Quatorze and Walter Scott downward. Have no barns--that's

my principle--and then you can't pull 'em down and build greater! But,

you know, it's all great nonsense, your talking like this! You're as

clever as ever--cleverer. You've only got to _paint_--and it'll be

all right. But, of course, if you will spend all your time in writing

letters to the papers, and pamphlets, and that kind of thing--well!--'

He shrugged his shoulders.

Fenwick took the remark good-temperedly. 'I've finished three large

pictures in eight months--if only somebody would buy 'em. And I'm in

Paris now'--he hesitated a moment--'on a painting job. I've promised

C----' (he named a well-known actor-manager in London) 'to help

him with the production of a new play! I never did such a thing

before--but--'

He looked up uncertainly, his colour rising.

'What?--scenery for _The Queen's Necklace?_ I've seen the puffs in the

papers. Why not? Hope he pays well. Then you're going to Versailles,

of course?'

Fenwick replied that he had taken some rooms at the Hôtel des

Réservoirs and must make some sketches in the palace; also in the

park, and the Trianon garden. Then he rose abruptly.

'Well, and what have you been after?'

'The same old _machines_,' said Watson, tranquilly, pointing to a

couple of large canvases. 'My subjects are no gayer than they used to

be. Except that--ah, yes--I forgot--I had a return upon myself this

spring--and set to work on some Bacchantes.' He stopped, and picked up

a canvas which was standing with its face to the wall.

It represented a dance of Bacchantes. Fenwick looked at it in silence.

Watson replaced it with a patient sigh. 'Theophile Gautier said

of some other fellow's Bacchantes that they had got drunk on

"philosophical" wine. He might, I fear, have said it of mine. Anyway,

I felt I was not made for Bacchantes--so I fell back on the usual

thing.'

And he showed an 'Execution of a Witch'--filled with gruesome and

poignant detail--excellent in some of its ideas and single figures,

but as a whole crude, horrible, and weak.

'I don't improve,' he said, abruptly, turning away--'but it keeps me

contented--that and my animals. Anatole!--_vaurien_!--_où es-tu_?'

A small monkey, in a red jacket, who had been sitting unnoticed on

the top of a cabinet since Fenwick's entrance, clattered down to the

floor, and, running to his master, was soon sitting on his shoulder,

staring at Fenwick with a pair of grave, soft eyes. Watson caressed

him;--and then pointed to a wicker cage outside the window in which a

pigeon was pecking at some Indian-corn. The cage door was wide open.

'She comes to feed here by day. In the morning I wake up and hear her

there--the darling! In the evening she spreads her wings, and I watch

her fly toward Saint-Cloud. No doubt the jade keeps a family there.

Oh! some day she'll go--like the rest of them--and I shall miss her

abominably.'

'You seem also to be favoured by mice?' said Fenwick, idly looking at

two traps on the floor beside him.

Watson smiled.

'My _femme de service_ sets those traps every night. She says we are

overrun--the greatest nonsense! As if there wasn't enough for all of

us! Then in the night--I sleep there, you see, behind that screen--I

wake, and hear some little fool squeaking. So I get up, and take the

trap downstairs in the dark--right away down--to the first floor. And

there I let the mouse go--those folk down there are rich enough to

keep him. The only drawback is that my old woman is so cross in the

morning, and she spends her life thinking of new traps. _Ah, ben!--Je

la laisse faire!_'

'And this place suits you?'

'Admirably--till the cold comes. Then I march. I must have the sun.'

He shivered again. Fenwick, struck by something in his tone, looked at

him more closely.

'How are you, by the way?' he asked, repentantly, 'I ought to have

inquired before. You mentioned consulting some big man here. What did

he say to you?'

'Oh, that I am phthisical, and must take care,' said Watson,

carelessly--'that's no news. Ah! by the way'--he hurried the change of

subject--'you know, of course, that Lord Findon and madame are to be

at Versailles?'

'They will be there to-night,' said Fenwick, after a moment.

'Ah! to-night. Then you meet them?'

'I shall see them, of course.'

'What a blessed thing to be rid of that fellow!--What's she been doing

since?'

Fenwick replied that since the death of her husband--about a year

before this date--Madame de Pastourelles, worn out with nursing, had

been pursuing health--in Egypt and elsewhere. Her father, stepmother,

and sister had been travelling with her. The sister and she were to

stay at Versailles till Christmas. It was a place for which Madame de

Pastourelles had an old affection.

'And I suppose you know that you will find the Welbys there too?'

Fenwick made a startled movement.

'The _Welbys_? How did you hear that?'

'I had my usual half-yearly letter from Cuningham yesterday. He's

the fellow for telling you the news. Welby has begun a big picture of

Marie Antoinette, at Trianon, and has taken a studio in Versailles for

the winter.'

Fenwick turned away and began to pace the bare floor of the studio.

'I didn't know,' he said, evidently discomposed.

'By the way, I have often meant to ask you. I trust he wasn't mixed

up in the "hanging" affair?' said Watson, with a quick look at his

companion.

'He was ill the day it was done, but in my opinion he behaved in an

extremely mean and ungenerous manner afterwards!' exclaimed Fenwick,

suddenly flushing from brow to chin.

'You mean he didn't support you?'

'He shilly-shallied. He thought--I have very good reason to

believe--that I had been badly treated--that there was personal

feeling in the matter--resentment of things that I had written--and so

on but he would never come out into the open and say so!'

The excitement with which Fenwick spoke made it evident that Watson

had touched an extremely sore point.

Watson was silent a little, lit another cigarette, and then said, with

a smile:

'Poor Madame de Pastourelles!'

Fenwick looked up with irritation.

'What on earth do you mean?'

'I am wondering how she kept the peace between you--her two great

friends.'

'She sees very little of Welby.'

'Ah! Since when?'

'Oh! for a long time. Of course they meet occasionally--'

A big, kindly smile flickered over Watson's face.

'What--was little Madame Welby jealous?'

'She would be a great goose if she were,' said Fenwick, turning aside

to look through some sketches that lay on a chair beside him.

Watson shook his head, still smiling, then remarked:

'By the way, I understand she has become quite an invalid.'

'Has she?' said Fenwick. 'I know nothing of them.'

Watson began to talk of other things. But as he and Fenwick discussed

the pictures on the easels, or Fenwick's own projects, as they talked

of Manet, and Zola's 'L'Oeuvre,' and the Goncourts, as they compared

the state of painting in London and Paris, employing all the latest

phrases, both of them astonishingly well informed as to men and

tendencies--Watson as an outsider, Fenwick as a passionate partisan,

loathing the Impressionists, denouncing a show of Manet and Renoir

recently opened at a Paris dealer's--Watson's inner mind was really

full of Madame de Pastourelles, and that _salon_ of hers in the

old Westminster house in Dean's Yard, of which during so many years

Fenwick had made one of the principal figures. It should perhaps

be explained that some two years after Fenwick's arrival in London,

Madame de Pastourelles had thought it best to establish a little

_ménage_ of her own, distinct from the household in St. James's

Square. Her friends and her stepmother's were not always congenial to

each other; and in many ways both Lord Findon and she were the happier

for the change. Her small panelled rooms had quickly become the

meeting-place of a remarkable and attractive society. Watson himself,

indeed, had never been an _habitué_ of that or any other drawing-room.

As he had told Lord Findon long ago, he was not for the world, nor the

world for him. But whereas his volatile lordship could never draw him

from his cell, Lord Findon's daughter was sometimes irresistible, and

Watson's great shaggy head and ungainly person was occasionally to

be seen beside her fire, in the years before he left London. He had,

therefore, been a spectator of Fenwick's gradual transformation at the

hands of a charming woman; he had marked the stages of the process;

and he knew well that it had never excited a shadow of scandal in the

minds of any reasonable being. All the same, the deep store of hidden

sentiment which this queer idealist possessed had been touched by

the position. The young woman isolated and childless, so charming,

so nobly sincere, so full of heart--was she to be always Ariadne,

and forsaken? The man--excitable, nervous, selfish, yet, in truth,

affectionate and dependent--what folly, or what chivalry kept him

unmarried? Ever since the death of M. le Comte de Pastourelles, dreams

concerning these two people had been stirring in the brain of Watson,

and these dreams spoke now in the dark eyes he bent on Fenwick.

Presently, Fenwick began to talk gloomily of the death of his old

Bernard Street landlady, who had become his housekeeper and factotum

in the new Chelsea house and studio, which he had built for himself.

'I don't know what I shall do without her. For eleven years I've never

paid a bill or engaged a servant for myself. She's done everything.

Every morning she used to give me my pocket-money for the day.'

'The remedy, after all, is simple,' said Watson, with a sudden turn of

the head.

Fenwick raised his eyebrows interrogatively.

'I imagine that what Mrs. Gibbs did well, "Mrs. Fenwick" might do even

better--_n'est-ce pas?_'

Fenwick sprang up.

'Mrs.--?' he repeated, vaguely.

He stood a moment bending over Watson--his eyes staring, his mouth

open. Then he controlled himself.

'You talk as though she were round the corner,' he said, turning away

and buttoning his coat afresh. 'But please understand, my dear fellow,

that she is not round the corner, nor likely to be.'

He spoke with a hard emphasis, smiling, and slapping the breast of his

coat.

Watson looked at him and said no more.

Fenwick walked rapidly along the Quai Voltaire, crossed the Pont Neuf,

and found himself inside the enclosure of the Louvre. Twenty minutes

to four. Some impulse, born of the seething thoughts within, took him

to the door of the Musée. He mounted rapidly, and found himself in the

large room devoted to the modern French school.

He went straight to two pictures by Hippolyte Flandrin--'Madame Vinet'

and 'Portrait de Jeune Fille.' When, in the first year of his London

life, he had made his hurried visits to Paris, these pictures, then in

the Luxembourg, had been among those which had most vitally affected

him. The beautiful surface and keeping which connected them with

the old tradition, together with the modern spirit, the trenchant

simplicity of their portraiture, had sent him back--eager and

palpitating--to his own work on the picture of Madame de Pastourelles,

or on the last stages of the 'Genius Loci.'

He looked into them now, sharply, intently, his heart beating to

suffocation under the stress of that startling phrase of Watson's.

Still tremulous--as one in flight--he made himself recognise certain

details of drawing and modelling in 'Madame Vinet' which had given him

hints for the improvement of the portrait of Phoebe; and, again,

the ease with which the head moves on its shoulders, its relief, its

refinement--how he had toiled to rival them in his picture of Madame

Eugénie!--translating as he best could the cold and disagreeable

colour of the Ingres school into the richer and more romantic handling

of an art influenced by Watts and Burne-Jones!

Then he passed on to the young girl's portrait--the girl in white

muslin, turning away her graceful head from the spectator, and showing

thereby the delicacy of her profile, the wealth of her brown hair, the

beauty of her young and virginal form. Suddenly, his eyes clouded;

he turned abruptly away, left the room without looking at another

picture, and was soon hurrying through the crowded streets northward

towards the Gare Saint-Lazare.

Carrie!--his child!--his own flesh and blood. His heart cried out for

her. Watson's _brusquerie_--the young girl of the picture--and his

own bitter and disappointed temper--they had all their share in the

emotion which possessed him.

The child whom he remembered, with her mother's eyes, and that light

mutinous charm, which was not Phoebe's--why, she was now seventeen!--a

little younger--only a little younger, than the girl of the portrait.

His longing fancy pursued her--saw her a wild, pretty, laughing thing,

nearly a woman--and then fell back passionately on a more familiar

image!--of the baby at his knee, open-mouthed, her pink lips rounded

for the tidbit just about to descend upon them, her sweet and

sparkling eyes fixed upon her father.

'My God!--where are they?--are they alive, or dead? How

cruel--_cruel_!' And he ground his teeth in one of those paroxysms

which every now and then, at long intervals, represented the return

upon him of the indestructible past. Often for months together it

meant little or nothing to him, but the dull weight of his secret;

twelve years had inevitably deadened feeling, and filled the mind with

fresh interests, while of late the tumult of his Academy and Press

campaign had silenced the stealing, distant voices. Yet there were

moments when all was as fresh and poignant as it had been in the first

hours, when Phoebe, with her golden head and her light, springing

step, seemed to move beside him, and he felt the drag of a small hand

in his.

He stiffened himself--like one attacked. The ghosts of dead hours came

trooping and eddying round him, like the autumn leaves that had begun

to strew the Paris streets--all the scenes of that first ghastly week

when he had hunted in desperation for his lost wife and child. His

joyous return from Chelsea, on the evening of his good-fortune--Mrs.

Gibbs's half-sulky message on the door-step that 'Mrs. Fenwick' was

in the studio--his wild rush upstairs--the empty room, the letter, the

ring:--his hurried journey North--the arrival at the Langdale cottage,

only to find on the table of the deserted parlour another letter from

Phoebe, written before she left Westmoreland, in the prevision that

he would come there in search of a clue, and urging him for both their

sakes to make no scandal, no hue and cry, to accept the inevitable,

and let her go in peace--his interview with the servant Daisy, who had

waited with the child in an hotel close to Euston, while Phoebe went

to Bernard Street, and had been sent back to the North immediately

after Phoebe's return, without the smallest indication of what

her mistress meant to do--his fruitless consultations with Anna

Mason!--the whole dismal story rose before him, as it was wont to do

periodically, filling him with the same rage, the same grief, the same

fierce and inextinguishable resentment.

Phoebe had destroyed his life. She had not only robbed him of herself

and of their child, she had forced him into an acted lie which had

poisoned his whole existence, and, first and foremost, that gracious

and beautiful friendship which was all, save his art, that she had

left him. For, in the first moments of his despair and horror, he had

remembered what it would mean to Madame de Pastourelles, did she ever

know that his mad wife had left him out of jealousy of her. He was

not slow to imagine the effect of Phoebe's action on that proud, pure

nature and sensitive conscience; and he knew what she and her

father must feel towards the deception which had led her into such a

position, and made such a tragedy possible. He foresaw her recoil, her

bitter condemnation, the final ruin of the relation between himself

and her; and yet more than these did he dread her pain, her causeless,

innocent pain. To stab the hand which had helped him, the heart which

had already suffered so much, in the very first hours of his own shock

and misery, he had shrunk from this, he had tried his best to protect

Madame de Pastourelles.

Hence the compact with his landlady, by which he had in fact bribed

her to silence, and transformed her into a devoted servant always

under his eye; hence the various means by which he had found it

possible to quiet the members of his own family and of Phoebe's--needy

folk, most of them, cannily unwilling to make an enemy of a man who

was likely, so they understood, to be rich, and who already showed a

helpful disposition. When once he had convinced himself that he had

no clue, and that Phoebe had disappeared, it had not been difficult

indeed to keep his secret, and to hide the traces of his own

wrong-doing, his own share in the catastrophe. Between Phoebe's world

and the world in which he was now to live, there were few or no links.

Bella Morrison might have supplied one. But she and her mother

had moved to Guernsey, and a year after Phoebe's flight Fenwick

ascertained that old Mrs. Morrison was dead, and that Bella had gone

to South America as companion to a lady.

So in an incredibly short time the crisis was over. The last phase was

connected with the cousin--Freddy Tolson--who had visited Phoebe the

night before her journey to London, and was now in New South Wales.

A letter from Fenwick to this young man, containing a number of

questions as to his conversation with Phoebe, and written immediately

after Phoebe's flight, obtained an answer after some three or four

months, but Tolson's reply was wholly unprofitable. He merely avowed

that he had discovered nothing at all of Phoebe's intention, and

could throw no light whatever upon her disappearance. The letter

was laboriously written by a man of imperfect education, and barely

covered three loosely written sides of ordinary note-paper. It arrived

when Fenwick's own researches were already at a standstill, and seemed

to leave nothing more to hope for. The police inquiries which had been

initiated went on intermittently for a while, then ceased; the waters

of life closed over Phoebe Fenwick and her child.

What was Fenwick's present feeling towards his wife? If amid this

crowded Paris he had at last beheld her coming to him, had seen the

tall figure and the childish look, and the lovely, pleading eyes,

would his heart have leapt within him?--would his hands have been

outstretched to enfold and pardon her?--or would he have looked at her

sombrely, unable to pass the gulf between them--to forget what she had

done?

In truth, he could not have answered the question; he was uncertain

of himself. Her act, by its independence, its force of will, and the

ability she had shown in planning and carrying it out, had transformed

his whole conception of her. In a sense, he knew her no longer. That

she could do a thing at once so violent and so final, was so wholly

out of keeping with all his memories of her, that he could only think

of the woman who had come in his absence to the Bernard Street studio,

and defaced the sketch of Madame de Pastourelles, as in some sort a

stranger--one whom, were she to step back into his life, he would

have had to learn afresh. Sometimes, when anything reminded him of her

suddenly--as, for instance, the vision in a shop-window of the very

popular mezzotint which had been made from the 'Genius Loci' the year

after its success in the Academy--the pang from which he suffered

would seem to show that he still loved her, as indeed he had always

loved her, through all the careless selfishness of his behaviour. But,

again, there were many months when she dropped altogether--or seemed

to drop--out of his mind and memory, when he was entirely absorbed in

the only interests she had left him--his art, his quarrels, and his

relation to Eugénie de Pastourelles.

There was a time, indeed--some two or three years after the

catastrophe--when he passed through a stage of mental and moral

tumult, natural to a man of strong passions and physique. Even in

their first married life, Phoebe had been sometimes jealous, and with

reason. It was her memory of these occasions that had predisposed her

to the mad suspicion which wrecked her. And when she had deserted him,

he came violently near, on one or two occasions, to things base and

irreparable. But he was saved--first by the unconscious influence, the

mere trust, of a good woman--and, secondly, by his keen and advancing

intelligence. Dread lest he should cast himself out of Eugénie's

delightful presence; and the fighting life of the mind: it was by

these he was rescued, by these he ultimately conquered.

And yet, was it, perhaps, his bitterest grievance against his wife

that she had, in truth, left him _nothing_!--not even friendship, not

even art. In so wrenching herself from him, she had perpetuated in

him that excitable and unstable temper it should have been her first

object to allay, and had thus injured and maimed his artistic power;

while at the same time she had so troubled, so falsified his whole

attitude towards the woman who on his wife's disappearance from his

life had become naturally and insensibly his dearest friend, that

not even the charm of Madame de Pastourelles' society, of her

true, delicate, and faithful affection, could give him any lasting

happiness. He himself had begun the falsification, but it was Phoebe's

act which had prolonged and compelled it, through twelve years.

For a long time, indeed, his success as an artist steadily developed.

The very energy of his resentment--his inner denunciation--of his

wife's flight, the very force of his fierce refusal to admit that he

had given her the smallest real justification for such a step, had

quickened in him for a time all the springs of life. Through his

painting, as we have seen, he wrestled out his first battles with

fate and with temptation; and those early years were the years of

his artistic triumph, as they were also the years of Madame de

Pastourelles' strongest influence upon him. But the concealment on

which his life was based, the tragedy at the heart of it, worked

like 'a worm i' the bud.' The first check to his artistic career--the

'hanging' incident and its sequel--produced an effect of shock

and disintegration out of all proportion to its apparent

cause--inexplicable indeed to the spectators.

Madame de Pastourelles wondered, and sorrowed. But she could do

nothing to arrest the explosion of egotism, arrogance, and passion

which Fenwick allowed himself, after his breach with the Academy. The

obscure causes of it were hidden from her; she could only pity and

grieve; and Fenwick, unable to satisfy her, unable to re-establish his

own equilibrium, full of remorse towards her, and of despair about his

art, whereof the best forces and inspirations seemed to have withered

within him like a gourd in the night, went from one folly to another,

while his pictures steadily deteriorated, his affairs became involved,

and a shrewd observer like Lord Findon wondered who or what the deuce

had got hold of him--whether he had begun to take morphia--or had

fallen into the clutches of a woman.

In the midst of these developments, so astonishing and disappointing

to Fenwick's best friends, Eugénie de Pastourelles was suddenly

summoned to the death-bed of the husband from whom she had been

separated for nearly fifteen years. It was now nearly twelve months

since Fenwick had seen her; and it was his eagerness to meet her

again, much more than the necessities of his new commission, which

had brought him out post-haste to Paris and Versailles, where, indeed,

Lord Findon, in a kind letter, had suggested that he should join them.

* * * * *

Amid these memories and agitations, he found himself presently at

the Gare Saint-Lazare, taking his ticket at the _guichet_. It was

characteristic of him that he bought a first-class return without

thinking of it, and then, when he found himself pompously alone in

his compartment, while crowds were hurrying into the second-class, he

reproached himself for extravagance, and passed the whole journey in

a fume of discomfort. For eight or nine years he had been rich; and he

loathed the small ways of poverty.

Versailles was in the glow of an autumn sunset, as he walked from the

station to the famous Hôtel des Réservoirs on the edge of the Park.

The white houses, the wide avenues, the château on its hill, were

steeped in light--a light golden, lavish, and yet melancholy, as

though the autumn day still remembered the October afternoon when

Marie Antoinette turned to look for the last time at the lake and the

woods of Trianon.

As Fenwick crossed the Rue de la Paroisse, a lady on the other side of

the road, who was hurrying in the opposite direction, stopped suddenly

at sight of him, and stared excitedly. She was a woman no longer

young, much sunburnt, with high cheek-bones and a florid complexion.

He did not notice her, and after a moment's hesitation she resumed her

walk.

He went into the Park, where the statues shone flamelike amid the

bronze and orange of the trees, where the water of the fountains was

dyed in blue and rose, and all the faded magnificence and decaying

grace of the vast incomparable scene were kindling into an hour's rich

life, under the last attack of the sun. He wandered a while, restless

and unhappy--yet always counting the hours till he should see the

slight, worn figure which for a year had been hidden from him.

He dined in the well-known restaurant, wandered again in the mild

dusk, then mounted to his room and worked a while at some of the

sketches he was making for his new commission. While he was so

engaged, a carriage drew up below, and two persons descended. He

recognised Lord Findon, much aged and whitened in these last years.

The lady in deep mourning behind him paused a moment on the broad

pathway, and looked round her, at the hill of the château, at

the bright lights in the restaurant. She threw back her veil, and

Fenwick's heart leapt as he recognised the spiritual beauty, the

patient sweetness of a face which through twelve troubled years had

kept him from evil and held him to good--had been indeed 'the master

light' of all his seeing.

And to his best and only friend he had lied, persistently and

unforgiveably, for twelve years. There was the sting--and there the

pity of it.

CHAPTER X

Eugénie de Pastourelles was sitting on the terrace at Versailles. Or

rather she was established in one of the deep embrasures between the

windows, on the western side. The wind was cold, but again a glorious

sun bathed the terrace and the château. It was a day of splendour--a

day when heaven and earth seemed to have conspired to flatter and to

adorn the vast creation of Louis Quatorze, this white, flaming palace,

amid the gold and bronze of its autumn trees, and the blue of its

waters. Superb clouds, of a royal sweep and amplitude, sailed through

the brilliant sky; the woods that girdled the horizon were painted

broadly and solidly in the richest colour upon an immense canvas

steeped in light. In some of the nearer alleys which branch from the

terrace, the eye travelled, through a deep magnificence of shade, to

an arched and framed sunlight beyond, embroidered with every radiant

or sparkling colour; in others, the trees, almost bare, met lightly

arched above a carpet of intensest green--a _tapis vert_ stretching

toward a vaporous distance, and broken by some god, or nymph, on whose

white shoulders the autumn leaves were dropping softly one by one.

Wide horizons, infinitely clear--a blazing intensity of light, beating

on the palace, the gardens, the statues, and the distant water of

the 'Canal de Versailles'--each tint and outline, sharp and vehement,

full-bodied and rich--the greenest greens, the bluest blues, the most

dazzling gold:--this was Versailles, as Eugénie saw it, on this autumn

day. And through it all, the blowing of a harsh and nipping wind

sounded the first approach of winter, still defied, as it were, by

these bright woods decked for a last festival.

It was the 5th of October--the very anniversary of the day when Marie

Antoinette, sitting alone beside the lake at Trianon, was startled by

a page from the château bringing the news of the arrival of the Paris

mob, and the urgent summons to return at once;--the day when she

passed the Temple of Love, gleaming amid the quiet streams, for

the last time, and fled back through the leafy avenues leading to

Versailles, under a sky--cloudy and threatening rain--which was

remembered by a later generation as blending fitly with the first act

of that most eminent tragedy--'The Fall of the House of France.'

Madame de Pastourelles had in her hand a recent book in which a French

man of letters, both historian and poet, had told once again the most

piteous of stories; a story, however, which seemed then, and still

seems, to be not even yet ripe for history--so profound and living

are the sympathies and the passions which to this day surround it in

France.

Eugénie had closed the book, and her eyes, as they looked out upon the

astonishing light and shade of the terrace and its surroundings, had

filled unconsciously with tears, not so much for Marie Antoinette,

as for all griefs!--for this duped, tortured, struggling life

of ours--for the 'mortalia' which grip all hearts, which none

escape--pain, and separation, and remorse, hopes deceived, and promise

mocked, decadence in one's self, change in others, and that iron

gentleness of death which closes all.

For nearly a year she had been trying to recover her forces after an

experience which had shaken her being to its depths. Not because,

when she went to nurse his last days, she had any love left, in the

ordinary sense, for her ruined and debased husband; but because of

that vast power of pity, that genius for compassion to which she

was born. Not a tremor of body or soul, not a pang of physical or

spiritual fear, but she had passed through them, in common with the

man she upheld; a man who, like Louis the Well-Beloved, former master

of the building beneath whose shadow she was sitting, was ready to

grovel for her pardon, when threatened with a priest and the last

terrors, and would have recalled his mistress, rejoicing, with the

first day of recovered health.

He and she had asked for respite in vain, however; and M. de

Pastourelles slept with his fathers.

Since his death, her strength had failed her. There had been no

definite illness, but a giving way for some six or seven months of

nature's resisting powers. Also--significant sign of the strength of

all her personal affections!--in addition to the moral and physical

strain she had undergone, she had suffered much about this time from

the loss of her maid, an old servant and devoted friend, who left her

shortly after M. de Pastourelles' death--incited, forced thereto by

Eugénie--in order to marry and go out to Canada. Eugénie had missed

her sorely; and insensibly, the struggle to get well had been the

harder. The doctors ordered travel and change, and she had wandered

from place to place; only half-conscious, as it often seemed to her;

the most docile of patients; accompanied now by one member of the

family, now by another; standing as it were, like the bather who has

wandered too far from shore, between the onward current which means

destruction, and that backward struggle of the will which leads to

life. And little by little the tide of being had turned. After

a winter in Egypt, strength had begun to come back; since then

Switzerland and high air had quickened recovery; and now, physically,

Eugénie was almost herself again.

But morally, she retained a deep and lasting impress of what she had

gone through. More than ever was she a creature of tenderness, of the

most delicate perceptions, of a sensibility, as our ancestors would

have called it, too great for this hurrying world. Her unselfishness,

always one of her cradle-gifts, had become almost superhuman; and had

she been of another temperament, the men and women about her might

have instinctively shrunk from her, as too perfect--now--for human

nature's daily food. But from that she was saved by a score of most

womanish, most mundane qualities. Nobody knew her, luckily, for the

saint she was; she herself least of all. As her strength renewed

itself, her soft fun, too, came back, her gentle, inexhaustible

delight in the absurdities of men and things, which gave to her talk

and her personality a kind of crackling charm, like the crispness of

dry leaves upon an autumn path. Naturally, and invincibly, she loved

life and living; all the high forces and emotions called to her, but

also all the patches, stains, and follies of this queer world; and

there is no saint, man or woman, of whom this can be said, that has

ever repelled the sinners. It is the difference between St. Francis

and St. Dominic!

How very little--all the same--could Eugénie feel herself with the

saints, on this October afternoon! She sat, to begin with, on the

threshold of Madame de Pompadour's apartment; and in the next place,

she had never been more tremulously steeped in doubts and yearnings,

entirely concerned with her friends and her affections. It was a

re-birth; not of youth--how could that be, she herself would have

asked, seeing that she was now thirty-seven?--but of the natural

Eugénie, who, 'intellectual' though she were, lived really by the

heart, and the heart only. And since it is the heart that makes youth

and keeps it--it _was_ a return of youth--and of beauty--that had come

upon her. In her black dress and shady hat, her collar and cuffs of

white lawn, she was very discreetly, quietly beautiful; the passer-by

did not know what it was that had touched and delighted him, till she

had gone, and he found himself, perhaps, looking after the slim

yet stately figure; but it was beauty none the less. And the autumn

violets, her sister's gift, that were fastened to-day in profusion

at her waist, marked in truth the re-awakening of buried things, of

feminine instincts long repressed. For months, her maid Fanchette had

dressed her, and she had worn obediently all the long crape gowns and

veils dictated by the etiquette of French mourning. But to-day she

had chosen for herself; and in this more ordinary garb, she was

vaguely--sometimes remorsefully--conscious of relief and deliverance.

Two subjects filled her mind. First, a conversation with Fenwick that

she had held that morning, strolling through the upper alleys of

the Park. Poor friend, poor artist! Often and often, during her

wanderings, had her thoughts dwelt anxiously on his discontents and

calamities; she had made her sister or her father write to him when

she could not write herself--though Lord Findon indeed had been for

long much out of patience with him; and during the last few months she

herself had written every week. But she had never felt so clearly the

inexorable limits of her influence with him. This morning, just as

of old, he had thrown himself tempestuously upon her advice, her

sympathy; and she had given him counsel as she best could. But a woman

knows when her counsel is likely to be followed, or no. Eugénie had no

illusions. In his sore, self-tormented state he was, she saw, at

the mercy of any passing idea, of anything that seemed to offer him

vengeance on his enemies, or the satisfaction of a vanity that writhed

under the failure he was all the time inviting and assuring.

Yet as she thought of him, she liked him better than ever. He might be

perverse, yet he appealed to her profoundly! The years of his success

had refined and civilised him no doubt, but they had tended to make

him like anybody else. Whereas this passionate accent of revolt--as of

some fierce, helpless creature, struggling blindly in bonds of its own

making--had perhaps restored to him that more dramatic element which

his personality had possessed in his sulky, gifted youth. He

had expressed himself with a bitter force on the decline of his

inspiration and the weakening of his will. He was going to the dogs,

he declared; had lost all his hold on the public; and had nothing more

to say or to paint. And she had been very, very sorry for him, but

conscious all the time that he had never been so eloquent, and never

in such good looks, what with the angry energy of the eyes, and the

sweep of grizzled hair across the powerful brow, and the lines cut by

life and thought round the vigorous, impatient mouth. How could he be

at once so able and so childish! Her woman's wit pondered it; while

at the same time she remembered with emotion the joy with which he had

greeted her, his eager, stammering sympathy, his rough grasp of her

hand, his frowning scrutiny of her pale face.

Yes, he was a great, great friend--and, somehow, she _must_ help him!

Her lips parted in a sigh of aspiration. If only this unlucky thing

had not happened!--this meeting of Arthur and of Fenwick, before the

time, before she had prepared and engineered it.

And so she came to her second topic of meditation. Gradually as her

mind pursued it, her aspect seemed to lose its new and tremulous

brightness; the face became once more a little grey and pinched. They

had somehow missed all the letters which should have warned them. To

find Arthur established here, with his poor invalid wife--nothing

had been more unexpected, and, alack, more unwelcome, considering the

relations between them and John Fenwick--Fenwick who was practically

her father's guest and hers.

Did Arthur think it strange, unkind? Wouldn't he really believe that

it was pure accident! If so, it would be only because Elsie was there,

influencing him against his old friends--poor, bitter, stricken Elsie.

Eugénie's lips quivered. There flitted before her the image of the

girl of eighteen--muse of laughter and delight. And she recalled

the taciturn woman whom she had seen on her sofa the night before,

speaking coldly, in dry, sharp sentences, to her husband, her cousin,

her maid--evidently unhappy and in pain.

Eugénie shaded her eyes from the light of the terrace. Her heart

seemed to be sinking, contracting. Mrs. Welby had been already ill,

and therewith jealous and tyrannical, for some little time before

Madame de Pastourelles had been summoned to the death-bed of her

husband! But now!--Eugénie shrank aghast before what she saw and what

she guessed.

And it was, too, as if the present state of things--as if the new

hardness in Elsie's eyes, and the strange hostility of her manner,

especially towards the Findons, and her cousin Eugénie--threw light on

earlier years, on many a puzzling trait and incident of the past.

There had been a terrible confinement, at the end of years of

childlessness--a still-born child--and then, after a short apparent

recovery, a rapid loss of strength and power. Poor, poor Elsie! But

why--why should this trouble have awakened in her this dumb tyranny

towards Arthur, this alienation from Arthur's friends?

Eugénie sharply drew herself together. She banished her thoughts.

Elsie was young, and would get well. And when she recovered, she would

know who were her friends, and Arthur's.

A figure came towards her, crossing the _parterre d'eau_. She

perceived her father--just released, no doubt, from two English

acquaintances with whom he had been exploring the 'Bosquet d'Apollon.'

He hurried towards her--a tall Don Quixote of a man, gaunt, active,

grey-haired, with a stride like a youth of eighteen, and the very

minimum of flesh on his well-hung frame. Lord Findon had gone through

many agitations during the last ten or twelve years. In his own

opinion, he had upset a Ministry, he had recreated the army, and saved

the Colonies to the Empire. That history was not as well aware of

these feats as it should be, he knew; but in the memoirs, of which

there were now ten volumes privately printed in his drawer, he

had provided for that. Meanwhile, in the rush of his opinions and

partisanships, two things at least had persisted unchanged--his

adoration for Eugénie--and his belief that if only man--and much more

woman--would but exchange 'gulping' for 'chewing'--would only, that

is to say, reform their whole system of mastication, and thereby of

digestion, the world would be another and a happier place.

He came up now, frowning, and out of temper.

'Upon my word, Eugénie, the blindness of some people is too amazing!'

'Is it? Sit down, papa, and look at that!'

She pushed a chair towards him, smiling, and pointed to the terrace,

the woods, the sky.

'It's all very well, my dear,' said Lord Findon, seating himself--'but

this place tries me a good deal.'

'Because the ladies in the restaurant are so stout?' said Eugénie.

'Dear papa--somebody must keep these cooks in practice!'

'Never did I see such spectacles!' said Lord Findon, fuming. 'And when

one knows that the very smallest attention to their diet--and they

might be sylphs again--as young as their grandchildren!--it's really

disheartening.'

'It is,' said Eugénie. 'Shall we announce a little conference in the

salon? I'm sure the ladies would flock.'

'The amount the French eat is appalling!' exclaimed Lord

Findon--without noticing. 'And they have such ridiculous ideas about

us! I said something about their gluttony to M. de Villeton this

morning--and he fired up!--declared he had spent this summer in

English country-houses, and we had seven meals a day--all told--and

there wasn't a Frenchman in the world had more than three--counting

his coffee in the morning.'

'He had us there,' said Eugénie.

'Not at all! It doesn't matter _when_ you eat--it's what and how much

you eat. We _can't_ produce such women as one sees here. I tell you,

Eugénie, we _can't_. It takes all the poetry out of the sex.'

Eugénie smiled.

'Haven't you been walking with Lady Marney, papa?'

Lord Findon looked a little annoyed.

'She's an exception, my dear--a hideous exception.'

'I wouldn't mind her size,' said Eugénie, softly--'if only the

complexion were better done.'

Lord Findon laughed.

'Paint is on the increase,' he declared--'and gambling too. Villeton

tells me there was baccarat in the Marney's' apartment last night,

and Lady Marney lost enormously. Age seems to have no effect on these

people. She must be nearly seventy-five.'

'You may be sure she'll play till the last trump,' said Eugénie.

'Papa!'--her tone changed--'is that Elsie's chair?'

The group to which she pointed was still distant, but Lord Findon,

even at seventy, had the eyes of an eagle, and could read an _affiche_

a mile off.

'It is.' Lord Findon looked a little disturbed, and, turning, he

scanned the terrace up and down before he bent towards Eugénie.

'You know, darling, it's an awkward business about these two men. I

don't believe Arthur's patience will hold out.'

'Oh yes, it will, papa. For our sakes, Arthur would keep the peace.'

'If the other will let him! I used to think, Eugénie, you had tamed

the bear--but, upon my soul!'--Lord Findon threw up his hands in

protest.

'He's in low spirits, papa. It will be better soon,' said Eugénie,

softly, and as she spoke she rose and went down the steps to meet the

Welbys.

Lord Findon followed her, tormented by a queer, unwelcome thought.

Was it possible that Eugénie was now--with her widowhood--beginning to

take a more than friendly interest in that strange fellow, Fenwick? If

so, _he_ would be tolerably punished for his meddling of long ago!

To have snatched her from Arthur, in order to hand her to John

Fenwick!--Lord Findon crimsoned hotly at the notion, all his pride of

race and caste up in arms.

Of course she ought now to marry. He wished to see her before he died

the wife of some good fellow, and the mistress of a great house. Why

not? Eugénie's distinctions of person and family--leaving her fortune,

which was considerable, out of count--were equal to any fate. 'It's

all very well to despise such things--but we have to keep up the

traditions,' he said to himself, testily.

And in spite of her thirty-seven years a suitable bridegroom would not

be at all hard to find. Lord Findon had perceived that in Egypt,

where they had spent the winter and early spring. Several of the most

distinguished men then in Cairo had been her devoted slaves--ill as

she was and at half-power. Alderney--almost certain to be the next

Viceroy of India--one of the most charming of widowers, with an only

daughter--it had been plain both to Lord Findon and his stupid wife

that Eugénie had made a deep impression upon a man no less romantic

than fastidious. Eugénie had but to lift her hand, and he would have

followed them to Syria. On the contrary, she had taken special pains

to prevent it. And General F,--and that clever fellow X,--who was now

reorganising Egyptian finance--and several more--they were all under

the spell.

But Eugénie had this quixotic liking for the 'intellectuals' of a

particular sort, for artists and poets, and people in difficulties

generally. Well, he had it himself, he reflected, frowning, as he

strolled after her; but there were limits. Marriage was a thing apart;

in that quarter, at any rate, it was no good supposing you could

escape from the rules of the game.

Not that the rules always led you right--witness De Pastourelles and

his villainies. But matrimonial anarchy was not to be justified,

any more than social anarchy, by the failures and drawbacks of

arrangements which were on the whole for people's good. _Passe

encore_!--if Fenwick had only fulfilled the promise of his

youth!--were at least a successful artist, instead of promising to

become a quarrelsome failure!

Now if Arthur himself were free! Supposing this poor girl were to

succumb?--what then?

At this point Lord Findon checked himself roughly, and a minute

afterwards was shaking Welby by the hand and stooping with an old

man's courtesy over the invalid carriage in which Mrs. Welby lay

reclined.

Euphrosyne, indeed, had shed her laughter! A face with sunken eyes

and drawn lips, and with that perpetual suspicious furrow in the brow,

which meant a terror lest any movement or jar should let loose the

enemy, pain; an emaciated body, from which all the soft mouldings of

youth had departed; a frail hand, lying in mute appeal on the shawl

with which she was covered:--this was now Elsie Welby, whose beauty

in the first years of her marriage had been one of the adornments of

London.

Eugénie was bending over her, and Mrs. Welby was pettishly answering.

'It's so stiff and formal. I don't admire this kind of thing. And

there isn't a bit of shade on this terrace. _I_ think it's ugly!'

Welby laid a hand on hers, smiling.

'But to-day, Bébé, you like the sun?--in October?'

Mrs. Welby was very decidedly of opinion that even in October there

was a glare--and in August--she shuddered to think of it! It was so

tiresome, too, to have missed the Grandes Eaux. So like French red

tape, to insist on stopping them on a particular date. Why should they

be stopped? As to expense, that was nonsense. How could water

cost anything! It was because the French were so _doctrinaire_, so

tyrannical--so fond of managing for managing's sake.

So the pettish voice rambled on, the others tenderly and sadly

listening, till presently Lord Findon shook his gaunt shoulders.

'Upon my word, it begins to get cold. With your leave, Elsie, I could

do with a little more sun! Arthur, shall we take a brisk walk round

the canal before tea?'

Welby looked anxiously at his wife. She had closed her eyes, and her

pale lips, tightly shut, made no movement.

'I think I promised Elsie to stay with her,' he said, uncertainly.

'Let _me_ stay with Elsie, please,' said Eugénie.

The blue eyes unclosed.

'Don't be more than an hour, Arthur,' said the young wife,

ungraciously. 'You know I asked Mrs. Westmacott to tea.'

The gentlemen walked off, and a sharp sensation impressed upon Madame

de Pastourelles that Arthur was only allowed to go with Lord Findon,

because _she_ was not of the party.

A sudden colour rose into her cheeks. For the hour that followed,

she devoted herself to her cousin. But Mrs. Welby was difficult and

querulous. Amongst other complaints she expressed herself bitterly

as to the appearance of Mr. Fenwick at Versailles. Arthur had been so

taken aback--Mr. Fenwick was always so atrociously rude to him! Arthur

would have never come to Versailles had he known; but of course, as

Uncle Findon and Eugénie liked Mr. Fenwick, as he was their friend,

Arthur couldn't now avoid meeting him. It was extremely disagreeable.

'I think they needn't meet very much,' said Eugénie, soothingly--'and

papa and I will do our best to keep Mr. Fenwick in order.'

'I wonder why he came,' said Elsie, fretfully.

'He has some work to do for the production of this play on Marie

Antoinette. And I suppose he wanted to meet us. You see, we didn't

know about Arthur.'

'I can't think why you like him so much.'

'He is an old friend, my dear!--and just now very unhappy, and out of

spirits.'

'All his own fault, Arthur says. He had the ball at his feet.'

'I know,' said Eugénie, smiling sadly. 'That's the tragedy of it!'

There was silence. Mrs. Welby still observed her companion. A variety

of expressions, all irritable or hostile, passed through the large,

languid eyes.

* * * * *

The afternoon faded--on the blue surface of the distant 'canal,' the

great poplars that stand sentinel at the western edge of the Park,

one to right, and one to left--last _gardes du corps_ of the House of

France!--threw long shadows on the water; and across the opening

which they marked, drifted the smoke of burning weeds, the only but

sufficient symbol, amid the splendid scene, of that peasant France

which destroyed Versailles. It was four o'clock, and to their left, as

they sat sheltered on the southern side of the château, the visitors

of the day were pouring out into the gardens. The shutters of the

lower rooms, in the apartments of the Dauphin and of Mesdames, were

being closed one by one, by the _gardiens_ within. Eugénie peered

through the window beside her. She saw before her a long vista of

darkened and solitary rooms, dim portraits of the marshals of France

just visible on their walls. Suddenly--under a gleam of light from a

shutter not yet fastened--there shone out amid the shadows a bust

of Louis Seize! The Bourbon face, with its receding brow, its heavy,

good-natured lips, its smiling incapacity, held--dominated--the

palace.

Eugénie watched, holding her breath. Slowly the light died; the marble

withdrew into the dark; and Louis Seize was once more with the ghosts.

Eugénie's fancy pursued him. She thought of the night of the 20th

of January, 1793, when Madame Royale, in the darkness of the Temple,

heard her mother turning miserably on her bed, sleepless with grief

and cold, waiting for that last rendezvous of seven o'clock which the

King had promised her--waiting--waiting--till the great bell of Notre

Dame told her that Louis had passed to another meeting, more urgent,

more peremptory still.

'Oh, poor soul!--poor soul!' she said, aloud, pressing her hands on

her eyes.

'What on earth do you mean!' said Mrs. Welby's voice beside

her--startled--stiff--a little suspicious.

Eugénie looked up and blushed.

'I beg your pardon!--I was thinking of Marie Antoinette.'

'I'm so tired of Marie Antoinette!' said the invalid, raising a

petulant hand, and letting it fall again, inert. 'All the silly

memorials of her they sell here!--and the sentimental talk about her!

Arthur, of course, now--with his picture--thinks of nothing else.'

'Naturally!'

'I don't know. People are bored with Marie Antoinette. I wish he'd

taken another subject. And as to her beauty--how could she have been

beautiful, with those staring eyes, and that lower lip! I say so to

Arthur--and he raves--and quotes Horace Walpole--and all sorts of

people. But one can see for one's self. People are much prettier now

than they ever were then! We should think nothing of their beauties.'

And the delicate lips of this once lovely child, this flower withered

before its time, made a cold gesture of contempt.

In Eugénie's eyes, as they rested upon her companion, there was a

flash--was it of horror?

Was she jealous even of the dead women whom Arthur painted?--no less

than of his living friends?

Eugénie came close to her, took the irresponsive hand in hers, tucked

the shawls closer round the wasted limbs, bent over her, chatting

and caressing. Then, as the sun began to drop quickly, Madame de

Pastourelles rose, and went to the corner of the château, to see if

the gentlemen were in sight. But in less than a minute Mrs. Welby

called her back.

'I must go in now,' she said, fretfully. 'This place is really _too_

cold!'

'She won't let me go to meet them,' thought Eugénie, involuntarily;

sharply reproaching herself, a moment afterwards, for the mere

thought.

But when Elsie had been safely escorted home, Eugénie slipped back

through the darkening streets, taking good care that her path should

not lead her across her father and Arthur Welby.

She fled towards the western flight of the Hundred Steps, and ran down

the vast staircase towards the Orangerie, and the still shining lake

beyond, girdled with vaporous woods. A majesty of space and light

enwrapt her, penetrated, as everywhere at Versailles, with memory,

with the bitterness and the glory of human things. In the distance the

voices of the children, still playing beside their nurses on the upper

terrace, died away. Close by, a white Artemis on her pedestal bent

forward--eager--her gleaming bow in air, watching, as it were, the

arrow she had just sped toward the windows of Madame de Pompadour;

and beside her, a nymph, daughter of gods, turned to the palace with a

free, startled movement, shading her eyes that she might gaze the more

intently on that tattered tricolour which floats above the palace of

'Le Roi Soleil.'

* * * * *

'Oh, poor Arthur--poor Arthur! And I did it!--I did it!'

It was the cry of Eugénie's inmost life.

And before she knew, she found herself enveloped in memories that

rolled in upon her like waves of storm. How long it had been before

she would allow herself to see anything amiss with this marriage she

had herself made! And, indeed, it was only since Elsie's illness that

things dimly visible before had sprung into that sharp and

piteous relief in which they stood to-day. Before it, indications,

waywardnesses, the faults of a young and petted wife. But since the

physical collapse, the inner motives and passions had stood up bare

and black, like the ribs of a wrecked ship from the sand. And as

Eugénie had been gradually forced to understand them, they had worked

upon her own mind as a silent, yet ever-growing accusation, against

which she defended herself in vain.

Surely, surely she had done no wrong! To have allowed Arthur to go on

binding his life ever more and more closely to hers, would have been a

crime. What could she give him, that such a nature most deeply needed?

Home, wifely love, and children--it was to these dear enwrapping

powers she had committed him in what she had done. She had feared for

herself indeed. But is it a sin to fear sin?--the declension of one's

own best will, the staining of one's purest feeling?

On her part she could proudly answer for herself. Never since Welby's

marriage, either in thought or act, had she given Arthur's wife the

smallest just cause of offence. Eugénie's was often an anxious and

a troubled conscience; but not here, not in this respect. She knew

herself true.

But from Elsie's point of view? Had she in truth sacrificed an

ignorant child to her impetuous wish for Arthur's happiness, a too

scrupulous care for her own peace? How 'sacrifice'? She had given

the child her heart's desire. Arthur was not in love; but Elsie Bligh

would have accepted him as a husband on any terms. Tenderly, in good

faith, trusting to the girl's beauty, and Arthur's rich and loving

nature, Eugénie had joined their hands.

Was that in reality her offence? In spite of all the delicacy with

which it had been done, had the girl's passion guessed the truth? And

having guessed it, had she then failed--and failed consciously--to

make the gift her own?

Eugénie had watched--often with a sinking spirit--the development of

a nature, masked by youth and happiness, but essentially narrow and

poor, full of mean ambitions and small antipathies. Arthur had played

his part bravely, with all the chivalry and the conscience that might

have been expected of him. And there had been moments--intervals--of

apparent happiness, when Eugénie's own conscience had been laid to

sleep.

Was there anything she might have done for those two people, that she

had not done? And Elsie had seemed--she sadly remembered--to love her,

to trust her--till this tragic breakdown. Indeed, so long as she

could dress, dance, dine, and chatter as much as she pleased, with

her husband in constant attendance, Mrs. Welby had shown no open

discontent with her lot; and if her caresses often hurt Eugénie more

than they pleased, there had been no outward dearth of them.

Alack!--Eugénie's heart was wrung with pity for the young maimed

creature; but the peevish image of the wife was swept away by the

more truly tragic image of the husband. Eugénie might try to persuade

herself of the possibility of Elsie's recovery; her real instinct

denied it. Yet life was not necessarily threatened, it seemed, though

certain fatal accidents might end it in a week. The omens pointed to

a long and fluctuating case--to years of hopeless nursing for Arthur,

and complaining misery for his wife.

Years! Eugénie sat down in a corner of the Orangerie garden, locking

her hands together, in a miserable pity for Arthur. She knew well what

a shining pinnacle of success and fame Welby occupied in the eyes of

the world; she knew how envious were the lesser men--such a man as

John Fenwick, for instance--of a reputation and a success they thought

overdone and undeserved. But Arthur himself! She seemed to be looking

into his face, graven on the dusk, the face of a man tragically

silent, patient, eternally disappointed; of an artist conscious of

ideals and discontents, loftier, more poignant, far than his fellows

will ever know--of a poet, alone at heart, forbidden to 'speak out,'

blighted, and in pain.

'_Arthur--Arthur_!' She leaned her head against the pedestal of a

marble vase--wrestling with herself.

Then, quick as fire, there flew through her veins the alternate

possibility--Elsie's death--freedom for herself and Arthur--the power

to retrace her own quixotic, fatal step....

Madame de Pastourelles rose to her feet, rigid and straight in her

black dress, wrestling as though with an attacking Apollyon. She

seemed to herself a murderess in thought--the lowest and vilest of

human beings.

In an anguish she looked through the darkness, in a wild appeal to

Heaven to save her from herself--this new self, unknown to her!--to

shut down and trample on this mutiny of a sinful and selfish heart--to

make it impossible--_impossible_!--that ever again, even without her

will, against her will, a thought so hideous, so incredible, should

enter and defile her mind.

She walked on blindly towards the water and the woods. Her eyes were

full of tears, which she could not stop. Unconsciously, to hide them,

she threw round her head a black lace scarf she had brought out with

her against the evening chill, and drew it close round her face.

'How late you are!' said a joyous voice beside her.

She looked up. Fenwick emerging from the wood, towards the shelter

of which she was hurrying, stood before her, bareheaded, as he often

walked, his eyes unable to hide the pleasure with which he beheld her.

She gave a little gasp.

'You startled me!'

In the dim light he could only see her slight, fluttering smile; and

it seemed to him that she was or had been in agitation. But at least

it was nothing hostile to himself; nay, it was borne in upon him as he

turned his steps, and she walked beside him with a quick yet gradually

subsiding breath, that his appearance had been a relief to her, that

she was glad of his companionship.

And he--miserable fellow!--to him it was peace after struggle, balm

after torment. For his thoughts, as he wandered through the Satory

woods alone, had been the thoughts of a hypochondriac. He hastened to

leave them, now that she was near.

They wandered along the eastern edge of the 'Swiss Water,' towards the

woods amid which the railway runs. Through the gold-and-purple air

the thin autumn trees rose lightly into the evening sky, marching in

ordered ranks beside the water. Young men were fishing in the lake;

boys and children were playing near it, and sweethearts walking in

the dank grass. The evening peace, with its note of decay and death,

seemed to stir feeling rather than soothe it. It set the nerves

trembling.

He began to talk of some pictures he had been studying in the

Palace that day--Nattiers, Rigauds, Drouais--examples of that happy,

sensuous, confident art, produced by a society that knew no doubts of

itself, which not to have enjoyed--so the survivors of it thought--was

to be for ever ignorant of what the charm of life might be.

Fenwick spoke of it with envy and astonishment. The _pleasure_ of it

had penetrated him, its gay, perpetual _festa_--as compared with the

strain of thought and conscience under which the modern lives.

'It gives me a perfect hunger for fine clothes, and jewels, and

masquerades--and "fêtes de nuit"--and every sort of theatricality and

expense! Nature has sent us starvelings on the scene a hundred years

late. We are like children in the rain, flattening our noses against a

ballroom window.'

'There were plenty of them then,' said Eugénie. 'But they broke in and

sacked the ballroom.'

'Yes. What folly!' he said, bitterly. 'We are all still groping among

the ruins.'

'No, no! Build a new Palace of Beauty--and bring everybody in--out of

the rain.'

'Ridiculous!' he declared, with sparkling eyes. Art and pleasure were

only for the few. Try and spread them, make current coin of them, and

they vanished like fairy gold.

'So only the artist may be happy?'

'The artist is never happy!' he said, roughly. 'But the few people who

appreciate him and rob him, enjoy themselves. By the way, I took one

of your ideas this morning, and made a sketch of it. I haven't noted

a composition of any sort for weeks--except for this beastly play. It

came to me while we talked.'

'Ah!' Her face, turned to him, received the news with a shrinking

pleasure.

He developed his idea before her, drawing it on the air with his

stick, or on the sand of the alleys where the arching trees overhead

seemed still to hold a golden twilight captive. The picture was to

represent that fine metal-worker of the _ancien régime_ who, when the

Revolution came, took his ragged children with him and went to the

palace which contained his work--work for which he had never been

paid--and hammered it to pieces.

Fenwick talked himself at last into something like enthusiasm; and

Eugénie listened to him with a pitiful eagerness, only anxious to lead

him on, to put this friendship, and the pure sympathy and compassion

of her feeling for him, between her and the ugly memory which hovered

round her like a demon thing. These dreams of the intellect and of

art, as they gradually rose and took shape between them, were so

infinitely welcome! Clean, blameless, strengthening--they put the

ghosts to flight, they gave her back herself.

'Oh, you must paint it!' she said--'you must.'

He stopped, and walked on abruptly. Then she pressed him to promise

her a time and date. It must be ready for a new gallery, and a

distinguished exhibition, just about to open.

He shook his head.

'I probably shan't care about it to-morrow.'

She protested.

'Just now you were so keen!'

He hesitated--then blurted out--'Because I was talking to you! When

you're not there--I know very well--I shall fall back to where I was

before.'

She tried to laugh at him for a too dependent friend, who must always

be fed on sugar-plums of praise; but the silence with which he met

her, checked her. It was too full of emotion; and she ran away from

it.