She ran, however, in vain. They reached the end of the lake, and went

to look at the mouldering statue of Louis Quatorze at its further

end--fantastic work of the great Bernini--Louis on a vast, curly-maned

beast, with flames bursting round him--flung out into the wilderness

and the woods, because Louis, after adding the flames to Bernini's

composition, finally pronounced the statue unworthy of himself and

of the sacred enclosure of the Park. So here, on the outer edge of

Versailles, the crumbling failure rises, in exile to this day, without

so much as a railing to protect it from the scribbling tourist who

writes his name all over it. In the realm of Art, it seemed, the

King's writ still ran, and the King's doom stood.

Fenwick's rhetorical sense was touched by the statue and its history.

He examined it, talking fast and well, Eugénie meanwhile winning from

him all he had to give, by the simplest words and looks--he the reed,

and she the player. His mind, his fancy, worked easily once more,

under the stimulus of her presence. His despondency began to give way.

He believed in himself--felt himself an artist--again. The relief,

physical and mental, was too tempting. He flung himself upon it with

reckless desire, incapable of denying himself, or of counting the

cost. And meanwhile, the effect of her black scarf, loosened, and

eddying round her head and face in the soft night wind, defining their

small oval, and the beauty of the brow, enchanted his painter's eye.

There was a moment, just as they reentered the Park, when, as she

stood looking at a moon-touched vista before them, the floating scarf

suddenly recalled to him the outline of that lovely hood in which

Romney framed the radiant head of Lady Hamilton as 'The Sempstress.'

The recollection startled him. Romney! Involuntarily there flashed

across him Phoebe's use of the Romney story--her fierce comments

on the deserted wife--the lovely mistress. Perhaps, while she stood

looking at the portrait in his studio, she was thinking of Lady

Hamilton, and all sorts of other ludicrous and shameful things!

And _this_, all the while, was the reality--this pure, ethereal being,

in whose presence he was already a better and a more hopeful man!--who

seemed to bring a fellow comfort, and moral renewal, in the mere touch

of her kind hand.

The shock of inner debate still further weakened his self-control.

He slipped, hardly knowing how or why, into a far more intimate

confession of himself than he had yet made to her. In the morning he

had given her the _outer_ history of his life, during the year of

her absence. But this was the inner history of a man's weakness

and failure--of his quarrels and hatreds, his baffled ambitions

and ideals. She put it together as best she could from his hurried,

excited talk--from stories half told, fierce charges against

'charlatans' and 'intriguers,' mingled with half-serious, half-comic

returns upon himself, attacks on all the world, alternating with a

ruthless self-analysis--the talk of a man who challenges society

one moment with an angry '_J'accuse!_'--and sees himself the

next--sardonically--as the chief obstacle in his own way.

Then suddenly a note of intense loneliness--anguish--inexplicable

despair. Eugénie could not stop it, could not withdraw herself.

There was a strange feeling that it brought her the answer to her

prayer.--They hurried on through the lower walks of the Park--plunging

now through tunnelled depths of shade, and now emerging into spaces

where sunset and moonrise rained a mingled influence on glimmering

water, on the dim upturned faces of Ceres or Flora, or the limbs

of flower-crowned nymphs and mermaids. It seemed impossible to turn

homeward, to break off their conversation. When they reached the

'Bassin de Neptune' they left the Park, turning down the Trianon

Avenue, in the growing dark, till they saw to their right, behind its

iron gates, the gleaming façade of the Petit Trianon; woods all about

them, and to their left, again, the shimmer of wide water. Meanwhile

the dying leaves, driven by the evening wind, descended on them in

a soft and ceaseless shower; the woods, so significant and human in

their planned and formal beauty, brought their 'visionary majesties'

of moonlight and of gloom to bear on nerve and sense, turned all that

was said and all that was felt, beneath their spell, to poetry.

Suddenly, at the Trianon gate, Eugénie stopped.

'I'm very tired,' she said, faintly. 'I am afraid we must go back.'

Fenwick denounced himself for a selfish brute; and they turned

homeward. But it was not physical fatigue she felt. It was rather the

burden of a soul thrown headlong upon hers--the sudden appeal of a

task which seemed to be given her by God--for the bridling of her own

heart, and the comforting and restoring of John Fenwick. From all

the conflicting emotion of an evening which changed her life, what

remained--or seemed to remain--was a missionary call of duty and

affection. 'Save him!--and master thyself!'

So, yet again, poor Eugénie slipped into the snare which Fate had set

for one who was only too much a woman.

The Rue des Réservoirs was very empty as Fenwick and Madame de

Pastourelles mounted the paved slope leading towards the hotel. The

street-lamps were neither many nor bright--but from the glazed gallery

of the restaurant, a broad, cheerful illumination streamed upon the

passers-by. They stepped within its bounds. And at the moment, a

woman who had just crossed to the opposite side of the street stopped

abruptly to look at them. They paused a few minutes in the entrance,

still chatting; the woman opposite made a movement as though to

re-cross the street, then shook her head, laughed, and walked away.

Fenwick went into the restaurant and Eugénie hurried through the

courtyard to the door of the Findon's apartment.

But in her reflexions of the night, Eugénie came to the conclusion

that the situation, as it then stood at Versailles, was not one to be

prolonged.

Next day she proposed to her father and sister a change of plan.

On the whole, she said, she was anxious to get back to London; the

holiday was overspreading its due limits; and she urged pressing on

and home. Lord Findon was puzzled, but submissive; the bookish sister

Theresa, now a woman of thirty, welcomed anything that would bring her

back to the London Library and the British Museum. But suddenly, just

as the maids had been warned, and Lord Findon's man had been sent to

look out trains, his master caught a chill, going obstinately, and in

a mocking spirit, to see what 'Faust' might be like, as given at

the Municipal Theatre of Versailles. There was fever, and a touch of

bronchitis; nothing serious; but the doctor who had been summoned

from Paris would not hear of travelling. Lord Findon hoarsely preached

'chewing' to him, through the greater part of his visits; he revenged

himself by keeping a tight hold on his patient, in all that was not

his tongue. Eugénie yielded, with what appeared to Theresa a strange

amount of reluctance; and they settled down for a week or two.

In the middle of the convalescence, the elder son, Marmaduke, came

over to see his father. He was a talkative Evangelical, like his

mother; a partner in the brewery owned by his mother's kindred; and

recently married to a Lady Louisa.

After spending three days at the hotel, he suddenly said to Lord

Findon, as he was mounting guard one night, while Eugénie wrote some

letters:

'I say, pater, do you want Eugénie to marry that fellow Fenwick?'

Lord Findon turned uneasily in his bed.

'What makes you say that?'

'Well, he's dreadfully gone on her--never happy except when she's

there--and she--well, she encourages him a good bit, father.'

'You don't understand, Marmie. You see, you don't care for books and

pictures; Eugénie does.'

'I suppose she does,' said Marmaduke, doubtfully--'but she wouldn't

care so much if Fenwick wasn't there to talk about them.'

'His talk is admirable!' said Lord Findon.

'I dare say it is, but he isn't my sister's equal,' replied the son,

with stolidity.

'A good artist is anybodyies equal,' cried Lord Findon, much heated.

'You don't really think it, papa,' said Marmaduke, firmly. 'Shall I

give Eugénie a talking to?--as you're not in a condition.'

Lord Findon laughed, though not gaily.

'You'd better try! Or rather, I don't advise you to try!'

Marmaduke, however, did try; with the only result that Eugénie soon

grew a little vexed and tremulous, and begged him to go home. He

might be a master of brewing finance, and a dear, kind, well-meaning

brother, but he really did not understand his sister's affairs.

Marmaduke went home, much puzzled, urgently commanding Theresa to

write to him, and announcing to Arthur Welby, who listened silently,

as he talked, that if Fenwick did propose, he should think it a damned

impertinence.

Lord Findon meanwhile held his peace. Every day Eugénie came in from

her walk with Fenwick, to sit with or read to her father. She

always spoke of what she had been doing, quite naturally and simply,

describing their walk and their conversation, giving the news of

Fenwick's work--bringing his sketches to show. Lord Findon would lie

and listen--a little suspicious and ill at ease--sometimes a little

sulky. But he let his illness and his voicelessness excuse him from

grappling with her. She must, of course, please herself. If she chose,

as she seemed about to choose--why, they must all make the best of

it!--Marmaduke might talk as he liked. Naturally, Arthur kept away

from them. Poor Arthur! But what a darling she looked in her black,

with this fresh touch of colour in her pale cheeks!

The Welbys certainly had but little to do with the party at the

Réservoirs. Welby seemed to be absorbed in his new picture, and Mrs.

Welby let it be plainly understood that at home Arthur was too busy,

and she too ill, to receive visitors; while out-of-doors they neither

of them wished to be thrown across Mr. Fenwick.

Every evening, after taking his wife home, Welby went out by himself

for a solitary walk. He avoided the Park and the woods; chose rather

the St. Cyr road, or the Avenue de Paris. He walked, wrapt, a little

too picturesquely perhaps, in an old Campagna cloak, relic of his

years in Rome--with a fine collie for his companion. Once or twice in

the distance he caught sight of Eugénie and Fenwick--only to turn down

a side street, out of their way.

His thoughts meanwhile, day by day, his silent, thronging thoughts,

dealt with his own life--and theirs. Would she venture it? He

discussed it calmly with himself. It presented itself to him as an

act altogether unworthy of her. What hurt him most, however, at these

times, was the occasional sudden memory of Eugénie's face, trembling

with pain, under some slight or unkindness shown her by his wife.

One day Welby was sitting beside his wife on the sheltered side of

the Terrace, when Eugénie and Fenwick came in sight, emerging from the

Hundred Steps. Suddenly Welby bent over his wife.

'Elsie!--have _you_ noticed anything?'

'Noticed what?'

He motioned towards the distant figures. His gesture was a little dry

and hostile.

Elsie in amazement raised herself painfully on her elbow to look.

'Eugénie!' she said, breathlessly--'Eugénie--and Mr. Fenwick!'

Arthur Welby watched the transformation in her face. It was the first

time he had seen her look happy for months.

'What an _excellent_ thing!' she cried; all flushed and vehement.

'Arthur, you know you said how lonely she must be!'

'Is he worthy of her?' he said, slowly, finding his words with

difficulty.

'Well, of course, _we_ don't like him!--but then Uncle Findon does.

And if he didn't, it's Eugénie that matters--isn't it?--only Eugénie!

At her age, you can't be choosing her husband for her! Well, I never,

never thought--Eugénie's so close!--she'd make up her mind to marry

anybody!'

And she rattled on, in so much excitement that Welby hastily and

urgently impressed discretion upon her.

But when she and Eugénie next met, Eugénie was astonished by her

gaiety and good temper--her air of smiling mystery. Madame de

Pastourelles hoped it meant real physical improvement, and would have

liked to talk of it to Arthur; but all talk between them grew rarer

and more difficult. Thus Eugénie's walks with Fenwick through

the enchanted lands that surround Versailles became daily more

significant, more watched. Lord Findon groaned in his sick-room, but

still restrained himself.

It was a day--or rather a night--of late October--a wet and windy

night, when the autumn leaves were coming down in swirling hosts on

the lawns and paths of Trianon.

Fenwick was hard at work, in the small apartment which he occupied

on the third floor of the Hôtel des Réservoirs. It consisted of a

sitting-room and two bedrooms looking on an inner _cour_. One of

the bedrooms he had turned into a sort of studio. It was now full of

drawings and designs for the sumptuous London 'production' on which

he was engaged--rooms at Versailles and Trianon--views in the Trianon

gardens--fragments of decoration--designs for stage grouping--for the

reproduction of one of the famous _fêtes de nuit_ in the gardens of

the 'Hameau'--studies of costume even.

His proud ambition hated the work; he thought it unworthy of him;

only his poverty had consented. But he kept it out of sight of his

companions as much as he could, and worked as much as possible at

night.

And here and there, amongst the rest, were the sketches and fragments,

often the grandiose fragments, which represented his 'buried

life'--the life which only Eugénie de Pastourelles seemed now to have

the power to evoke. When some hours of other work had weakened the

impulse received from her, he would look at these things sadly, and

put them aside.

To-night, as he drew, he was thinking incessantly of Eugénie; pierced

often by intolerable remorse. But whose fault was it? Will you ask a

man, perishing of need, to put its satisfaction from him? The tests of

life are too hard. The plain, selfish man must always fail under them.

Why act and speak as though he were responsible for what Nature and

the flesh impose?

But how was it all to end?--that was what tormented him. His

conscience shrank from the half-perceived villainies before him; but

his will failed him. What was the use of talking? He was the slave

of an impulse, which was not passion, which had none of the excuse of

passion, but represented rather the blind search of a man who, like a

child in the dark, recoils in reckless terror from loneliness and the

phantoms of his own mind.

Eleven o'clock struck. He was busying himself with a cardboard model,

on which he had been trying the effect of certain arrangements, when

he heard a knock at his door.

'_Entrez_!' he said, in astonishment.

At this season of the year the hotel kept early hours, and there was

not a light to be seen in the _cour_.

The door opened. On the threshold stood Arthur Welby. Fenwick gazed at

him open-mouthed.

'You?--you came to see me?'

He advanced, head foremost, hand outstretched.

'I have something important to say to you.' Welby took no notice of

the hand. 'Shall we be undisturbed?'

'I imagine so!' said Fenwick, fiercely retreating; 'but, as you see, I

am extremely busy!' He pointed to the room and its contents.

'I am sorry to interrupt you'--Welby's voice was carefully

controlled--'but I think you will admit that I had good reason to come

and find you.' He looked round to see that the door was shut, then

advanced a step nearer. 'You are, I think, acquainted with that lady?'

He handed Fenwick a card. Fenwick took it to the light. On it was

lithographed 'Miss Isabel Morrison,' and a written address, 'Corso de

Madrid, Buenos Ayres,' had been lightly scratched out in one corner.

Fenwick put down the card.

'Well,' he said, sharply--'and if I am--what then?'

Welby began to speak--paused--and cleared his throat. He was standing,

with one hand lightly resting on the table, his eyes fixed on Fenwick.

There was a moment of shock, of mutual defiance.

'This lady seems to have observed the movements of our party here,'

said Welby, commanding himself. 'She followed my wife and me to-day,

after we met you in the Park. She spoke to us. She gave us the

astonishing news that you were a married man--that your wife--'

Fenwick rushed forward and gripped the speaker's arm.

'My God! Tell me!--is she alive?'

His eyes starting out of his head--his crimson face--his anguish,

seemed to affect the other with indescribable repulsion.

Welby wrenched himself free.

'That was what Miss Morrison wished to ask _you_. She says that when

you and she last met you were not on very good terms; she shrank,

therefore, from addressing you. But she had a respect for your

wife--she wished to know what had become of her--and her curiosity

impelled her to speak to us. She seems to have been in Buenos Ayres

for many years. This year she returned--as governess--with the family

of a French engineer, who have taken an apartment in Versailles. She

first saw you in the street nearly a month ago.'

Fenwick had dropped into a chair, his face in his hands. As Welby

ceased speaking, he looked up.

'And she said nothing about my wife's where-abouts?'

'Nothing. She knows nothing.'

'Nor of why she left me?'

Welby hesitated.

'Miss Morrison seems to have her own ideas as to that.'

'Where is she?' Fenwick rose hurriedly.

'Rue des Ecuries, 27. Naturally, you can't see her to-night.'

'No'--said Fenwick, sitting down again, like a man in a dream--'no.

Did she say anything else?'

'She mentioned something about a debt you owed her,' said Welby,

coldly--'some matter that she had only just discovered. I had no

concern with that.'

Fenwick's face, which had become deathly pale, was suddenly overspread

with a rush of crimson. More almost than by the revelation of his long

deception as to his wife was he humiliated and tortured by these words

relating to his debt to Morrison on Welby's lips. This successful

rival, this fine gentleman!--admitted to his sordid affairs. He rose

uncertainly, pulling himself passionately together.

'Now that she has reappeared, I shall pay my debt to Miss Morrison--if

it exists,' he said, haughtily; 'she need be in no fear as to that.

Well, now then'--he leaned heavily on the mantelpiece, his face still

twitching--'you know, Mr. Welby--by this accident--the secret of my

life. My wife left me--for the maddest, emptiest reasons--and she took

our child with her. I did everything I could to discover them. It was

all in vain--and if Miss Morrison cannot enlighten me, I am as much

in the dark to-night as I was yesterday, whether my wife is alive--or

dead. Is there anything more to be said?'

'By God, yes!' cried Welby, with a sudden gesture of passion,

approaching Fenwick. 'There is everything to be said!'

Fenwick was silent. Their eyes met.

'When you first made acquaintance with Lord Findon,' said Welby,

controlling himself, 'you made him--you made all of us--believe that

you were an unmarried man?'

'I did. It was the mistake--the awkwardness of a moment. I hadn't your

easy manners! I was a raw country fellow--and I hadn't the courage,

the mere self-possession, to repair it.'

'You let Madame de Pastourelles sit to you,' said Welby,

steadily--'week after week, month after month--you accepted her

kindness--you became her friend. Later on, you allowed her to advise

you--write to you--talk to you about marrying, when your means should

be sufficient--without ever allowing her to guess for a moment that

you had already a wife and child!'

'That is true,' said Fenwick, nodding. 'The second false step was the

consequence of the first.'

'The consequence! You had but to say a word--one honest word! Then,

when your conduct, I suppose--I don't dare to judge you--had driven

your wife away--for twelve years'--he dragged the words between his

teeth--'you masquerade to Madame de Pastourelles--and when her long

martyrdom as a wife is at last over--when in the tenderness

and compassion of her heart she begins to show you a friendship

which--which those who know her'--he laboured for breath and

words--'can only--presently--interpret in one way--you who owe her

everything--everything!--you _dare_ to play with her innocent, her

stainless life--you _dare_ to let her approach--to let those about

her approach--the thought of her marrying you--while all the time you

knew--what you know! If there ever was a piece of black cruelty in

this world, it is you, _you_ that have been guilty of it!'

The form of Arthur Welby, drawn to its utmost height, towered above

the man he accused. Fenwick sat, struck dumb. Welby's increasing

stoop, which of late had marred his natural dignity of gait; the

slight touches of affectation, of the _petit-maître_, which were now

often perceptible; the occasional note of littleness, or malice, such

as his youth had never known:--all these defects, physical and moral,

had been burnt out of the man, as he spoke these words, by the flame

of his only, his inextinguishable passion. For his dear mistress--in

the purest, loftiest sense of that word--he stood champion, denouncing

with all his soul the liar who had deceived and endangered her; a

stern, unconscious majesty expressed itself in his bearing, his voice;

and the man before him--artist and poet like himself--was sensible of

it in the highest, the most torturing degree.

Fenwick turned away. He stooped mechanically to the fire, put it

together, lifted a log lying in front of it, laid it carefully on the

others. Then he looked at Welby, who on his side had walked to the

window and opened it, as though the room suffocated him.

'Everything that you say is just'--said Fenwick, slowly--'I have no

answer to make--except that--No!--I have no answer to make.'

He paced once or twice up and down the length of the room, slowly,

thoughtfully; then he resumed:

'I shall write to Madame de Pastourelles to-night, and by the first

train to-morrow, as soon as these things'--he looked round him--'can

be gathered together, I shall be gone!'

Welby moved sharply, showing a face still drawn and furrowed with

emotion--'No! she will want to see you.'

Fenwick's composure broke down. 'I had better not see her'--he

said--'I had better not see her!'

'You will bear that for her,' said Welby, quietly. 'The more

completely you can enlighten her, the better for us all.'

Fenwick's lips moved, but without speaking. Welby's ignorance of the

whole truth oppressed him; yet he could make no effort to remove it.

Welby came back towards him.

'There is no reason, I think, why we should carry this conversation

further. I will let Miss Morrison know that I have communicated with

you.'

'No need,' said Fenwick, interrupting him. 'I shall see her first

thing in the morning--'

'And'--resumed Welby, lifting a book and letting it fall

uncertainly--'if there is anything I can do--with Lord Findon--for

instance--'

Fenwick had a movement of impatience. He felt his endurance giving

way.

'There is nothing to do!--except to tell the truth--and to as few

people as possible!'

Welby winced. Was the reference to his wife?

'I agree with you--of course.'

He paused a moment--irresolute--wondering whether he had said all

he had to say. Then, involuntarily, his eyes rested questioningly,

piercingly, on the man beside him. They seemed to express the marvel

of his whole being that such an offence could ever be--they tried

to penetrate a character, a psychology which in truth baffled them

altogether.

He moved to the door, and Fenwick opened it.

As his visitor walked away, Fenwick stood motionless, listening to the

retreating step, which echoed in the silence of the vast, empty hotel,

once the house of Madame de Pompadour.

He looked at his watch. Past midnight. By about three o'clock, in the

midst of a wild autumnal storm, he had finished his letter to Madame

de Pastourelles; and he fell asleep at his table, worn out, his head

on his arms.

Before ten on the following morning Fenwick had seen Bella Morrison.

A woman appeared--the caricature of something he had once known, the

high cheek-bones of his early picture touched with rouge, little curls

of black hair plastered on her temples, with a mincing gait, and a

manner now giggling and now rude. She was extremely sorry if she had

put him out--really particularly sorry! She wouldn't have done so

for the world; but her curiosity got the better of her. Also, she

confessed, she had wished to see whether Mr. Fenwick would acknowledge

his debt to her. It was only lately that she had come across a

statement of it amongst her father's papers. It was funny he should

have forgotten it so long; but there--she wasn't going to be nasty. As

to poor Mrs. Fenwick, no, of course she knew nothing. She had inquired

of some friends in the North, and they also knew nothing. They had

only heard that husband and wife couldn't hit it off, and that Mrs.

Fenwick had gone abroad. It was a pity--but a body might have expected

it, mightn't they?

The crude conceit and violence of her girlhood had given place, under

the pressure of a hard life, to something venomous and servile. She

never mentioned her visit to Phoebe; but her eyes seemed to mock her

visitor all the time. Fenwick cut the interview short as soon as he

could, hastily paid her a hundred pounds, though it left him overdrawn

and almost penniless, and then rushed back to his hotel to see what

might be waiting for him.

An envelope was lying on his table. It cost him a great effort to open

it.

'I have received your letter. There is nothing to say, except that I

must see you. I wish to keep what you have told me from my father, for

the present, at any rate. There would be no possibility of our talking

here. We have only one sitting-room, and my sister is there all the

time. I will be at the Bosquet d'Apollon, by 11.30.'

Only that! He stared at the delicate, almost invisible writing. The

moment he had dreaded for twelve years had arrived; and the world

still went on, and quiet notes like that could still be written.

Long before the hour fixed he was in the Bosquet d'Apollon, walking up

and down in front of the famous grotto, on whose threshold the white

Apollo, just released from the chariot of the Sun, receives the

ministrations of the Muses, while his divine horses are being fed and

stalled in the hollows of the rock to either side. No stranger fancy

than this ever engaged the architects and squandered the finances of

the Builder-King. Reared in solid masonry on bare sandy ground now

entirely disguised, the artificial rock that holds the grotto towers

to a great height, crowned by ancient trees, weathered by wind and

rain, overgrown by leaf and grass, and laved at its base by clear

water. All round, the trees stand close--the lawns spread their quiet

slopes. On this sparkling autumn morning, a glory of russet, amber,

and red, begirt the white figures and the gleaming grotto. The

Immortals, the champing horses, locked behind their _grilles_ lest

the tourist should insult them--all the queer crumbling romance of

the statuary, all the natural beauty of leaf and water, of the white

clouds overhead and their reflexions below--combined to make Fenwick's

guilty bewilderment more complete, to turn all life to dream, and all

its figures into the puppets of a shadow-play.

A light step on the grass. A shock passed through him. He made a

movement, then checked it.

Eugénie paused at some distance from him. In this autumnal moment of

the year, and on week-days, scarcely any passing visitor disturbs the

quiet of the Bosquet d'Apollon. In its deep dell of trees and grass,

they were absolutely alone; the sunlight which dappled the white

bodies of the Muses, and shone on the upstretched arm of Apollo,

seemed the only thing of life besides themselves.

She threw back her veil as she came near him--her long widow's veil,

which to-day she had resumed. Beneath it, framed in it, the face

appeared of an ivory rigidity and pallor. The eyes only were wild and

living as she came up to him, clasping her hands, evidently shrinking

from him--yet composed.

'There is one thing more I want to know. If I have ever been your

friend!--if you have ever felt any kindness for me, tell me--tell me

frankly--why did your wife leave you?'

Fenwick's face fell. Had she come so soon to this point?--by the

sureness of her own instinct?

'There were many troubles between us,' he said, hoarsely, walking on

beside her, his eyes on the grass.

'Was she--was she jealous?'--she breathed with difficulty--'of any of

your models?--I know that sometimes happens--or of your sitters--of

_me_, for instance?'

The last words were scarcely audible; but her gaze enforced them.

'She was jealous of my whole life--away from her. And I was utterly

blind and selfish--I ought to have known what was going on--and I had

no idea.'

'And what happened? I know so little.'

Her voice so peremptorily strange--so remote--compelled him. With

difficulty he gave an outline of Phoebe's tragic visit to his studio.

His letter of the night before had scarcely touched on the details of

the actual crisis, had dwelt rather on the months of carelessness and

neglect on his own part, which had prepared it.

She interrupted.

'That was she?--the mother in the "Genius Loci"?'

He assented mutely.

She closed her eyes a moment, seeing, in her suffering, the face of

the young mother and her child.

'But go on. And you were away? Please, please go on! When was it? It

must have been that spring when--'

She put her hand to her head, trying to remember dates.

'It was just before the Academy,' he said, reluctantly.

'You were out?'

'I had gone to tell Watson and Cuningham the good news.'

His voice dropped.

Her hands caught each other again.

'It was that day--that very day we came to you?'

He nodded.

'But why?--what was it made her do such a thing?--go--for

ever--without seeing you--without a word? She must have had some

desperate reason.'

'She had none!' he said, with energy.

'But she must have thought she had. Can't--can't you explain it to me

any more?'

He was almost at the end of his resistance.

'I told you--how she had resented--my concealment?'

'Yes--yes! But there must have been something more--something

sudden--that maddened her?'

He was silent. She grew whiter than before.

'Mr. Fenwick--I--I have much to forgive. There is only one course

of action--that can ever--make amends--and that is--an entire--an

absolute frankness!'

Her terrible suspicion--her imperious will had conquered. Anything was

better than to deny her, torture her--deceive her afresh.

He looked at her in a horrible indecision. Then, slowly, he put his

hand within the breast of his coat.

'This is the letter she wrote me. I found it in my room.'

And he drew out the crumpled letter from his pocket-book, which he had

worn thus almost from the day of Phoebe's disappearance.

Eugénie fell upon it, devoured it. Not a demur, not a doubt, as

to this!--in one so strictly, so tenderly scrupulous. Even at that

moment, it struck him pitifully. It seemed to give the measure of her

pain.

'The picture?' she said, looking up--'I don't understand--you had sent

it in.'

'Do you remember--asking me about the sketch? and I told you--it had

been accidentally spoilt?'

She understood. Her lips trembled. Returning the letter, she sank upon

a seat. He saw that her forces were almost failing her. And he dared

not say a word or make a movement of sympathy.

For some little time she was silent. Her eyes ranged the green circuit

of the hollow--the water, the reeds, the rock, and that idle god among

his handmaidens. Her attitude, her look expressed a moral agony,

how strangely out of place amid this setting! Through her--innocent,

unconscious though she were--the young helpless wife had come to

grief--a soul had been risked--perhaps lost. Only a nature trained as

Eugénie's had been, by suffering and prayer and lofty living, could

have felt what she felt, and as she felt it.

Fumbling, Fenwick put back the letter in his pocket-book--thrust it

again into his coat. Never once did the thought cross Eugénie's mind

that he had probably worn it there, through these last days, while

their relation had grown so intimate, so dear. All recollection of

herself had left her. She was possessed with Phoebe. Nothing else

found entrance.

At last, after much more questioning--much more difficult or impetuous

examination--she rose feebly.

'I think I understand. Now--we have to find her!'

She stood, her hands loosely clasped, her eyes gazing into the sunny

vacancy of sky, above the rock.

Fenwick advanced a step. He felt that he must speak, must grovel to

her--repeat some of the things he had said in his letter. But here,

in her presence, all words seemed too crude, too monstrous. His voice

died away.

So there was no repetition of the excuses, the cry for pardon he had

spent the night on; and she made no reference to them.

They walked back to the hotel, talking coldly, precisely, almost as

strangers, of what should be done. Fenwick--whose work indeed was

finished--would return to England that night. After his departure,

Madame de Pastourelles would inform her father of what had happened;

a famous solicitor, Lord Findon's old friend, was to be consulted; all

possible measures were to be taken once more for Phoebe's discovery.

At the door of the hotel, Fenwick raised his hat. Eugénie did not

offer her hand; but her sweet face suddenly trembled afresh--before

her will could master it. To hide it, she turned abruptly away; and

the door closed upon her.

CHAPTER XI

After a moderately bright morning, that after-breakfast fog which we

owe to the British kitchen and the domestic hearth was descending on

the Strand. The stream of traffic, on the roadway and the pavements,

was passing to and fro under a yellow darkness; the shop-lights

were beginning to flash out here and there, but without any of their

evening cheerfulness; and on the passing faces one saw written the

inconvenience and annoyance of the fog--the fear, too, lest it should

become worse and impenetrable.

Fenwick was groping his way along, eastward; one moment feeling and

hating the depression of the February day, of the grimy, overcrowded

street; the next, responsive to some dimly beautiful effect of colour

or line--some quiver of light--some grouping of phantom forms in the

gloom. Halfway towards the Law-Courts he was hailed and overtaken by a

tall, fair-haired man.

'Hallo, Fenwick!--just the man I wanted to see!'

Fenwick, whose eyes--often very troublesome of late--were smarting

with the fog, peered at the speaker, and recognised Philip Cuningham.

His face darkened a little as they shook hands.

'What did you want me for?'

'Did you know that poor old Watson had come back to town--ill?'

'No!' cried Fenwick, arrested. 'I thought he was in Algiers.'

Cuningham walked on beside him, telling what he knew, Fenwick all

the time dumbly vexed that this good-looking, prosperous fellow, this

Academician in his new fur coat, breathing success and commissions,

should know more of his best friend's doings than he.

Watson, it appeared, had been seized with hemorrhage at Marseilles,

and had thereupon given up his winter plans, and crawled home to

London, as soon as he was sufficiently recovered to bear the journey.

Fenwick, much troubled, protested that it was madness to have come

back to the English winter.

'No,' said Cuningham, looking grave. 'Better die at home than among

strangers. And I'm afraid it's come to that, dear old fellow!'

Then he described--with evident self-satisfaction--how he had heard,

from a common friend, of Watson's arrival, how he had rescued the

invalid from a dingy Bloomsbury hotel, and settled him in some rooms

in Fitzroy Square, with a landlady who could be trusted.

'We must have a nurse before long--but he won't have one yet. He wants

badly to see you. I told him I'd look you up this evening. But this'll

do instead, won't it? You'll remember?--23, Fitzroy Square. Shall

I tell him when he may expect you? Every day we try to get him some

little pleasure or other.'

Fenwick's irritation grew. Cuningham was talking as though the old

relation between him and Richard Watson were still intact; while

Fenwick knew well how thin and superficial the bond had grown.

'I shall go to-day,' he said, rather shortly. 'I have two or three

things to do this morning, but there'll be time before my rehearsal

this afternoon.'

'Your rehearsal?' Cuningham looked amiably curious.

Fenwick explained, but with fresh annoyance. The papers had been full

enough of this venture on which he was engaged; Cuningham's ignorance

offended him.

'Ah, indeed--very interesting,' said Cuningham, vaguely. 'Well,

good-bye. I must jump into a hansom.'

'Where are you off to?'

'The Goldsmiths' Company are building a new Hall, and they want my

advice about its decoration. Precious difficult, though, to get away

from one's pictures, this time of year, isn't it?'

He hailed a hansom as he spoke.

'That's not a difficulty that applies to me,' said Fenwick, shortly.

Cuningham stared--frowned--and remembered.

'Oh, my dear fellow--what a mistake that was!--if you'll let me say

so. Can't we put it right? Command me at any time.'

'Thank you. I prefer it as it is.'

'We'll talk it over. Well, good-bye. Don't forget old Dick.'

Fenwick walked on, fuming. Cuningham, he said to himself, was now the

type of busy, pretentious mediocrity, the type which eternally keeps

English art below the level of the Continent.

'I say--one moment! Have you had any news of the Findons lately?'

Fenwick turned sharply, and again saw Cuningham, whose hansom had been

blocked by the traffic, close to the pavement. He was hanging over the

door, and smiling.

In reply to the question, Fenwick merely shook his head.

'I had a capital letter from her ladyship a week or two ago,' said

Cuningham, raising his voice, and bringing himself as near to Fenwick

as his position allowed. 'The old fellow seems to be as fit as ever.

But Madame de Pastourelles must be very much changed.'

Fenwick said nothing. It might have been thought that the traffic

prevented his hearing Cuningham's remark. But he had heard distinctly.

'Do you know when they'll be home?' he asked, reluctantly, walking

beside the hansom.

'No--haven't an idea. I believe I'm to go to them for Easter. Ah!--now

we go on. Ta-ta!'

He waved his hand, and the hansom moved away.

Fenwick pursued his walk plunged in disagreeable thought. 'Much

changed?' What did that mean? He had noticed no such change before the

Findons left London. The words fell like a fresh blow upon a wound.

He turned north, toward Lincoln's Inn Fields, called at the offices of

Messrs. Butlin & Forbes, the well-known solicitors, and remained

there half an hour. When he emerged from the old house, he looked, if

possible, more harried and cast down than when he had entered it.

They had had a letter to show him, but in his opinion it contributed

nothing. There was no hope--and no clue! How could there be? He had

never himself imagined for a moment that any gain would come of these

new researches. But he had been allowed no option with regard to them.

Immediately after his return to London from Versailles he had received

a stern letter from Lord Findon, insisting--as his daughter had

already done--that the only reparation he, Fenwick, could make to the

friends he had so long and cruelly deceived, was to allow them a free

hand in a fresh attempt to discover his wife, and so to clear Madame

de Pastourelles from the ridiculous suspicions that Mrs. Fenwick

had been led so disastrously to entertain. 'Most shamefully and

indefensibly my daughter has been made to feel herself an accomplice

in Mrs. Fenwick's disappearance,' wrote Lord Findon; 'the only amends

you can ever make for your conduct will lie in new and vigorous

efforts, even at this late hour, to find and to undeceive your wife.'

Hence, during November and December, constant meetings and

consultations in the well-known offices of Lord Findon's solicitors.

At these meetings both Madame de Pastourelles and her father had

been often present, and she had followed the debates with a quick and

strained intelligence, which often betrayed to Fenwick the suffering

behind. He painfully remembered with what gentleness and chivalry

Eugénie had always treated him personally on these occasions, with

what anxious generosity she had tried to curb her father.

But there had been no private conversation between them. Not only did

they shrink from it; Lord Findon could not have borne it. The storm of

family and personal pride which the disclosure of Fenwick's story had

aroused in the old man had been of a violence impossible to resist.

That Fenwick's obscure and crazy wife should have dared to entertain

_jealousy_ of a being so far above his ken and hers, as Eugénie then

was--that she should have made a ridiculous tragedy out of it--and

that Fenwick should have conduced to the absurd and insulting

imbroglio by his ill-bred and vulgar concealment:--these things

were so irritating to Lord Findon that they first stimulated a rapid

recovery from his illness at Versailles, and then led him to frantic

efforts on Phoebe's behalf, which were in fact nothing but the

expression of his own passionate pride and indignation--resting, no

doubt ultimately, on those weeks at Versailles when even he, with all

the other bystanders, had supposed that Eugénie would marry this man.

His mood, indeed, had been a curious combination of wounded affection

with a class arrogance stiffened by advancing age and long indulgence.

When, in those days, the old man entered the room where Fenwick was,

he bore his grey head and sparkling eyes with the air of a teased

lion.

Fenwick, a man of violent temper, would have found much difficulty

in keeping the peace under these circumstances, but for the frequent

presence of Eugénie, and the pressure of his own dull remorse. 'I

too--have--much to forgive!'--that, he knew well, would be the only

reference involving personal reproach that he would ever hear from

her lips, either to his original deceit, or to those wild weeks at

Versailles (that so much ranker and sharper offence!)--when, in his

loneliness and craving, he had gambled both on her ignorance and on

Phoebe's death. Yet he did not deceive himself. The relation between

them was broken; he had lost his friend. Her very cheerfulness and

gentleness somehow enforced it. How natural!--how just! None the less

his bitter realisation of it had worked with crushing effect upon a

miserable man.

About Christmas, Lord Findon's health had again caused his family

anxiety. He was ordered to Cannes, and Eugénie accompanied him. Before

she went she had gone despairingly once more through all the ingenious

but quite fruitless inquiries instituted by the lawyers; and she had

written a kind letter to Fenwick begging to be kept informed, and

adding at the end a few timid words expressing her old sympathy with

his work, and her best wishes for the success of the pictures that she

understood he was to exhibit in the spring.

Then she and her father departed. Fenwick had felt their going as

perhaps the sharpest pang in this intolerable winter. But he had

scarcely answered her letter. What was there to say? At least he had

never asked her or her father for money--had never owed Lord Findon a

penny. There was some small comfort in that.

* * * * *

Nevertheless, it was of money that he thought--and must think--night

and day.

After his interview with the magnificent gentlemen in Lincoln's Inn

Fields, he made his way wearily to a much humbler office in Bedford

Row. Here was a small solicitor to whom he had often resorted lately,

under the constant pressure of his financial difficulties. He spent

an hour in this man's room. When he came out, he walked fast towards

Oxford Street and the west, hardly conscious in his excitement of

where he was going. The lawyer he had just seen had for the first time

mentioned the word 'bankruptcy.' 'I scarcely see, Mr. Fenwick, how you

can avoid it.'

Well, it might come to that--it might. But he still had his six

pictures--time to finish two others that were now on hand--and the

exhibition.

It was with that he was now concerned. He called on the manager of

a small gallery near Hanover Square with whom he had already made an

arrangement for the coming May--paying a deposit on the rent--early

in the winter. In his anxiety, he wished now to make the matter still

clearer, to pay down the rest of the rent if need be. He had the notes

always in his breast-pocket, jealously hidden away, lest any other

claim, amid the myriads which pressed upon him, should sweep them from

him.

The junior partner in charge of the gallery and the shop of which it

made part, received him very coldly. The firm had long since regretted

their bargain with a man whose pictures were not likely to sell,

especially as they could have relet the gallery to much better

advantage. But their contract with Fenwick--clinched by the

deposit--could not be evaded; so they were advised.

All, therefore, that the junior partner could do was to try to alarm

Fenwick, as to the incidental expenses involved--hanging, printing,

service, etc. But Fenwick only laughed. 'I shall see to that!' he

said, contemptuously. 'And my pictures will sell, I tell you,' he

added, raising his voice. 'They'll bring a profit both to you and to

me.'

The individual addressed said nothing. He was a tall, well-fed young

man, in a faultless frock-coat, and Fenwick, as they stood together

in the office--the artist had not been offered a chair--disliked him

violently.

'Well, shall I pay you the rest?' said Fenwick, abruptly, turning to

go, and fumbling at the same time for the pocket-book in which he kept

the notes.

The other gave a slight shrug.

'That's just as you please, Mr. Fenwick.'

'Well, here's fifty, anyway,' said Fenwick, drawing out a fifty-pound

note and laying it on the table.

'We are not in any hurry, I assure you.'

The young man stood looking at the artist, in an attitude of cool

indifference; but at the same time his hand secured the note, and

placed it safely in the drawer of the table between them.

He wrote a receipt, and handed it to Fenwick.

'Good-day,' said Fenwick, turning to go.

The other followed him, and as they stepped out into the

exhibition-rooms of the shop, hung in dark purple, Fenwick perceived

in the distance what looked like a fine Corot, and a Daubigny--and

paused.

'Got some good things, since I was here last?'

'Oh, we're always getting good things,' said his companion,

carelessly, without the smallest motion towards the pictures.

Fenwick nodded haughtily, and walked towards the door. But his soul

smarted within him. Two years before, the owners of any picture-shop

in London would have received him with _empressement_, have shown him

all they had to show, and taken flattering note of his opinion.

On the threshold he ran against the Academician with the orange hair

and beard, who had been his fellow-guest at the Findon's on the night

of his first dinner-party there. The orange hair was now nearly white;

its owner had grown to rotundity; but the sharp, glancing eyes and

pompous manner were the same as of old. Mr. Sherratt nodded curtly to

Fenwick, and was then received with bows and effusion by the junior

partner standing behind.

'Ah, Mr. Sherratt!--_delighted_ to see you! Come to look at the Corot?

By all means! This way, please.'

Fenwick pursued his course to Oxford Street in a morbid

self-consciousness. It seemed to him that all the world knew him by

now for a failure and a bankrupt; that he was stared and pointed at.

He took refuge from this nightmare in an Oxford Street restaurant, and

as he ate his midday chop he asked himself, for the hundredth time,

how the deuce it was that he had got into the debts which weighed him

down. He had been extravagant on the building and furnishing of

his house--but after all he had earned large sums of money. He sat

gloomily over his meal--frowning--and trying to remember. And once,

amid the foggy darkness, there opened a vision of a Westmoreland

stream, and a pleading face upturned to his in the moonlight--'And

then, you know, I could look after money! You're _dreadfully_ bad

about money, John!'

The echo of that voice in his ears made him restless. He rose and set

forth again--toward Fitzroy Square.

On the way his thoughts recurred to the letter he had found waiting

for him at the lawyer's. It came from Phoebe's cousin, Freddy Tolson.

Messrs. Butlin had traced this man anew--to a mining town in New South

Wales. He had been asked to come to England and testify--no matter

at what expense. In the letter just received--bearing witness in its

improved writing and spelling to the prosperous development of the

writer--he declined to come, repeating that he knew nothing whatever

of his Cousin Phoebe's where-abouts, nor of her reasons for leaving

her husband. He gave a fresh and longer account of his conversation

with her, as far as he could remember it at this distance of time;

and this longer account contained the remark that she had asked him

questions about other colonies than Australia, to which he was himself

bound. He thought Canada had been mentioned--the length of the passage

there, and its cost. He had not paid much attention to it at the time.

It had seemed to him that she was glad, poor thing, of some one

to have a 'crack' with--'for I guess she'd been pretty lonesome up

there.' But she might have had something in her head--he couldn't say.

All he could declare was that if she were in Canada, or any other of

the colonies, he had had no hand in it, and knew no more than a 'born

baby' where she might be hidden.

So now, on this vague hint, a number of fresh inquiries were to be

set on foot. Fenwick hoped nothing from them. Yet as he walked fast

through the London streets, from which the fog was lifting, his mind

wrestled with vague images of great lakes, and virgin forests, and

rolling wheat-lands--of the streets of Montreal, or the Heights of

Québec--and amongst them, now with one background, now with another,

the slender figure of a fair-haired woman with a child beside her. And

through his thoughts, furies of distress and fear pursued him--now as

always.

'Well, this is a queer go, isn't it?' said Watson, in a

half-whispering voice. 'Nature has horrid ways of killing you. I wish

she'd chosen a more expeditious one with me.'

Fenwick sat down beside his friend, the lamp-light in the old panelled

room revealing, against his will, his perturbed and shaken expression.

'How did this come on?' he asked.

'Of itself, my dear fellow'--laughed Watson, in the same hoarse

whisper. 'My right lung has been getting rotten for a year past, and

at Marseilles it happened to break. That's my explanation, anyway, and

it does as well as the doctor's.--Well, how are you?'

Fenwick shifted uneasily, and made a vague answer.

Watson turned to look at him.

'What pictures have you on hand?'

Fenwick gave a list of the completed pictures still in his studio, and

described the arrangements made to exhibit them. He was not as ready

as usual to speak of himself; his gaze and his attention were fixed

upon his friend. But Watson probed further, into the subjects of his

recent work. Fenwick was nearing the end, he explained, of a series of

rustic 'Months' with their appropriate occupations--an idea which had

haunted his mind for years.

'As old as the hills,' said Watson, 'but none the worse for that.

You've painted them, I suppose, out-of-doors?'

Fenwick shrugged his shoulders.

'As much as possible.'

'Ah, that's where those French fellows have us,' said Watson,

languidly. 'One of them said to me in Paris the other day, "It's bad

enough to paint the things you've seen--it's the devil to paint the

things you've not seen."'

'The usual fallacy,' said Fenwick, firing up. 'What do they mean by

"seen"?'

He would have liked this time to go off at score. But a sure instinct

told him that he was beside a dying man; and he held himself back,

trying instead to remember what small news and gossip he could, for

the amusement of his friend.

Watson sat in a deep armchair, propped up by pillows. The room in

which they met had been a very distinguished room in the eighteenth

century. It had still some remains of carved panelling, a graceful

mantelpiece of Italian design, and a painted ceiling half-effaced. It

was now part of a lodging-house, furnished with shabby cheapness; but

the beauty, once infused, persisted; and it made no unworthy setting

for a painter's death.

The signs of desperate illness in Richard Watson were indeed plainly

visible. His shaggy hair and thick, unkempt beard brought into relief

the waxen or purple tones of the skin. The breath was laboured and the

cough frequent. But the eyes were still warm, living, and passionate,

the eyes of a Celt, with the Celtic gifts, and those deficiencies,

also, of his race, broadly and permanently expressed in the words of a

great historian--'The Celts have shaken all States, and founded none!'

No founder, no _achiever_, this--no happy, harmonious soul--but a

man who had vibrated to life and Nature, in their subtler and sadder

aspects, through whom the nobler thoughts and ambitions had passed,

like sound through strings, wringing out some fine, tragic notes,

some memorable tones. 'I can't last more than a week or two,' he

said, presently, in a pause of Fenwick's talk, to which he had

hardly listened--'and a good job too. But I don't find myself at all

rebellious. I'm curiously content to go. I've had a good time.'

This from a man who had passed from one disappointed hope to another,

brought the tears to Fenwick's eyes.

'Some of us may wish we were going with you,' he said, in a low voice,

laying his hand a moment on his friend's knee.

Watson made no immediate reply. He coughed--fidgeted--and at last

said:

'How's the money?'

Fenwick hastily drew himself up. 'All right.'

He reached out a hand to the tongs and put the fire together.

'Is that so?' said Watson. The slight incredulity in his voice touched

some raw nerve in Fenwick.

'I don't want anything,' he said, almost angrily. 'I shall get

through.'

Cuningham had been talking, no doubt. His affairs had been discussed.

His morbid pride took offence at once.

'Mine'll just hold out,' said Watson, presently, with a humorous

inflexion--'it'll bury me, I think--with a few shillings over. But I

couldn't have afforded another year.'

There was silence a while--till a nurse came in to make up the fire.

Fenwick began to talk of old friends, and current exhibitions; and

presently tea made its appearance. Watson's strength seemed to revive.

He sat more upright in his chair, his voice grew stronger, and he

dallied with his tea, joking hoarsely with his nurse, and asking

Fenwick all the questions that occurred to him. His face, in its

rugged pallor and emaciation, and his great head, black or iron-grey

on the white pillows, were so fine that Fenwick could not take

his eyes from him; with the double sense of the artist, he saw the

_subject_ in the man; a study in black and white hovered before him.

When the nurse had withdrawn, and they were alone again, in a silence

made more intimate still by the darkness of the panelled walls, which

seemed to isolate them from the rest of the room, enclosing them in a

glowing ring of lamp and firelight, Fenwick was suddenly seized by an

impulse he could not master. He bent towards the sick man.

'Watson!--do you remember advising me to marry when we met in Paris?'

'Perfectly.'

The invalid turned his haggard eyes upon the speaker, in a sudden

sharp attention.

There was a pause; then Fenwick said, with bent head, staring into the

fire:

'Well--I _am_ married.'

Watson gave a hoarse 'Phew!'--and waited.

'My wife left me twelve years ago and took our child with her. I don't

know whether they are alive or dead. I thought I'd like to tell you.

It would have been better if I hadn't concealed it, from you--and--and

other friends.'

'Great Scott!' said Watson, slowly, bringing the points of his long,

emaciated fingers together, like one trying to master a new image. 'So

that's been the secret--'

'Of what?' said Fenwick, testily; but as Watson merely replied by

an interrogative and attentive silence, he threw himself into his

tale--headlong. He told it at far greater length than Eugénie had ever

heard it; and throughout, the subtle, instinctive appeal of man to man

governed the story, differentiating it altogether from the same story,

told to a woman.

He spoke impetuously, with growing emotion, conscious of an infinite

relief and abandonment. Watson listened with scarcely a comment.

Midway a little pattering, scuffling noise startled the speaker. He

looked round and saw the monkey, Anatole, who had been lying asleep

in his basket. Watson nodded to Fenwick to go on, and then feebly

motioned to his knee. The monkey clambered there, and Watson folded

his bony arms round the creature, who lay presently with his weird

face pressed against his master's dressing-gown, his melancholy eyes

staring out at Fenwick.

'It was Madame she was jealous of?' said Watson, when the story came

to an end.

Fenwick hesitated--then nodded reluctantly. He had spoken merely of

'one of my sitters.' But it was not possible to fence with this dying

man.

'And Madame knows?'

'Yes.'

But Fenwick sharply regretted the introduction of Madame de

Pastourelles' name. He had brought the story down merely to the point

of Phoebe's flight and the search which followed, adding only--with

vagueness--that the search had lately been renewed, without success.

Watson pondered the matter for some time. Fenwick took out his

handkerchief and wiped a brow damp with perspiration. His story--added

to the miseries of the day--had excited and shaken him still further.

Suddenly Watson put out a hand and seized his wrist. The grip hurt.

'Lucky dog!'

'What on earth do you mean?'

'You've lost them--but you've had a woman in your arms--a child on

your knee! You don't go to your grave--[Greek: apraktos]--an ignorant,

barren fool--like me!'

Fenwick looked at him in amazement. Self-scorn--bitter and passionate

regret--transformed the face beside him. He pressed the fevered hand.

'Watson!--dear fellow!'

Watson withdrew his hand, and once more folded the monkey to him.

'There are plenty of men like me,' he muttered. 'We are afraid of

living--and art is our refuge. Then art takes its revenge--and we

are bad artists, because we are poor and sterilised human beings.

But you'--he spoke with fresh energy, composing himself--'don't talk

rot!--as though _your_ chance was done. You'll find her--she'll come

back to you--when she's drunk the cup. Healthy young women don't die

before thirty-five;--and by your account she wasn't bad--she had a

conscience. The child'll waken it. Don't you be hard on her!'--he

raised himself, speaking almost fiercely--'you've no right to!

Take her in--listen to her--let her cry it out. My God!'--his voice

dropped, as his head fell back on the pillows--'what happiness--what

happiness!'

His eyes closed. Fenwick stooped over him in alarm, but the thin hand

closed again on his.

'Don't go. What was she like?'

Fenwick asked him whether he remembered the incident of the

sketch-book at their first meeting--the drawing of the mother and

child in the kitchen of the Westmoreland farm.

'Perfectly. And she was the model for the big picture, too? I see. A

lovely creature! How old is she now?'

'Thirty-six--if she lives.'

'I tell you, she _does_ live! Probably more beautiful now than she

was then. Those Madonna-like women mellow so finely. And the child?

_Vois-tu, Anatole_!--something superior to monkeys!'

But he pressed the little animal closer to him as he spoke. Fenwick

rose to go, conscious that he had stayed too long. Watson looked up.

'Good-bye, old man--courage! Seek--till you find. She's in the

world--and she's sorry. I could swear it.'

Fenwick stood beside him, quivering with emotion and despondency.

Their eyes met steadily, and Watson whispered:

'I pass from one thing to another. Sometimes it's Omar Khayyám--"One

thing is certain and the rest is lies--The flower that once is born

for ever dies"--and the next it's the Psalms, and I think I'm at a

prayer-meeting--a Welsh Methodist again.'

He fell into a flow of Welsh, hoarsely musical. Then, with a smile, he

nodded farewell; and Fenwick went.

* * * * *

Fenwick wrote that night to Eugénie de Pastourelles at Cannes,

enclosing a copy of the letter received from Freddy Tolson. It meant

nothing; but she had asked to be kept informed. As he entered upon the

body of his letter, his eyes still recurred to its opening line:

'Dear Madame de Pastourelles.'

For many years he had never addressed her except as 'My dear friend.'

Well, that was all gone and over. The memory of her past goodness, of

those walks through the Trianon woods, was constantly with him. But he

had used her recklessly and selfishly, and she had done with him.

He admitted it now, as often before, in a temper of dull endurance;

bending himself to the task of his report.

* * * * *

Eugénie read his letter, sitting on a bench above the blue

Mediterranean, in the pine woods of the Cap d'Antibes. She had torn

it open in hope, and the reading of it depressed her. In the

pine-scented, sun-warmed air she sat for long motionless and sad. The

delicate greenish light fell on the soft brown hair, the white face

and hands. Eugénie's deep black had now assumed a slight 'religious'

air which disturbed Lord Findon, and kindled the Protestant wrath

of her stepmother. That short moment of a revived _mondanité_ which

Versailles had witnessed, was wholly past; and for the first and only

time in her marred life, Eugénie's natural gaiety was quenched. She

knew well that in the burden which weighed upon her there were morbid

elements; but she could only bear it; she could not smile under it.

Fenwick's letter led her thoughts back to the early incidents of

this fruitless search. Especially did she recall every moment of her

interview with Daisy Hewson--Phoebe Fenwick's former nursemaid, now

married to a small Westmoreland farmer. One of the first acts of the

lawyers had been to induce this woman to come to London to repeat once

more what she knew of the catastrophe.

Then, after the examination by the lawyers, Eugénie had pleaded that

she might see her--and see her alone. Accordingly, a shy and timid

woman, speaking with a broad Westmoreland accent, called one morning

in Dean's Yard.

Eugénie had won from her many small details the lawyers had been

unable to extract. They were not, alack, of a kind to help the search

for Phoebe; but, interpreted by the aid of her own quick imagination,

they drew a picture of the lost mother and child, which sank deep,

deep, into Eugénie's soul.

Mrs. Fenwick, said Mrs. Hewson, scarcely spoke on the journey south.

She sat staring out of window, with her hands on her lap, and Daisy

thought there was 'soomat wrang'--but dared not ask. In saying

good-bye at Euston, Mrs. Fenwick had kissed her, and given the guard a

shilling to look after her. She was holding Carrie in her arms, as

the train moved away. The girl had supposed she was going to join her

husband.

And barely a week later, John Fenwick had been dining in St. James's

Square, looking harassed and ill indeed--it was supposed, from

overwork; but, to his best friends, as silent as that grave of

darkness and oblivion which had closed over his wife.

Yet, as the weeks of thought went on, Eugénie blamed him less and

less. Her clear intelligence showed her all the steps of the unhappy

business. She remembered the awkward, harassed youth, as she had first

seen him at her father's table, with his curious mixture of arrogance

and timidity; now haranguing the table, and now ready to die with

confusion over some social slip. She understood what he had told her,

in his first piteous letter, of his paralysed, tongue-tied states--of

his fear of alienating her father and herself. And she went deeper.

She confessed the hatefulness of those weakening timidities, those

servile states of soul, by which our social machine balances the

insolences and cruelties of the strong--its own breeding also; she

felt herself guilty because of them; the whole of life seemed to her

sick, because a young man, ill at ease and cowardly in a world not his

own, had told or lived a foolish lie. It was as though she had

forced it from him; she understood so well how it had come about. No,

no!--her father might judge it as he pleased. She was angry no longer.

Nor--presently--did she even resent the treachery of those weeks at

Versailles, so quick and marvellous was the play of her great gift of

sympathy, which was only another aspect of imagination. In recoil from

a dark moment of her own experience, of which she could never think

without anguish, she had offered him a friend's hand, a friend's

heart--offered them eagerly and lavishly. Had he done more than

take them, with the craving of a man, for whom already the ways are

darkening, who makes one last clutch at 'youth and bloom, and this

delightful world'? He had been reckless and cruel indeed. But in its

profound tenderness and humility and self-reproach her heart forgave

him.

Yet of that forgiveness she could make no outward sign--for her own

sake and Phoebe's. That old relation could never be again; the weeks

at Versailles had killed it. Unless, indeed, some day it were her

blessed lot to find the living Phoebe, and bring her to her husband!

Then friendship, as well as love, might perhaps lift its head once

more. And as during the months of winter, both before and since her

departure from England, the tidings reached her of Fenwick's growing

embarrassments, of his increasing coarseness and carelessness of work,

his violence of temper, the friend in her suffered profoundly. She

knew that she could still do much for him. Yet there, in the way,

stood the image of Phoebe, as Daisy Hewson described her,--pale,

weary, desperate,--making all speech, all movement, on the part of

the woman, for jealousy of whom the wife had so ignorantly destroyed

herself and Fenwick, a thing impossible.

Eugénie's only comfort indeed, at this time, was the comfort of

religion. Her soul, sorely troubled and very stern with itself,

wandered in mystical, ascetic paths out of human ken. Every morning

she hurried through the woods to a little church beside the sea,

filled with fishing-folk. There she heard Mass, and made the spiritual

communion which sustained her.

Once, in the mediaeval siege of a Spanish fortress, so a Spanish

chronicler tells us, all the defenders were slaughtered but one man;

and he lay dying on the ground, across the gate. There was neither

priest nor wafer; but the dying man raised a little of the soil

between the stones to his lips, and so, says the chronicler,

'communicated in the earth itself,' before he passed to the Eternal

Presence. Eugénie would have done the same with a like ardour and

simplicity; her thought differing much, perhaps, in its perceived and

logical elements, from that of the dying Spaniard, but none the less

profoundly akin. The act was to her the symbol and instrument of an

Inflowing Power; the details of those historical beliefs with which

it was connected, mattered little. And as she thus leant upon the old,

while conscious of the new, she never in truth felt herself alone.

It seemed to her, often, that she clasped hands with a vast invisible

multitude, in a twilight soon to be dawn.

CHAPTER XII

A fortnight later Dick Watson died. Fenwick saw him several times

before the end, and was present at his last moments. The funeral

was managed by Cuningham; so were the obituary notices; and Fenwick

attended the funeral and read the notices, with that curious mixture

of sore grief and jealous irritation into which our human nature is so

often betrayed at similar moments.

Then he found himself absorbed by the later rehearsals of _The Queen's

Necklace_; by the completion of his pictures for the May exhibition;

and by the perpetual and ignominious hunt for money. As to this last,

it seemed to him that each day was a battle in which he was for ever

worsted. He was still trying in vain to sell his house at Chelsea, the

house planned at the height of his brief prosperity, built and finely

furnished on borrowed money, and now apparently unsaleable, because

of certain peculiarities in it, which suited its contriver, and no one

else. And meanwhile the bank from which he had borrowed most of his

building money was pressing inexorably for repayment; the solicitor in

Bedford Row could do nothing, and was manifestly averse to running

up a longer bill on his own account; so that, instead of painting,

Fenwick often spent his miserable days in rushing about London, trying

to raise money by one shift after another, in an agony to get a bill

accepted or postponed, borrowing from this person and that, and with

every succeeding week losing more self-respect and self-control.

The situation would have been instantly changed if only his artistic

power had recovered itself. And if Eugénie had been within his reach

it might have done so. She had the secret of stimulating in him what

was poetic, and repressing what was merely extravagant or violent. But

she was far away: and as he worked at the completion of his series of

'Months,' or at various portraits which the kindness or compassion of

old friends had procured for him, he fell headlong into all his worst

faults.

His handling, once so distinguished through all its inequalities, grew

steadily more careless and perfunctory; his drawing lost force and

grip; his composition, so rich, interesting, and intelligent in his

early days, now meant nothing, said nothing. The few friends who still

haunted his studio during these dark months were often struck with

pity; criticism or argument was useless; and some of them believed

that he was suffering from defects of sight, and was no longer capable

of judging his own work.

The portrait commissions, in particular, led more than once to

disaster. His angry vanity suspected that while he was now thought

incapable of the poetic or imaginative work in which he had once

excelled, he was still considered--'like any fool'--good enough for

portraits. This alone was enough to make him loathe the business. On

two or three occasions he ended by quarrelling with the sitter. Then

for hours he would walk restlessly about his room, smoking enormously,

drinking--sometimes excessively--out of a kind of excitement and

_désoeuvrement_--his strong, grizzled hair bristling about his head,

his black eyes staring and bloodshot, and that wild gypsyish look

of his youth more noticeable than ever in these surroundings of what

promised soon to be a decadent middle age.

One habit of his youth had quite disappeared. The queer tendency to

call on Heaven for practical aid in any practical difficulty--to make

of prayer a system of 'begging-letters to the Almighty'--which had of

ten quieted or distracted him in his early years of struggle, affected

him no longer. His inner life seemed to himself shrouded in a sullen

numbness and frost.

And the old joy in reading, the old plenitude and facility of

imagination, were also in abeyance. He became the fierce critic

of other men's ideas, while barren of his own. To be original,

successful, happy, was now in his eyes the one dark and desperate

offence. Yet every now and then he would have impulses of the largest

generosity; would devote hours to the teaching of some struggling

student and the correction of his work; or draw on his last remains of

credit or influence--pester people with calls, or write reams to the

newspapers--on behalf of some one, unduly overlooked, whose work he

admired.

But through it all, the shadows deepened, and a fixed conviction that

he was moving towards catastrophe. In spite of Watson's touching words

to him, he did not often let himself think of Phoebe. Towards her, as

towards so much else, his mind and heart were stiffened and voiceless.

But for hours in the night--since sleeplessness was now added to his

other torments--he would brood on the loss of his child, would try

to imagine her dancing, singing, sewing--or helping her mother in the

house. Seventeen! Why, soon no doubt they would be marrying her, and

he, her father, would know nothing, hear nothing. And in the darkness

he would feel the warm tears rise in his eyes, and hold them there,

proudly arrested.

The rehearsals in which he spent many hours of the week, generally

added to his distress and irritation. The play itself was, in his

opinion, a poor vulgar thing, utterly unworthy of the 'spectacle' he

had contrived for it. He could not hide his contempt for the piece,

and indeed for most of its players; and was naturally unpopular

with the management and the company. Moreover, he wanted his money

desperately, seeing that the play had been postponed, first from

November to February, and then from February to April; but the

actor-manager concerned was in somewhat dire straits himself, and

nothing could be got before production.

One afternoon, late in March, a rehearsal was nearing its completion,

everybody was tired out, and everything had been going badly. One of

Fenwick's most beautiful scenes--carefully studied from the Trianon

gardens on the spot--had been, in his opinion, hopelessly spoilt in

order to bring in some ridiculous 'business' wholly incongruous with

the setting and date of the play. He had had a fierce altercation on

the stage with the actor-manager. The cast, meanwhile, dispersed

at the back of the stage or in the wings, looked on maliciously or

chatted among themselves; while every now and then one or other of the

antagonists would call up the leading lady, or the conceited gentleman

who was to act Count Fersen, and hotly put a case. Fenwick was madly

conscious all the time of his lessened consideration and dignity in

the eyes of a band of people whom he despised. Two years before,

his cooperation would have been an honour and his opinion law.

Now, nothing of the kind; indeed, through the heated remarks of the

actor-manager there ran the insolent implication that Mr. Fenwick's

wrath was of no particular account to anybody, and that he was

presuming on a commission he had been very lucky to get.

At last a crowd of stage-hands, setting scenery for another piece in

the evening, invaded the stage, and the rehearsal was just breaking

up when Fenwick, still talking in flushed exasperation, happened to

notice two ladies standing in the wings, on the other side of the vast

stage, close to the stage-entrance.

He suddenly stopped talking--stammered--looked again. They were two

girls, one evidently a good deal older than the other. The elder was

talking with the assistant stage-manager. The younger stood quietly, a

few yards away, not talking to any one. Her eyes were on Fenwick, and

her young, slightly frowning face wore an expression of amusement--of

something besides, also--something puzzled and intent. It flashed upon

him that she had been there for some time, that he had been vaguely

conscious of her--that she had, in fact, been watching from a distance

the angry scene in which he had been engaged.

'Why!--whatever is the matter, Mr. Fenwick?' said the actor beside

him, startled by his look.

Fenwick made no answer, but he dropped a roll of papers he was holding

and suddenly rushed forward across the stage, through the throng of

carpenters and scene-shifters who were at work upon it. Some garden

steps and a fountain just being drawn into position came in his way;

he stumbled and fell, was conscious of two or three men coming to his

assistance, rose again, and ran on, blindly, pushing at the groups in

his way, till he ran into the arms of the stage-manager.

'Who were those ladies?--where are they?' he said, panting, and

looking round him in despair; for they had vanished, and the

stage-entrance was blocked by an outgoing stream of people.

'Don't know anything about them,' said the man, sulkily. Fenwick had

been the plague of his life in rehearsals. 'What?--you mean those two

girls? Never saw 'em before.'

'But you must know who they are--you must!' shouted Fenwick. 'What's

their name? Why did you let them go?'

'Because I had finished with them.'

The manager turned on his heel, and was about to give an order to a

workman, when Fenwick caught him by the arm.

'I implore you,' he said, in a shaking voice, his face crimson--'tell

me who they are--and where they went.'

The man looked at him astonished, but something in the artist's face

made him speak more considerately.

'I am extremely sorry, Mr. Fenwick, but I really know nothing about

them. Oh, by the way'--he fumbled in his pocket. 'Yes--one of them did

give me a card--I forgot--I never saw the name before.' He extracted

it with difficulty and handed it to Fenwick, who stood trembling from

head to foot.

Fenwick looked at it.

'Miss Larose.' Nothing else. No address.

'But the other one!--the other one!' he said, beside himself.

'I never spoke to her at all,' said his companion, whose name was

Fison. 'They came in here twenty minutes ago and asked to see me. The

door-keeper told them the rehearsal was just over and they would find

me on the stage. The lady I was talking to wished to know whether we

had all the people we wanted for the ballroom scene. Some friend with

whom she had been acting in the country had advised her to apply--'

'Acting _where_?' said Fenwick, still gripping him.

The stage-manager rubbed his nose in perplexity.

'I really can't remember. Leeds--Newcastle--Halifax--was it? It's

altogether escaped my memory.'

'For God's sake, remember!' cried Fenwick.

The stage-manager shook his head.

'I really didn't take notice. I liked the young lady very well. We got

on, as you may say, at once. I talked to her while you were discussing

over there. But I had to tell her there was no room for her--and no

more there is. Her sister--or her friend--whichever it was--was an

uncommonly pretty girl. I noticed that as she went out--which reminds

me--she asked me to tell her who you were.'

Fenwick gazed at the speaker in passionate despair.

'And you can't tell me any more--can't help me?' His voice rose again

into a shout, then failed him.

'No, I really can't,' said the other, decidedly, pulling himself away.

'You go and ask the door-keeper. Perhaps he'll know something.'

But the door-keeper knew only that he had been asked for 'Mr. Fison'

by two nice-spoken young ladies, that he had directed them where to

go, and had opened the stage-door for them. He hadn't happened to be

in his 'lodge' when they went out, and couldn't say in which direction

they had gone.

'Why, lor' bless you, sir, they come here in scores every week!'

Fenwick rushed out into the Strand, and walked from end to end of the

theatrical section of it several times, questioning the policemen on

duty. But he could discover nothing.

Then, blindly, he made his way down a narrow street to the Embankment.

There he threw himself on a bench, almost fainting, unable to stand.

What should he do? He was absolutely convinced that he had seen

Carrie--his child; his little Carrie!--his own flesh and blood. It was

her face--her eyes--her movement--changed, indeed, but perfectly to

be recognised by him, her father. And by the cruel, the monstrous

accidents of the meeting, she had been swept away from him again into

this whirlpool of London, before he had had the smallest chance of

grasping at the little form as it floated past him on this aimless

stream of things. His whole nature was in surging revolt against

life--against men's senseless theories of God and Providence. If it

should prove that he had lost all clue again to his wife and child,

he would put an end, once for all, to his share in the business--he

swore, with clenched hands, that he would. The Great Potter had made

sport of him long enough; it was time to break the cup and toss its

fragments back into the vast common heap of ruined and wasted things.

'Some to honour--and some to dishonour'--the words rang in his ears,

mingling with that deep bell of St. Paul's, whereof the echoes were

being carried up the river towards him on the light southeasterly

wind.

But first--he tried to make his mind follow out the natural

implications and consequences of what had happened. Carrie had asked

his name. But clearly, when it was given her, it had meant nothing

to her. She could not have left her father there--knowing it was her

father--without a word. No; Phoebe's first step, of course, would have

been to drop her old name, and the child would have no knowledge of

it.

But Phoebe? If Carrie was in England, so was Phoebe. He could not

believe that she would part with the child. And supposing Carrie spoke

of the prating, haranguing fellow she had seen?--mentioned the name,

which the stage-manager had given her?--what then? Could Phoebe still

have the cruelty, the wickedness to maintain her course of action--to

keep Carrie from him? Ah! if he had been guilty towards her in the old

days, she had wrung out full payment long ago; the balance of injury

had long since dropped heavily on his side. But who could know how

she had developed?--whether towards hardness or towards repentance.

Still--to-night, probably--she would hear what and whom Carrie had

seen. Any post might bring the fruits of it. And if not--he was

not without a clue. If a girl whose name is known has been playing

recently at an English provincial theatre, it ought to be possible

somehow to recover news of her. He looked at his watch. Too late for

the lawyers. But he roused himself, hailed a cab, and went to his

club, where he wrote at length to his solicitor, describing what had

happened, and suggesting various lines of action.

Then he went home, got some charcoal and paper and by lamp-light began

to draw the face which he had seen--a very young and still plastic

face, with delicate lips open above the small teeth; and eyes--why,

they were Phoebe's eyes, of course!--no other eyes like them in the

world. He drew them with an eager hand, knowing the way of them. He

put the light--the smile--into them; a happy smile!--as of one to

whom life has been kind. No sign of fear, distress, or cringing

poverty--rather an innocent sovereignty, lovely and unashamed. Then

the brow, and the curly hair in its brown profusion; and the small

neck; and the thin, straight shoulders. He drew in the curve of the

shady hat--the knot of lace at the throat--the spare young lines of

the breast.

So it emerged; and when it was done, he put it on an easel and sat

staring at it, his eyes blind with tears.

Yes, it was Carrie--he had no doubt whatever that it was Carrie.

And behind her, mingling with her image--yet distinct--a veiled,

intangible presence, stood Phoebe--Phoebe so like her, and yet so

different. But of Phoebe--still--he would not think. It was as when

a man, mortally tired, shrinks from some fierce contest of brain and

limb, which yet he knows may some day have to be faced. He put his

wife aside, and sank himself in the covetous, devouring vision of his

child.

Next day there was great activity among the lawyers. They were

confident of recovering the clue, and if Fenwick's identification was

a just one, the search was near its end.

Only, till they really _were_ on the track, better say nothing to

Lord Findon and Madame de Pastourelles. This was the suggestion of the

Findon's solicitor, and Fenwick eagerly endorsed it.

Presently inquiry had been made from every management in London as to

the touring companies of the year; confidential agents had been sent

to every provincial town that possessed a theatre; long lists of names

had been compiled and carefully scanned. Fenwick's drawing of the girl

whom he had seen had been photographed; and some old likenesses of

Phoebe and Carrie had been reproduced and attached to it, for the

use of Messrs. Butlin's provincial correspondents. The police were

appealed to; the best private detectives to be had were employed.

In vain! The smiling child of seventeen had emerged for that one

appearance on the stage of her father's life, only, it seemed, to

vanish again for ever. No trace could be found anywhere of a 'Miss

Larose,' either as a true or a theatrical name; the photographs

suggested nothing to those who saw them; or if various hints and clues

sometimes seemed to present themselves, they led to no result.

Meanwhile, day after day, Fenwick waited on the post, hurrying for and

scanning his letters with feverish, ever-waning hope. Not a sign, not

a word from Phoebe. His heart grew fierce. There were moments when

he felt something not unlike hatred for this invisible woman, who was

still able to lay a ghostly and sinister hand upon his life. And yet,

and yet!--suppose, after all, that she were dead?

During these same weeks of torment _The Queen's Necklace_ was

produced; it was a pretentious failure, and after three weeks of

difficult existence flickered to an end. The management went

into bankruptcy, and the greater part of Fenwick's payment was

irrecoverable. He could hardly now meet his daily living expenses,

and there was an execution in his house, put in by the last firm of

builders employed.

Close upon this disaster came the opening of his private exhibition.

Grimly, in a kind of dogged abstraction, he went through with it.

He himself, with the help of a lad who was his man-of-all-work in

Chelsea, nailed up the draperies, hung the pictures, and issued the

invitations for the private view.

About a hundred people came to the private view. His reputation was

not yet dead, and there was much curiosity about his circumstances.

But Fenwick, looking at the scanty crowd, considering the faces that

were there and the faces that were not there, knew very well that it

could be of no practical assistance to him. Not a picture sold; and

next day there were altogether seven people in the gallery, of

whom five were the relations of men to whom he had given gratuitous

teaching at one period or other of his career.

And never, alack, in the case of any artist of talent, was there a

worse 'press' than that which dealt with his pictures on the following

morning. The most venomous article of all was the work of a man whom

Fenwick had treated with conceit and rudeness in the days of his

success. The victim now avenged himself, with the same glee which a

literary club throws into the black-balling of some evil tongue--some

too harsh and too powerful critic of the moment. 'Scamped and empty

work,' in which 'ideas not worth stating' find an expression 'not

worth criticism.' Mannerisms grown to absurdity; faults of early

training writ dismally large; vulgarity of conception and carelessness

of execution--no stone that could hurt or sting was left unflung,

and the note of meditative pity in which the article came to an end,

marked the climax of a very neat revenge. After reading it, Fenwick

felt himself artistically dead and buried.

A great silence fell upon him. He spoke to no one in the gallery, and

he avoided his club. Early in the afternoon he went to Lincoln's Inn

Fields--only to hear from the lawyers that they had done all they

could with the new scent, and it was no use pursuing it further. He

heard what they had to say in silence, and after leaving their office

he visited a shop in the Strand. Just as the light was waning, about

seven o'clock on a May evening, he found himself again in his studio.

It was now absolutely bare, save for a few empty easels, a chair

or two, and some tattered portfolios. The two men representing the

execution were in the dining-room. He could hear the voices of a

charwoman and of the lad who had helped him to arrange the gallery,

talking in the kitchen.

Fenwick locked himself into the studio. On his way thither he had

recoiled, shivering, from the empty desolation of the house. In the

general disarray of the ticketed furniture and stripped walls, all

artistic charm had disappeared. And he said to himself, with a grim

twist of the mouth, that if the house had grown ugly and commonplace,

that only made it a better setting for the ugly and commonplace thing

which he was about to do.

* * * * *

About half an hour later a boy, looking like the 'buttons' of a

lodging-house, walked up to the side entrance of Fenwick's ambitious

mansion--which possessed a kind of courtyard, and was built round two

sides of an oblong. The door was open and the charwoman just inside,

so that the boy had no occasion to ring. He carried a parcel carefully

wrapped in an old shawl.

'Is this Mr. Fenwick's?' asked the boy, consulting a dirty scrap of

paper.

'Aye,' said the woman. 'Well, who's it from? isn't there no note with

it?'

The boy replied that there was no note, and his instructions were to

leave it.

'But what name am I to say?' the woman called after him as he went

down the path.

The boy shook his head.

'Don't know--give it up!' he said, impudently, and went off whistling.

'Silly lout,' said the woman, crossly, and, taking up the package,

which was not very large, she went with it to the studio, reflecting

as she went that by the feel of it it was an unframed picture, and

that if some one would only take away some of the beastly, dusty

things that were already in the house--that wouldn't, so the bailiffs

said, fetch a halfpenny--it would be better worth while than bringing

new ones where they weren't wanted.

There was at first no answer to her knock. She tried the door, and

wondered to find it locked. But presently she heard Fenwick moving

about inside.

'Well, what is it?'

His voice was low and impatient.

'A parcel for you, sir.'

'Take it away.'

'Very well, sir.'

She turned obediently and was halfway down the passage which led to

the dining-room, when the studio door opened with a great crash and

Fenwick looked out.

'Bring that here. What is it?'

She retraced her steps.

'Well, it's a picture, I think, sir.'

He held out his hand for it, took it, and instantly withdrew into the

studio and again locked the door. She noticed that he seemed to

have lit one candle in the big studio, and his manner struck her as

strange. But her slow mind followed the matter no further, and she

went back to the cooking of his slender supper.

Fenwick meanwhile was standing with the parcel in his hand. At the

woman's knock he had risen from a table, where he had been writing a

letter. A black object, half-covered with a painting-rag, lay beside

the ink-stand.

'I must make haste,' he thought, 'or she will be bothering me again.'

He looked at the letter, which was still unfinished. Meanwhile he had

absently deposited the parcel on the floor, where it rested against

the leg of the table.

'Another page will finish it. Hôtel Bristol, Rome--till the end of the

week?--if I only could be _sure_ that was what Butlin said!'

He paced up and down, frowning, in an impotent distress, trying to

make his brain work as usual. On his visit of the afternoon he had

asked the lawyers for the Findon's address; but his memory now was of

the worst.

Suddenly he wheeled round, sat down, and took up a book which had been

lying face downwards on the table. It was the 'Memoirs of Benjamin

Haydon,' and he opened it at one of the last pages--

'About an hour after, Miss Haydon entered the painting-room, and

found her father stretched out dead, before the easel on which stood,

blood-sprinkled, his unfinished picture. A portrait of his wife stood

on a smaller easel facing his large picture.'

* * * * *

The man reading, paused.

'He had suffered much more than I,' he thought--'but his wife had

helped him--stood by him--'

And he passed on to the next page--to the clause in Haydon's will

which runs--'My dearest wife, Mary Haydon, has been a good, dear,

and affectionate wife to me--a heroine in adversity and an angel in

peace.'

'And he repaid her by blowing his brains out,' thought Fenwick,

contemptuously. 'But he was mad--of course he was mad. We are all

mad--when it comes to this.'

And he turned back, as though in fascination, to the page before, to

the last entry in Haydon's Journal.

'21st.--Slept horribly. Prayed in sorrow and got

up in agitation.

'22d.--God forgive me. Amen.'

'Amen!' repeated Fenwick, aloud, as he dropped the book. The word

echoed in the empty room. He covered his eyes with his right hand,

leaning his arm on the table.

The other hand, as it fell beside him, came in contact with the

parcel which was propped against the table. His touch told him that

it contained a picture--an unframed canvas. A vague curiosity awoke in

him. He took it up, peered at the address, then began to finger with

and unwrap it.

Suddenly--he bent over it. What was it!

He tore off the shawl, and some brown paper beneath it, lifted the

thing upon the table, so that the light of the one candle fell upon

it, and held it there.

Slowly his face, which had been deeply flushed before, lost all its

colour; his jaw dropped a little.

He was staring at the picture of himself which he had painted for

Phoebe in the parlour of the Green Nab Cottage thirteen years before.

The young face, in its handsome and arrogant vigour, the gypsy-black

hair and eyes, the powerful shoulders in the blue serge coat, the

sunburnt neck exposed by the loose, turn-down collar above the

greenish tie--there they were, as he had painted them, lying once

more under his hand. The flickering light of the candle showed him his

signature and the date.

He laid it down and drew a long breath. Thrusting his hands into his

pockets, he stood staring at it, his brain, under the sharp stimulus,

beginning to work more clearly. So Phoebe, too, was alive--and in

England. The picture was her token. That was what it meant.

He went heavily to the door, unlocked it, and called. The charwoman

appeared.

'Who brought this parcel?'

'A boy, sir.'

'Where's the note?--he must have brought something with it.'

'No, he didn't, sir--there was no note.'

'Don't be absurd!' cried Fenwick. 'There must have been.'

Mrs. Flint, outraged, protested that she knew what she was a-saying

of. He questioned her fiercely, but there was nothing to be got out of

her rigmarole account, which Fenwick cut short by retreating into the

studio in the middle of it.

This fresh check unhinged him altogether--seemed to make a mere fool

of him--the sport of gods and men. There he paced up and down in a

mad excitement. What in the Devil's name was the meaning of it? The

picture came from Phoebe--no one else. But it seemed she had only

sent it to him to torment him to punish him yet more? Women were the

cruellest of God's creatures. And as for himself--idiot!--if he had

only finished his business an hour ago, both she and he would have

been released by this time. He worked himself up into a wild passion

of rage, stopping every now and then to look at that ghost of his

youth, which lay on the table, propped up against some books--and once

at the reflexion of his haggard face and grey hair as he passed in

front of an old mirror on the wall.

Then suddenly the tension gave way. He sank on the chair beside the

table, hiding his face on his arms in an utter exhaustion, while yet,

through the physical weakness, something swept and vibrated, which was

in truth the onset of returning life.

As he lay there a cab drove up to the front door, and a lady dressed

in black descended from it. She rang, and Mrs. Flint appeared.

'Is Mr. Fenwick at home?'

'He is, ma'am,' said the woman, hesitating--'but he did say he wasn't

to be disturbed.'

'Will you please give him my card and say I wish to see him at once? I

have brought him an important letter.'

Mrs. Flint, wavering between her dread of Fenwick's ill-humour and the

impression produced upon her by the gentle decision of her visitor,

retreated into the house. The lady followed.

'Well, if you'll wait there, ma'am'--the charwoman opened the door of

the dismantled sitting-room--'I'll speak to Mr. Fenwick.'

She shuffled off. Eugénie de Pastourelles threw back her veil. She

had arrived only that morning in London after a night journey, and her

face showed deep lines of fatigue. But its beauty of expression had

never been more striking. Animation--joy--spoke in the eyes, quivered

in the lips. She moved restlessly up and down, holding in one hand a

parcel of letters. Once she noticed the room--the furniture ticketed

in lots--and paused in concern and pity. But the momentary cloud was

soon chased by the happiness of the thought which held her. Meanwhile

Mrs. Flint knocked at the door of the studio.

'Mr. Fenwick! Sir! There's a lady come, sir, and she wishes to speak

to you particular.'

An angry movement inside.

'I'm busy. Send her away.'

'I've got her card here, sir,' said Mrs. Flint, dropping her voice.

'It's a queer name, sir--somethin furrin--Madam somethin. She says

it's _most_ pertickler. I was to tell you she'd only got home to-day,

from abroad.'

A sudden noise inside. The door was opened.

'Where is she? Ask her to come in.'

He himself retreated into the darkness of the studio, clinging, so

the charwoman noticed, to the back of a chair, as though for support.

Wondering 'what was up,' she clattered back again down the long

passage which led from the sitting-room to the studio.

But Eugénie had heard the opening door and came to meet her.

'Is anything wrong?' she asked, anxiously. 'Is Mr. Fenwick ill?'

'Well, you see, ma'am,' said Mrs. Flint, cautiously--'it's the

Sheriff's horficers--though they do it as kind as they can.'

Eugénie looked bewildered.