'A hexecution, ma'am,' whispered the woman as she led the way.

'Oh!' It was a cry of distress, checked by the sight of Fenwick, who

stood in the door of his studio.

'I am sorry you were kept waiting,' he said, hoarsely.

She made some commonplace reply, and they shook hands. Mrs. Flint

looked at them curiously, and withdrew again into the back premises.

Fenwick turned and walked in front of Eugénie towards the table from

which he had risen. She looked at him in sudden horror--arrested--the

words she had come to speak stifled on her lips. Then a quick impulse

made her shut the door behind her. He turned again, bewildered, and

raised his hand to his head.

'My God!' he said, in a low voice; 'I oughtn't to have let you come in

here. Go away--please go away.'

Then she saw him totter backward, raise an overcoat which hung across

the back of a chair, and throw it over something lying on the table.

Terror possessed her; his aspect was so ghastly, his movements so

strange. She flew to him, and took his hand in both hers.

'No, no--don't send me away! My friend--my dear friend--listen to me.

You look so ill--you've been in trouble! If I'd only known!

But I've thought of you always--I've prayed for you. And

listen--_listen_!--I've brought you good news.'

She paused, still holding him. Her eyes were bright with tears, but

her mouth smiled. He looked at her, trembling. Her pale charm, her

pleading grace moved him unbearably; this beauty, this tenderness--the

sudden apparition of them in this dark room--unmanned him altogether.

But she came nearer.

'We got home only this morning. It was a sudden wish of my

father's--he thought Italy wasn't suiting him. We came straight

from Rome. I wrote to you by this morning's post. Then--this

afternoon--after we'd settled my father--I drove to Lincoln's Inn

Fields. And I found them so excited--just sending off a messenger to

you. A letter had arrived by the afternoon post, an hour after you

left the office. I have it here--they trusted it to me. Oh, dear Mr.

Fenwick, listen to me! They are on the track--it's a _real_ clue this

time! Your wife has been in Canada--they know where she was three

months ago--it's only a question of time now. Oh! and they told me

about the theatre--how _wonderful_! Oh! I believe they're not far

off--know it--I feel it!'

He had fallen on his chair; she stood beside him.

'And you've been ill,' she said, sadly, 'and in great distress, I'm

afraid--about money, was it? Oh, if I'd only known! But you'll let me

make that right, won't you?--you couldn't refuse me that? And think!

you'll have them again--your wife--your little girl.'

She smiled at him, while the tears slipped down her cheeks. She

cherished his cold hands, holding them close in her warm, soft palms.

He seemed to be trying to speak. Then suddenly he disengaged himself,

rose feebly, went to the mantelpiece, lit another candle, and brought

it, holding it towards something on a chair--beckoning to her. She

went to him--perceived the unframed portrait--and cried out.

'Phoebe sent it me--just now,' he said, almost in a whisper--'without

a word--without a single word. It was left here by a boy--with no

letter--no address. Wasn't it cruel?--wasn't it horribly cruel?'

She watched him in dismay.

'Are you sure there was nothing--no letter?'

He shook his head. She released herself, took up the picture, and

examined it. Then she shook out the folds of the shawl, the fragments

of the brown paper, and still found nothing. But as she took the

candle and stooped with it to the floor, something white gleamed.

A neatly folded slip of paper had dropped among some torn letters

beneath the table. She held it up to him with a cry of delight.

He made a movement, then fell back.

'Read it, please,' he said, hoarsely, refusing it. 'There's something

wrong with my eyes.'

And he held his hands pressed to them, while she--little reluctantly,

wistfully--opened and read:

* * * * *

MY DEAR JOHN,--I have Phoebe safe. She can't write. But she sends you

this--as her sign. It's been with her all through. She knows she's

been a sinful wife. But there, it's no use writing. Besides, it makes

me cry. But come!--come soon! Your child is an angel. You'll forget

and forgive when you see her.

[Illustration: '_Be my messenger_']

I brought Phoebe here last week. Do you see the address?--it's the old

cottage! I took it with a friend--three years ago. It seemed the right

place for your poor wife--till she could make up her mind how and when

to let you know.

As to how _I_ came to know--we'll tell you all that.

Carrie knows nothing yet. I keep thinking of the first look in her

eyes! Come soon!

Ever your affectionate old friend,

ANNA MASON.

There was silence. Eugénie had read the letter in a soft voice that

trembled. She looked up. Fenwick was staring straight before him, and

she saw him shudder.

'I know it's horrible,' he said, in a low voice--'and cowardly--but I

feel as if I couldn't face it--I couldn't bear it.'

And he began feebly to pace to and fro, looking like an old,

grey-haired man in the dim grotesqueness of the light. Eugénie

understood. She felt, with mingled dread and pity, that she was in the

presence of a weakness which represented far more than the immediate

emotion; was the culmination, indeed, of a long, disintegrating

process.

She hesitated--moved--wavered--then took courage again.

'Come and sit down,' she said, gently.

And, going up to him, she took him by the arm and led him back to his

chair.

He sank upon it, his eyes hanging on her. She stooped over him.

'Shall I,' she said, uncertainly--'shall I--go first? Oh, I _oughtn't_

to go! Nobody ought to interfere--between husband and wife. But if you

wish it--if I could do any good--'

Her eyes sought the answer of his.

Her face, framed in the folds of her black veil, shone in the

candle-light; her voice was humble, yet brave.

The silence continued a moment. Then his lips moved.

'Be my messenger!' he said, just breathing it.

She made a sign of assent. And he, feebly lifting her hands, brought

them to his lips. Close to them--unseen by her--for the moment

unremembered by him--lay the revolver with which he had meant to take

his life--and the letter in which he had bid her a last farewell.

CHAPTER XIII

Great Langdale was once more in spring. After the long quiet of the

winter, during which these remoter valleys of the Lakes resume their

primitive and self-dependent life, there were now a few early tourists

in the two Dungeon Ghyll hotels, and the road traffic had begun to

revive. Phoebe Fenwick, waiting and listening for the post in an upper

room of Green Nab Cottage, ran hurriedly to the window several times

in vain, drawn by the sound of wheels. The cart which clattered past

was not that which bore Her Majesty's mails.

At the third of these false alarms she lingered beside the open

casement window, looking out into the valley. It was a very weary

woman who stood thus--motionless and drooping; a woman so tired, so

conscious of wasted life and happiness, that although expectation held

her in a grip of torture, there was in it little or nothing of hope.

Twelve years since she had last looked on those twin peaks, those

bare fields and winding river! Twelve years! Time, the inexorable, had

dealt with her, and not softly. All that rounded grace which Fenwick

had once loved to draw had dropped from her, as the bloom drops from

a wild cherry in the night. Phoebe was now thirty-five--close on

thirty-six; and twelve years of hard work, joyless struggle, and

pursuing remorse had left upon her indelible marks. She had grown

excessively thin, and lines of restlessness, of furtive pain and

suspicion, had graven themselves, delicately, irrevocably, about

her eyes and mouth, on her broad brow and childish neck. There were

hollows in the cheeks, the cutting of the face seemed to be ruder and

the skin browner than of old. Nevertheless, the leanness of the face

was that of energy, not that of emaciation. It pointed to life in

the open air, a strenuous physical life; and, but for the look

of fretting, of ceaseless and troubled longing with which it was

associated, it would rather have given beauty than taken it away.

Her eyes were more astonishing than ever; but there was a touch of

wildness in them, and they were grown, in truth, too big and staring

for the dwindled face. A pathetic face!--as of one in whom the impulse

to weep is always present, yet for ever stifled. It had none of that

noble intimacy with sorrow which so often dignifies a woman's whole

aspect; it spoke rather of the painful, struggling, desiring will,

the will of passion and regret, the will which fights equally with the

past and with the future, and is, for Buddhist and Christian alike,

the torment of existence.

Again a sound of wheels drew her eyes to the road. But it was only the

Hawkshead butcher going his rounds. He stopped below the cottage,

and Miss Anna's servant went out to him. Phoebe sighed afresh in

disappointment, her ears still strained the while to catch the first

sound of that primitive horn, wherewith the postman in his cart, as

he mounts the Langdale Valley, summons the dwellers in the scattered

farms and cottages to come and take their letters.

But very likely there would be no letter at all. This was Thursday.

On Saturday Miss Anna had met her and Carrie at Windermere, and had

brought them to the old place. Sunday and Monday had been filled

with agitated consultations. Then, on Tuesday, a neighbour living in

Elterwater, and an old friend of Miss Anna's, had gone up to London,

bearing with her a parcel addressed to 'John Fenwick, Constable

House, East Road, Chelsea,' which she had promised to deliver, either

personally or through one of the servants of the boarding-house

whither she was bound.

This lady must have delivered it on Wednesday--some time on

Wednesday--she would not pledge herself. But probably not till the

afternoon or evening. If so, there could be no letter. But if not a

letter, a telegram; unless, indeed, John were determined not to

take her back; unless her return were in his eyes a mere trouble and

burden; unless they were to be finally and for ever separated. Then he

would take his time--and write.

But--_Carrie_! Phoebe resumed her wandering from room to room and

window to window, her mind deafened as it were by the rush of her own

thoughts--unable to rest for a moment. He must want to see Carrie! And

that seeing must and should carry with it at least one interview with

his wife, at least the permission to tell her story, face to face.

Was it only a week since, under a sudden impulse, she had written to

Miss Anna?--from the Surrey lodging, where for nearly two months she

had hidden herself after their landing in England. Each day since

then had been at once the longest and the shortest she had ever known.

Every emotion of which she was capable had been roused into fresh

life, crowding the hours; while at the same time each day had flown

on wings of flame, bringing the moment--so awful, yet so desired--when

she should see John's face again. After the slow years of

self-inflicted exile; after the wavering weeks and months of

repentance, doubt, and changing resolution, life had suddenly become

breathless--a hurrying rush down some Avernian descent, towards

crashing pain and tumult. For how could it end well? She was no silly

girl to suppose that such things can be made right again with a few

soft words and a kiss.

Idly her mind wandered through the past; through the years of dumb,

helpless bitterness, when she would have given the world to undo what

she had done, and could see no way, consistently with the beliefs

which still held her; and through the first hours of sharp reaction,

produced partly by events in her own history and partly by fresh and

unexpected information. She had thought of John as hard, prosperous,

and cruel; removed altogether out of her social ken, a rich and

fashionable gentleman who might have and be what he would. The London

letter of a Canadian weekly paper had given her the news of his

election to the Academy. Then, from the same source, she had learnt

of the quarrel, the scene with the Hanging Committee, the noisy

resignation, and all the controversy surrounding it. She read and

re-read every line of this scanty news, pondering and worrying over

it. How like John, to ruin himself by these tempers! And yet, of

course, he had been abominably treated!--any one could see that. From

her anger and concern sprang new growths of feeling in a softened

heart. If she had only been there!

Well!--what did it matter? The great lady who advised and patronised

him no doubt had been there. If she had not been able to smooth out

the tangle, what chance would his despised wife have had with him?

Then--last fall--there had come to the farm in the green Ontario

country, a young artist, sent out on a commission from an English

publishing firm who were producing a great illustrated book on Canada.

The son of the house, who was at college in Montreal, had met him, and

made friends with him; had brought him home to draw the farm, and the

apple-orchards, heavy with fruit. And there, night after night, he had

sat talking in the rich violet dusk; talking to this sad-faced Mrs.

Wilson, this Englishwoman, who understood his phrases and his ways,

and had been in contact with artists in her youth.

John Fenwick! Why, of course, he knew all about John Fenwick!

Quarrelsome, clever chap! Had gone up like a rocket, and was now

nowhere. What call had he to quarrel with the Academy? The Academy had

treated him handsomely enough--much better than it had treated a lot

of other fellows. The public wouldn't stand his airs and his violence.

He wasn't big enough. A Whistler might be insolent, and gain by it;

but the smaller men must keep civil tongues in their heads. Oh, yes,

talent of course--enormous talent!--but a poor early training, and

a man wants all his time to get the better of _that_--instead of

spouting and scribbling all over the place. No--John Fenwick would

do nothing more of importance. Mrs. Wilson might take his word for

that--sorry if he had said anything unpleasant of a friend of hers.

General report, besides, made him an unhappy, moody kind of fellow,

living alone, with very few friends, taking nobody's advice--and as

obstinate as a pig about his work.

So said this young Daniel-come-to-judgement, between the whiffs of his

pipe, in the Canadian farm-garden, while the darkness came down and

hid the face of the silent woman beside him.

And so Remorse, and anguished Pity, sprang up beside her--grey and

stern comrades--and she walked between them night and day. John, a

lonely failure in England--poor and despised. And she, an exile here,

with her child. And this dumb, irrevocable Time, on which she had

stamped her will, so easily, so fatally, flowing on the while, year by

year, towards Death and the End!--and these voices of 'Too late!' in

her ears!

But still the impulse of return grew--mysteriously it

seemed--independently. And other facts and experiences came strangely

to its aid. In the language of Evangelicalism which had been natural

to her youth, Phoebe felt now, as she looked back, that she had been

wonderfully 'led.' It was this sense, indeed, which had softened

the humiliation and determined the actual steps of her homeward

pilgrimage; she seemed to have been yielding to an actual external

force in what she had done.

For it had not been easy, this second uprooting. Carrie, especially,

had had her own reasons for making it difficult. And Phoebe had never

yet had the courage to tell her the truth. She had spoken vaguely of

'business' obliging them to take a journey to England--had asked the

child to trust her--and taken refuge in tears and depression from

Carrie's objections. In consequence, she had seen the first shadow

descend on Carrie's youth; she had been conscious of the first breach

between herself and her daughter.

In a sudden agony, she walked back to the window in her own room,

looking this time, not towards Elterwater and the post, but towards

Dungeon Ghyll and the wild upper valley.

Anna Mason had taken Carrie for a walk. At that moment, on Phoebe's

prayer, she was telling the child the story of her father and mother.

Phoebe's eyes filled. She was, in truth, waiting for judgement--at

the hands of her husband--and her daughter. Ever since their flight

together, Carrie had been taught to regard her father as dead. As

the years went on, 'poor papa' was represented to her by a few fading

memories, by the unframed picture which her mother kept jealously

locked from sight, which she had been only once or twice allowed to

see.

And now? Phoebe recalled the anguish of that night, when Carrie,

returning to her mother in Surrey, from a day's expedition to town,

with a Canadian friend, described the queer, passionate, grey-haired

man--'Mr. Fenwick, they called him'--whom she had seen directing

the rehearsal at the Falcon Theatre. Phoebe had a vision of herself

leaning back in her chair, wrapped in shawls, feigning the exhaustion

and blindness of nervous headache--while the child gave her laughing

account of the scene, in the intervals of kissing and comforting 'poor

mummy.'

And that drive from Windermere, beside Miss Anna, with Carrie

opposite!--Carrie excitable, happy, talkative--her father's child--now

absorbed in a natural delight, exclaiming at the beauty of the

mountains, the trees, the river, catching her mother's hand, to make

her smile too, and then in a sudden shyness and hardness, looking

with her deep jealous eyes at the unknown friend opposite, wondering

clearly what it all meant, resenting that she was told so little, and

too proud to insist on more--or, perhaps, afraid to pierce what might

turn out to be the unhappy or shameful secret of their life?

Yet Phoebe had tried to make it plausible. They were going to stay

with an old friend, in a place which Carrie and her parents had lived

in when she was a baby, near to the town where she was born. She knew

already that her mother was from Westmoreland, from a place called

Keswick; but she understood that her mother's father was dead, and all

her people scattered.

Until they came actually in sight of the cottage, the child had

betrayed no memory of her own; though as they entered Langdale

her chatter ceased, and her eyes sped nervously from side to side,

considering the woods and fells and whitewashed farms. As they

stopped, however, at the foot of the steep pitch leading to the

little house, Carrie suddenly caught sight of it--the slate porch, the

yew-tree to the right, the sycamore in front. She changed colour, and

as she jumped down, she wavered and nearly fell.

And without waiting for the others she ran up the hill and through the

gate. When she met them again at the house-door, her eyes were wet.

'I've been into the kitchen,' she said, breathlessly--'and it's so

strange! I remember sitting there, and a man'--she drew her hand

across her brow--'a man, feeding me. That--that was father?'

Phoebe could not remember how she had answered her; only some

trembling words from Anna Mason, and an attempt to draw the child

away--that her mother might enter the cottage alone and unwatched. And

she had entered it alone--had walked into the little parlour.

The next thing she recollected--amid that passion of desperate tears

which had seemed to dissolve her, body and soul--were Carrie's arms

round her, Carrie's face pressed against hers.

'Mother! mother! Oh! what is the matter? Why did we come here? You've

been keeping things from me all these weeks--for years even. There

is something I don't know--I'm sure there is. Oh, it _is_ unkind. You

think I'm not old enough--but I am. Oh! you ought to tell me, mother!'

How had she defended herself? staved off the inevitable once again?

All she knew was that Miss Anna had again come to the rescue, had

taken the child away, whispering to her. And since then, in these

last forty-eight hours--oh! Carrie had been good! So quiet, so

useful--unpacking their clothes, helping Miss Anna's maid with the

supper, cooking, dusting, mending, as a Canadian girl knows how--only

stopping sometimes to look round her, with that clouded, wondering

look, as though the past invaded her.

Oh! she was a darling! John would see that--whatever he might feel

towards her mother. 'I stole her--but I've brought her back. I may be

a bad wife--but there's Carrie! I've not neglected her--I've done the

best by her.'

It was in incoherent, unspoken words like this that Phoebe was for

ever pleading with her husband, even now.

Presently, in her walk about the room, she came to stand before the

mantelpiece, where a photograph had been propped up against the

wall by Carrie--of a white walled farm, with its out-buildings and

orchards--and, gleaming beneath it, the wide waters of Lake Ontario.

Phoebe shuddered at the sight of it. Twelve years of her life had been

wasted there.

Carrie, indeed, took a very different view.

Restlessly the mother left her room and wandered into Carrie's. It was

already--by half-past nine--spotlessly clean and neat; and Eliza, the

girl from Hawkshead, had not been allowed to touch it. On the bed lay

a fresh 'waist,' which Carrie had just made for herself, and on the

dressing-table stood another photograph--not a place this time, but a

person--a very evident and very good-looking young man!

Phoebe stood looking at it forlornly. Carrie's young romance--and her

own spoilt life--these two images held her. Carrie would go back, in

time, across the sea--would marry, would forget her mother.

'And I'm not old, neither--I'm not old.'

Trembling she left the room. The door of Miss Anna's was open. Phoebe

stood on the threshold, looking in. It had been her room and John's in

the old days. Their very furniture was still there--as in the parlour,

too. For John had sold it all to their landlord, when he wound up

affairs. Miss Anna knew even what he had got for it--poor John!

She dared not go in. She stood leaning against the door-post, looking

from outside, like one in exile, at the low-raftered room, with its

oak press, and its bed, and its bit of green carpet. Thoughts passed

through her mind--thoughts which shook her from head to foot.

The cottage was now enlarged. Miss Mason, when she took it on lease

three years before this date, had built two new rooms, or got the

Hawkshead landlord to build them. She had retired now, on her savings;

and there lived with her an old friend, a tired teacher like herself.

It was one of those spinster marriages--honourable and seemly

_ménages_--for which the Lakes have always been famous. But Miss

Wetherby was now away, visiting her relations in the South. Had she

been there, Phoebe could never have made up her mind to accept Miss

Anna's urgent invitation. She shrank from everybody--strangers, or old

acquaintance--it was all one. The terror which ranked, in her mind,

next to the disabling, heart-arresting terror of the first meeting

with her husband, was that of the first moment when she must discover

herself to her old acquaintance in Langdale or Elterwater--in Kendal

or Keswick--as Phoebe Fenwick. She had arrived, closely veiled, as

'Mrs. Wilson,' and she had never yet left the cottage door.

Then again she caught her breath, remembering that at that very moment

Carrie was learning her true name from Miss Anna--was realising that

she had seen her father without knowing it--was hearing the story of

what her mother had done.

'Perhaps she'll hate me!' thought Phoebe, miserably. Through the

window came the soft spring air. The big sycamore opposite was nearly

in full leaf, and in the field below sprawled the helpless, new-born

lambs, so white beside their dingy mothers. The voice of the river

murmured through the valley, and sometimes, as the west wind blew

stronger, Phoebe's fine and long-practised ear could distinguish other

and more distant sounds, wafted from the leaping waterfalls which

threaded the ghyll, perhaps even from the stream of Dungeon Ghyll

itself, thundering in its prison of rocks. It was a characteristic

Westmoreland day, with high grey cloud and interlacing sun, the fells

clear from base to top, their green or reddish sides marked with white

farms or bold clumps of fir; with the blackness of scattered yews,

landmarks through generations; or the purple-grey of the emerging

limestone. Fresh, lonely, cheerful--a land at once of mountain

solitude, and of a long-settled, long-humanised life--it breathed

kindly on this penitent, anxious woman; it seemed to bid her take

courage.

Ah! the sound of a horn echoing along the fell. Phoebe flew down to

the porch; then, remembering she might be seen, perhaps recognised, by

the postman, she stepped back into the parlour, listening, but out of

sight.

The servant, who had run down to fetch the letters, seemed to be

having something of an argument with the postman. In a few minutes she

reappeared, breathless.

'There's no letters, mum,' she said, seeing Phoebe at the parlour

window--'and I doan't think this has owt to do here.' She held up a

telegram, doubtfully--yet with an evident curiosity and excitement

in her look. It was addressed to 'Mrs. John Fenwick.' The postman had

clearly made some remark upon it.

Phoebe took it.

'It's all right. Tell him to leave it.'

The girl, noticing her agitation and her shaking fingers, ran down the

hill again to give the message. Phoebe carried the telegram upstairs

to her room, and locked the door.

For some moments she dared not open it. If it said that he refused to

come?--that he would never see her again? Phoebe felt that she should

die of grief--that life must stop.

At last she tore it open:

Sending messenger to-day. Hope to follow immediately. Welcome.

She gasped over the words, feeling them in the first instance as a

blow--a repulse. She had feared--but also she had hoped--she scarcely

knew for what--yet at least for something more, something different

from this.

He was not coming, then, at once! A messenger! What messenger could a

man send to his wife in such a case? Who knew them both well enough

to dare to come between them? Old fiercenesses woke up in her. Had

the word been merely cold and unforgiving it would have crushed her

indeed; but there was that in her which would have scarcely dared

complain. An eye for an eye--no conscience-stricken creature but

admits the wild justice of that.

But a 'messenger'!--when she that was lost is found, when a man's wife

comes back to him from the dead! Phoebe sat voiceless, the telegram on

her lap, a kind of scorn trembling on her lip.

Then her eye caught the word 'welcome,' and it struck home. She began

to sob, her angry pride melting. And suddenly the door of her room

opened, and there on the threshold stood Carrie--Carrie, who had been

crying, too--with wide, startled eyes and flushed cheeks. She looked

at her mother, then flew to her, while Phoebe instinctively covered

the telegram with her hand.

'Oh, mother! mother!--how could you? And I _laughed_ at him--I did--I

_did_!' she cried, wringing her hands. 'And he looked so tired! And on

the way home Amélie mimicked him--and his voice--and his queer ways;

and I laughed. Oh, what a beast I was! Oh, mother, and I told you his

name, and you never--never--said a word!'

The child flung herself on the floor, her feet tucked under her, her

hands clasped round her knees, swaying backwards and forwards in a

tempest of excited feeling, hardly knowing what she said.

Phoebe looked at her, bewildered; then she removed her hand, and

Carrie saw the telegram. She threw herself on it, read the address,

gulping, then the words:

'A messenger!' She understood that no more than her mother. It meant a

letter, perhaps? But she fastened on 'immediately'--'welcome.'

And presently--all in a moment--she leapt to her feet, and began to

dance and spring about the room. And as Phoebe watched her, startled

and open-mouthed, wondering if this was all the reproach that Carrie

was ever going to make her, the flushed and joyous creature came and

flung her arms round Phoebe's neck, so that the fair hair and the

brown were all in a confusion together, and the child's cheek was on

her mother's.

'Mummy!--and I was only five, and you weren't so very old--only

seven years older than I am now--and you thought father was tired

of you--and you went off to Canada right away. My!--it was plucky of

you--I will say that for you. And if you hadn't gone, I should never

have seen George. But--oh, mummy, mummy!'--this between laughing and

crying--'I do guess you were just a little fool! I guess you were!'

Miss Anna sat downstairs listening to the murmur of those hurrying

voices above her in Phoebe's room. She was darning a tablecloth,

with the Manchester paper beside her; and she sat peculiarly erect, a

little stern and pinched,--breathing protest.

It was extraordinary how Carrie had taken it. These were your Canadian

ways, she supposed. No horror of anything--no shyness. Looking a thing

straight in the face, at a moment's notice--with a kind of humorous

common sense--refusing altogether to cry over spilt milk, even

such spilt milk as this--in a hurry, simply, to clear it up! A mere

metaphorical refusal to cry, this--for, after all, there had been

tears. But the immediate rebound, the determination to be cheerful,

though the heavens fell, had been so amazing! The child had begun

to laugh before her tears were dry--letting loose a flood of sharp,

shrewd questions on her companion; wondering, with sparkling looks,

how 'George' would take it; and quite refusing to provide that

fine-drawn or shrinking sentiment, that 'moral sense,' in short, with

which, as it seemed to the elder woman, half-hours of this quality in

life should be decently accompanied. Little heathen! Miss Anna thought

grimly of all the precautions she had taken to spare the young lady's

feelings--of her own emotions--her sense of a solemn and epoch-making

experience. She might have saved her pains!

But at this point the door upstairs opened, and the 'little heathen'

descended presently to the parlour, bringing the telegram. She came in

shyly, and it might perhaps have been seen that she was conscious of

her disgrace with Miss Anna. But she said nothing; she merely held

out the piece of pink paper; and Miss Anna, surprised out of her own

'moral sense,' fell upon it, hastily adjusting her spectacles to a

large and characteristic nose.

She read it frowning. A messenger! What on earth did they want with

such a person? Just like John!--putting the disagreeables on other

people. She said to herself that one saw where the child's levity came

from.

'It's nice of father, isn't it?' said Carrie, rather timidly, touching

the telegram.

'He'd better have come himself,' said Miss Anna, sharply.

'But he is coming!' cried Carrie. 'He's only sending a letter--or a

present--or something--to smooth the way--just as George does with me.

Well, now then'--she bent down and brought her resolute little face

close to Miss Anna's--'where's he to sleep?'

Miss Anna jumped, pushed back her chair, and said, coldly, 'I'll see

to that.'

'Because, if he's going into my room,' said Carrie, thoughtfully,

'something'll have to be done to lengthen that bed. The pillow slips

down, and even I hung my feet out last night. But, if you'll let me, I

could fix it up--I could make that room real nice.'

Miss Anna told her to do what she liked. 'And where'll you sleep

to-night, pray?'

'Oh, I'll go in to mother.'

'There's a second bed in my room,' said Miss Anna, stiffly.

'Ah! but that would crowd you up,' said the girl, softly; and off she

went.

Presently there was a commotion upstairs--hammering, pulling, pushing.

Miss Anna wondered what on earth she was doing to the bed.

Then, Phoebe came down, white and fluttered enough to satisfy the most

exacting canons. Miss Anna tried not to show that she was dissatisfied

with the terms of the telegram, and Phoebe did not complain. But her

despondency was very evident, and Miss Anna was extremely sorry for

her. In her restlessness she presently said that she would go out to

the ghyll and sit by the water a little. If anybody came, they were to

shout for her. She would only be a stone's throw from the house.

She went away along the fell-side, her head drooping--so tall and

thin, in her plain dress of grey Carmelite and her mushroom hat

trimmed with black.

Miss Anna looked after her. She knew very little indeed, as yet,

of what it was that had really brought the poor thing home. Her

own fault, no doubt. Phoebe would have poured out her soul, without

reserve, on that first night of her return to her old home. But Miss

Anna had entirely refused to allow it. 'No, no!' she had said, even

putting her hand on the wife's trembling lips; 'you shan't tell me.

Keep that for John--it's his right. If you've got a confession--it

belongs to _John_!'

On the other hand, of the original crisis--of the scene in

Bernard Street, the spoilt picture, and the letters of Madame de

Pastourelles--Miss Anna had let Phoebe tell her what she pleased;

and in truth--although Phoebe seemed to be no longer of a similar

opinion--it appeared to the ex-schoolmistress that John had a good

deal to explain--John and the French lady. If people are not married,

and not relations, they have no reasonable call whatever to write each

other long and interesting letters. In spite of her education and

her reading, Miss Anna's standards in these respects were the small,

Puritanical standards of the English country town.

The gate leading to the steep pitch of lane opened and shut. Miss Anna

rose hastily and looked out.

A lady in black entered the little garden, walked up to the door, and

knocked timidly. Was this the 'messenger'? Miss Anna hurried into the

little hall.

'Is Mrs. Fenwick in?' asked a very musical voice.

'Mrs. Fenwick is sitting a little way off on the fell,' said Miss

Anna, advancing. 'But I can call her directly. What name, please?'

The lady took out her card.

'It's a French name,' she said, with smiling apology, handing it to

Miss Anna.

Miss Anna glanced at it, and then at the bearer.

'Kindly step this way,' she said, pointing to the parlour, and holding

her grey-capped head rather impressively high.

Madame de Pastourelles obeyed her, murmuring that she had sent her

carriage on to the Dungeon Ghyll Hôtel, whence it would return for her

in an hour.

Eugénie had made her first speech--her first embarrassed explanation.

She and Miss Anna sat on either side of the parlour table, their eyes

on each other. Eugénie felt herself ill at ease under the critical

gaze of this handsome, grey-haired woman, with her broad shoulders and

her strong brows. She had left London in hurry and agitation, and

was, after all, but very slenderly informed as to the situation

in Langdale. Had she inadvertently said something to set this

formidable-looking person against her and her mission?

On her side Miss Anna surveyed the delicate refinement of her visitor;

the black dress so plain, yet so faultless; the mass of brown hair,

which even after a night's railway journey was still perfectly

dressed, no doubt by the maid without whom these fine ladies never

venture themselves abroad; the rings which sparkled on the thin

fingers; the single string of pearls, which alone relieved the

severity of the black bodice. She noticed the light, distinguished

figure, the beauty of the small head; and her hostility waxed within

her. John's smart friend belonged to the pampered ones of the earth,

and Miss Anna did not intend to be taken in by her, not for a moment.

'Mr. Fenwick has been terribly overworked,' Eugénie repeated,

colouring against her will, 'and yesterday he was quite broken down

by your letter. It seemed too much for him. You will understand, I'm

sure. When a person is so weak, they shrink--don't they?--even from

what they most desire. And so he asked me--to--to come and tell Mrs.

Fenwick something about his health, and his circumstances these

last two years--just to prepare the way. There is so much--isn't

there?--Mrs. Fenwick cannot yet know; and I'm afraid--it will pain her

to hear.'

The speaker's voice faltered and ceased. She felt through every nerve

that she was in a false position, and wondered how she was to mend it.

'Do I understand you that John Fenwick is coming to see his wife

to-night?' said Miss Mason at last, in a voice of battle.

'He arrives by the afternoon train,' said Eugénie, looking at her

questioner with a slight frown of perplexity.

'What is the matter with him?' said Miss Anna, dryly.

Eugénie hesitated; then she bent forward, the colour rushing again

into her cheeks.

'I think'--her voice was low and hurried, and she looked round her to

see that the door was shut and they were really alone--'I think it has

been an attack of depression--perhaps--perhaps melancholia. He has had

great misfortunes and disappointments. Unfortunately, my father and I

were abroad, and did not understand. But, thank God!'--she clasped her

hands involuntarily--'I got home yesterday--I went to see him--just in

time--'

She paused, looking at her companion as though she asked for the

understanding which would save her further words. But Miss Anna sat

puzzled and cold.

'Just in time?' she repeated.

'I didn't understand at first,' said Eugénie, with emotion; 'I only

saw that he was ill and terribly broken. But he has told me since--in

a letter I got just before I started. And I want you to advise me--to

tell me whether you think Mrs. Fenwick should know--'

'Know what?' cried Miss Anna.

Madame de Pastourelles bent forward again, and said a few words under

her breath.

Anna Mason recoiled.

'Horrible!' she said; 'and--and so cowardly! So like a man!'

Eugénie could not help a tremulous smile; then she resumed:

'The picture had come--just come. It was that which saved him. Ah,

yes'--the smile flashed out again--'I had forgotten! Of course Mrs.

Fenwick must know! It was the picture--it was _she_ that _saved_

him. But your note, by some strange accident, had escaped him. It had

fallen out, among some other papers on the floor--and he was nearly

beside himself with disappointment. I was lucky enough to find it and

give it him. But oh! it was pitiful to see him.'

She shaded her eyes with her hand a moment, waiting for composure.

Miss Anna watched her, the strong mouth softening unconsciously.

'And so, when he asked me to come and see his wife first--to tell

her about his troubles and his breakdown--I felt as if I could not

refuse--though, of course, I know'--she looked up appealingly--'it may

well seem strange and intrusive to Mrs. Fenwick. But perhaps when

she understands how we have all been searching for her these many

months--'

'Searching!' exclaimed Miss Anna. 'Who has been searching?'

Her question arrested her companion. Eugénie drew herself more erect,

collecting her thoughts.

'Shall we face the facts as they are?' she said at last, quietly. 'I

can tell you very shortly how the case stands.'

Miss Anna half-rose, looked at the door, sat down again.

'Mrs. Fenwick, you understand, may return at any time!'

'I will be very short. We must consult--mustn't we?--for them both?'

Timidly, her eyes upraised to the vigorous old face beside her,

Eugénie held out her delicate hand. With a quick, impulsive movement,

wondering at herself, Miss Anna grasped it.

A little while later Miss Anna emerged from the parlour. She went

upstairs to find Carrie.

Carrie was sitting beside the open door of her room, calmly ripping

up a mattress. The bed behind her had been substantially lengthened,

apparently by the help of a packing-case in which Mrs. Fenwick had

brought some of her possessions across the Atlantic. A piece of white

dimity had been tacked round the packing-case.

'Carrie, what on earth are you doing?' cried Miss Anna, in dismay.

'It's all right,' said Carrie--'I'm only making it over. It's got

lumpy.' Then she laid down her scissors, flushed, and looked at Miss

Anna. 'Who's that downstairs?'

'It's a lady who wants to see your mother. Will you go and fetch her?'

'Father's "messenger"?' cried Carrie, springing up, and breathing

quick.

Miss Anna nodded.

'Your mother should be very grateful to her,' she said, in rather a

shaky voice.

Carrie put on her hat in silence, and descended. The door of the

parlour was open, and between it and the parlour window stood the

strange lady, staring at the river and the fell opposite, apparently

deep in thought.

At the sound of the girl's step Eugénie turned.

'Carrie!' she cried, involuntarily--'you are Carrie!' And she came

forward, impetuously holding out both her hands. 'How like the

picture--how like!'

And Eugénie gazed in delight at the small, slight creature, so

actively and healthily built, in spite of her fairy proportions, at

the likeness to Fenwick in hair and skin, at the apple-freshness of

her colour, the beauty of her eyes, the lightness of her pretty feet.

Twelve years!--and then to find _this_, dropped into your arms by the

gods--this living, breathing promise of all delight! Deep in Eugénie's

heart there stirred the pang of her own pitiful motherhood, of the

child who had just flickered into life, and out of it, through one

summer's day.

She shyly put her arm round the girl.

'May I,' she said, timidly--'may I kiss you?'

Carrie, with down-dropped eyes, a little grave, submitted.

'I am going to tell my mother. Father sent you, didn't he?'

Eugénie said 'Yes' gently, and released her. The child ran off.

Phoebe came slowly into the room, with an uncertain gait, touching the

door and the walls like one groping her way.

'Oh, Mrs. Fenwick!'

It was a little cry from Eugénie--deprecating, full of pain.

Phoebe took no notice of it. She went straight to her visitor.

'Where is my husband, please?' she said, in a strong, hoarse voice,

mechanically holding out her hand, which Eugénie touched and then let

drop--so full of rugged, passionate things were the face and form she

looked at.

'He's coming by the afternoon train.' Eugénie threw all her will into

calmness and clearness. 'He gets to Windermere before five--and

he thought he might be here a little after six. He was so ill

yesterday--when I found him--when I went to see him! That's what

he wanted me to tell you before you saw him again--and so I came

first--by the night train.'

'You went to see him--yesterday?' said Phoebe, still in the same tense

way.

She had never asked her guest to sit, and she stood herself, one hand

leaning heavily on the table.

'I had heard from the lawyers--the lawyers my father had recommended

to Mr. Fenwick--that they had found a clue--they had discovered some

traces of you in Canada--and I went to tell him.'

'Lawyers?' Phoebe raised her left hand in bewilderment. 'I don't

understand.'

Eugénie came a little nearer. Hurriedly, with changing colour, she

gave an account of the researches of the lawyers during the preceding

seven months--interrupted in the middle by Phoebe.

'But why was John looking for us, after--after all this time?' she

said, in a fainter, weaker voice, dropping at the same time into a

chair.

Eugénie hesitated; then said, firmly, 'Because he wished to find you,

more than anything else in the world. And my father and I helped him

all we could--'

'But you didn't know?'--Phoebe caught piteously at her dress--'you

didn't know--?'

'That Mr. Fenwick was married? No--never!--till last autumn. That was

his wrong-doing, towards all his old friends.'

Phoebe looked at the dignity and pureness of the face before her, and

shrank a little.

'And how was it found out?' she breathed, turning away.

'There was a Miss Morrison--'

'Bella Morrison!' cried Phoebe, suddenly, clasping her hands--'Bella!

Of course, she did it to disgrace him.'

'We never knew what her motive was. But she told--an old friend--who

told us.'

'And then--what did John say?'

The wife's hands shook--her eyes were greedy for an answer.

'Oh! it was all miserable!' said Eugénie, with a gesture of emotion.

'It made my father very angry, and we could not be friends any

more--as we had been. And Mr. Fenwick had a wretched winter. He was

ill--and his painting seemed to go wrong--and he was terribly in need

of money--and then came that day at the theatre--'

'I know,' whispered Phoebe, hanging on the speaker's lips--'when he

saw Carrie?'

'It nearly killed him,' said Eugénie, gently. 'It was like a light

kindled, and then blown out.'

Phoebe leant her head against the table before her, and began to sob--

'If I'd never let her go up that day! When we first landed I didn't

know what to do--I couldn't make up my mind. We'd taken lodgings down

at Guildford--near some acquaintances we'd made in Canada. And

the girl was a great friend of Carrie's--we used to stay with

them sometimes in Montreal. She had acted a little at Halifax and

Montreal--and she wanted an opening in London--and somebody told her

to apply at that theatre--I forget its name.'

'Halifax!' cried Eugénie--'Halifax, Nova Scotia? Oh, now I understand!

We have searched England through. The stage-manager said one of the

young ladies mentioned Halifax. Nobody ever thought--'

She paused. Phoebe said nothing; she was grappling with some of the

new ideas presented to her.

'And this was his second search, you know,' said Eugénie, laying a

hand timidly on Phoebe's shoulder. 'He had done all he could--when

you left him. But when he lost sight of Carrie again--and so of you

both--it wore his heart out. I can see it did. He is a broken man.'

Her voice trembled. 'Oh, you will have to nurse--to comfort him. He

has been in despair about his art--in despair about everything. He--'

But she checked herself. The rest was for him to tell.

'For a long time he seemed so--so--successful,' said Phoebe, plucking

at the tablecloth, trying to compose voice and features.

'Yes--but it didn't last. He seemed to get angry with himself--and

everybody else. He quarrelled with the Academy--and his work didn't

improve--it went back. But then--when one's unhappy--'

Her smile and the pressure of her hand said the rest.

'He'll never forgive me!' said Phoebe, her voice thick and shaking.

'It can never be the same again. I was a fool to come home.'

Eugénie withdrew her hand. Unconsciously, a touch of sternness showed

itself in her bearing, her pale features.

'No, no!'--she said, with energy. 'You will comfort him, Mrs.

Fenwick--you will give him heart and hope again. It was a cruel

thing--forgive me if I say it once!--it was a cruel thing to leave

him! A man like that--with his weaknesses and his temperament--which

are part of his gift really--its penalty--wants his wife at every

turn--the woman who loves him--who understands. But to desert him for

a suspicion!--a dream! Oh! Mrs. Fenwick, there are those who--who are

really starved--really forsaken--really trampled under foot--by those

they love!'

Her voice broke. She stood gazing straight before her, quivering with

the passion of recollection. Phoebe looked up--awed--remembering what

John had said, so long ago, of the unhappy marriage, the faithless and

cruel husband. But Eugénie's hand touched her again.

'And I know that you thought--_I_--had made Mr. Fenwick--forget you.

That was so strange! At that time--and for many years afterwards--my

husband was still alive. If he had sent me a word--any day--any

hour--I would have gone to him--to the ends of the world. I don't

mean--I don't pretend--that my feeling for him remained unchanged. But

my pride was--my duty was--that he should never find _me_ lacking. And

last year--he turned to me--I was able to help him--through his death.

I had been his true wife--and he knew it.'

She spoke quietly, brushing the tears from her eyes. But with the last

words, her voice wavered a little. Phoebe had bowed her head upon the

hand which held hers, and there was no spectator of the feeling in

Eugénie's face. Was her pure conscience tormented with the thought

that she had not told all, and could never tell it? Her innocent

tempting of Fenwick--as an act, partly, of piteous self-defence

against impulses of quite another quality and power--this must remain

her secret to the end. Sad evasions, which life forces upon even the

noblest worshippers of truth!

After a minute she stooped and kissed Phoebe's golden hair.

'I was so glad to help Mr. Fenwick--he interested me so. If I had only

known of you--and the child--why, how happy we might all have been!'

She withdrew her hand, and walked away to the window, trying to calm

herself.

Phoebe rose and followed her.

'Do you know?'--she said, piteously--'can't you tell me?--will John

take me back?'

Eugénie paused just a moment; then said, steadily, 'He is coming here,

because you are his wife--because he is faithful to you--because he

wants you. Don't agitate him too much! He wants resting and healing.

And so do you!' She took Phoebe's hands again in hers. 'And how do you

think anybody is to deny you anything, when you bring such a gift as

that?'

Carrie and Miss Mason were entering the little garden. Eugénie's

smile, as she motioned towards the girl, seemed to reflect the May

sunshine and Carrie's young charm.

But after Madame de Pastourelles was gone, a cloud of nervous

dread fell upon the little cottage and its inmates. Phoebe wandered

restlessly about the garden, waiting--and listening--hour after hour.

The May evening drew towards sunset. Flame descended on the valley,

striking athwart the opening which leads to its furthest recess,

superbly guarded by the crags of Bowfell, and turning all the

mountain-side above the cottage, still dyed with the fern of

'yesteryear,' to scarlet. A fresh breeze blew through the sycamore

leaves, bringing with it the cool scents of rain-washed grass. All

was hushed--richly hued--expectant--like some pageant waiting for its

king.

Alas--poor king! In the full glory of the evening light, a man

alighted from a wagonette at the foot of the cottage hill, and dragged

his weary limbs up the steep ground. He opened the gate, looking round

him slowly to right and left.

Then, in the porch, Fenwick saw his wife. He walked up to her, and

gripped her wrists. She fell back with a stifled cry; and they stood

there--speechless and motionless--looking into each other's eyes.

CHAPTER XIV

Phoebe first withdrew herself. In that first moment of contact,

Fenwick's changed aspect had pierced her to the heart. But the shock

itself brought self-control.

'Come in,' she said, mechanically; 'Miss Anna's gone out.'

'Where's Carrie?'

He followed her in, glancing from side to side.

'She--she'll be here directly.'

Phoebe's voice stumbled over the words.

Fenwick understood that the child and Anna Mason were leaving them

to themselves, out of delicacy; and his exhaustion of mind and body

recoiled impatiently from the prospect of a 'scene,' with which he

felt himself wholly unable to cope. He had been sorely tempted to stay

at Windermere, and telegraph that he was too ill to come that day.

Such a course would at least have given him the night's respite. But a

medley of feelings had prevailed over the impulse; and here he was.

They entered the little parlour, and he looked round him in amazement,

muttering, 'Why, it looks just as it did--not a thing changed.'

Phoebe closed the door, and then turned to him, trembling.

'Won't you--won't you say you're glad to see me, John?'

He looked at her fixedly, then threw himself down beside the table,

and rested his head on his hands.

'It's no good to suppose we can undo these twelve years,' he said,

roughly; 'it's no good whatever to suppose that.'

'No,' said Phoebe--'I know.'

She too sat down on the other side of the table, deadly pale, not

knowing what to say or do.

Suddenly he raised his head and looked at her, with his searching

painter's eyes.

'My God!' he said, under his breath. 'We are changed, both of

us--aren't we?'

She too studied the face before her--the grey hair, the red-rimmed

eyes, of which the lids fluttered perpetually, shrinking from the

light, the sombre mouth; and slowly a look of still more complete

dismay overspread her own; reflected, as it were, from that

half-savage discouragement and weariness which spoke from the drawn

features, the neglected dress, and slouching figure, and seemed

to make of the whole man one sore, wincing at a touch. Her heart

sank--and sank.

'Can't we begin again?' she said, in a low voice, while the tears rose

in her eyes. 'I'm sorry for what I did.'

'How does that help it?' he said, irritably. 'I'm a ruined man.

I can't paint any more--or, at any rate, the world doesn't care a

ha'p'orth _what_ I paint. I should be a bankrupt--but for Madame de

Pastourelles--'

'John!' cried Phoebe, bending forward--'I've got a little money--I

saved it--and there are some shares a friend advised me to buy, that

are worth a lot more than I gave for them. I've got eight hundred

pounds--and it's all yours, John,--it's all yours.' She stretched out

her hands in a yearning anguish, and touched his.

'What friend?' he said, with a quick, suspicious movement, taking no

notice of her statement; 'and where have you been--all these years?'

He turned and looked at her sharply.

'I've been in Canada--on a farm--near Montreal.'

She held herself erect, speaking slowly and carefully, as though a

moment had arrived for which she had long prepared; through rebellion,

and through yielding; now in defiance, and now in fear: the moment

when she should tell John the story of her flight. Her manner,

indeed--for one who could have understood it--proved a curious thing;

that never, throughout their separation, had she ceased to believe

that she should see her husband again. There had been no finality in

her action. In her eyes the play had been always going on, the curtain

always up.

'You know I told you about Freddy--Freddy Tolson's--coming to see

me--that night? Well, it was the things he said about Canada made me

do it. Of course I didn't want to go where he was going. But he said

that one could get to Canada for a few pounds, and it took about

nine days. And it was a fine place, and any one could find work. He'd

thought of it, he said, but as he had friends in Australia, he was

going there. And so, when he'd left the cottage, I thought--if, when

I came up to town--I--I did find what I expected--I'd take Carrie--and

go to Canada.'

Fenwick rose, and, thrusting his hands into his pockets, began to walk

up and down excitedly.

'And of course--as you expected it--you found it,' he said, bitterly.

'Who could ever have _conceived_ that a woman could act in such a way!

Why, I had been kissing your photograph the minute before! Lord Findon

had been there, to tell me my pictures were in the Academy all right,

and he'd given me five hundred pounds for them--and the cheque'--he

stopped in front of her, rapping the table with his finger for

emphasis--'the cheque was actually in the drawer!--under your

hand--where I'd left it. It was too late to catch the North post for a

letter to you, so I went out to tell one or two people, and on the way

I bought some things for you at a shop--prettinesses that I'd never

been able to give you. Why, I thought of nothing but you.'

His voice had risen to a cry. He stooped, bending over the table, his

haggard face close to hers.

She recoiled, and burst into a wild sob:

'John, I--I couldn't know!'

'Well, go on,' he said, abruptly, raising himself--'go on. You found

that picture in my room--I'll tell you about that presently--and you

wrote me the letter. Well, then you went back to Euston, and you sent

Daisy away. After that?'

His stern, sharp tone, which was really the result of a nerve-tension

hardly to be borne, scared her. It was with painful difficulty that

she collected her forces enough to meet his gaze and to reply.

'I took Carrie to Liverpool. We had to wait three days there. Then we

got on a steamer for Québec. The voyage was dreadful. Carrie was ill,

and I was so--so miserable! We stopped at Québec a little. But I felt

so strange there, with all the people speaking French--so we went

on to Montreal. And the Government people there who look after

the emigrants found me a place. I got work in an hotel--a sort of

housekeeper. I looked after the linen, and the servants, and after a

bit I learnt how to keep the accounts. They paid me eight dollars

a week, and Carrie and I had a room at the top of the hotel. It was

awfully hard work. I was so dead tired at night, sometimes, I couldn't

undress. I would sit down on the side of my bed to rest my feet; and

then the next thing I'd know would be waking in the morning, just as

I was, in my clothes. But so long as I slept, it was all right. It was

lying awake--that killed me!'

The trembling of her lips checked her, and she began to play nervously

with the fringe of the tablecloth, trying to force back emotion. He

had again seated himself opposite to her, and was observing her with

a half-frowning attention, as of one in whom the brain action is

physically difficult. He led her on, however, with questions, seeing

how much she needed the help of them.

From Montreal, it appeared, she had gone to a fruit-farm in the

Hamilton district, Ontario, as housekeeper to a widower with a family

of children varying in age from five to sixteen. She had made the

acquaintance of this man--a decent, rough, good-tempered fellow,

Canadian-born--through the hotel. He had noticed her powers of

management, and her overwork; and had offered her equal pay, an easier

task, and country air, instead of the rush of Montreal.

'I accepted for Carrie's sake. It was an apple-farm, running down to

Lake Ontario. I had to look after the house and the children--and to

cook--and wash--and bake--and turn one's hand to anything. It wasn't

too hard--and Carrie went to school with the others--and used to run

about the farm. Mr. Crosson was very kind. His old mother was living

there--or I--wouldn't have gone'--she flushed deeply--'but she

was very infirm, and couldn't do anything. I took in two English

papers--and used to get along somehow. Once I was ill, with congestion

of the lungs, and once I went to Niagara, with some people who lived

near. And I can hardly remember anything else happening. It was all

just the same--day after day--I just seemed to be half-alive.'

'Ah! you felt that?' he said, eagerly--'you felt that? There's a

stuff they call curare. You can't move--you're paralysed--but you feel

horrible pain. That's what I used to feel like--for months and months.

And then sometimes--it was different--as if I didn't care twopence

about anything, except a little bit of pleasure--and should never vex

myself about anything again. One was dead, and it didn't matter--was

rather pleasant indeed.'

She was silent. Her seeking, pitiful eyes were on him perpetually,

trying to make him out, to acquaint herself with this new personality,

which spoke in these harsh staccato phrases--to reconcile it with the

exciteable, sanguine, self-confident man whom she had deserted in his

youth.

'Well,' he resumed, 'and what was your farmer like?' Then,

suddenly--lifting his eyes--'Did he make love to you?'

She coloured hotly, and threw back her head.

'And if he did, it was no one's fault!--neither his nor mine. He

wasn't a bad fellow!--and he wanted some one to look after his

children.'

'Naturally. Quite content also to look after mine!' said Fenwick,

with a laugh which startled her--resuming his agitated walk, a curious

expression of satisfaction, triumph even, on his dark face. 'So _you_

found yourself in a false position?'

He stopped to look at her, and his smile hurt her sorely. But she had

made up her mind to a long patience, and she struggled on.

'It was partly that made me come home--that, and other things.'

'What other things?'

'Things--I saw--in some of the papers about you,' she said, with

difficulty.

'What--that I was a flat failure?--a quarrelsome ass, and that kind of

thing? You began to pity me?'

'Oh, John, don't talk to me like that?' She held out her hands to

him in appealing misery. 'I was _sorry_, I tell you!--I saw how I'd

behaved to you. I thought if you hadn't been getting on, perhaps it

was my fault. It upset me altogether!'

But he didn't relent. He stood still--fiercely interrogative--his

hands in his pockets, on the other side of the table.

'And what else was there?'

Phoebe choked back her tears.

'There was a woman--who came to live near us--who had been a maid--'

She hesitated.

'Please go on!'

'Maid to Madame de Pastourelles'--she said, hastily, stumbling over

the French name.

He exclaimed:

'In Ontario!'

'She married a man she had been engaged to for years; he'd been making

a home for her out there. I liked her directly I saw her; and she was

too delicate for the life; she came in the fall, and the winter

tried her dreadfully. I used to go in to nurse her--she was very much

alone--and she told me all about herself--and about--'

'Madame?'

Phoebe nodded, her eyes swimming again in tears.

'And you found out you'd been mistaken?'

She nodded again.

'You see--she talked about her to me a great deal. Of course I--I

never said anything. She'd been with her fifteen years--and she just

worshipped her. And she told me about her bad husband--how she'd

nursed him, and that--and how he died last year!'

A wild colour leapt into Fenwick's cheeks.

'And you began to think--there might be a false position--there

too--between her and me?'

His cruel, broken words stung her intolerably. She sprang up, looking

at him fiercely.

'And if I did, it wasn't all selfishness. Can't you understand, I

might have been afraid for her--and you--as well as for myself?'

He moved again to the window, and stood with head bent, twisting his

lip painfully.

'And to-day you've seen her?' he said, still looking out.

'Yes--she was very, very kind,' said Phoebe, humbly.

He paused a moment, then broke out--

'And now you see--what you did!--what a horrible thing!--for the most

ridiculous reasons! But after you'd left me--in that way--you couldn't

expect me to give her up--her friendship--all I had. For nine or ten

years, if I prospered at all, I tell you it was her doing--because she

upheld me--because she inspired me--because her mere existence shamed

me out of doing--well, what I could never have resisted, but for her.

If I ever did good work, it was her doing--if I have been faithful to

you, in spite of everything, it was her doing too!'

He sank down upon the window-seat--his face working. And suddenly

Phoebe was at his knees.

'Oh, John--John--forgive me!--do, John!--try and forgive me!' She

caught his hands in hers, kissing them, bathing them with her tears.

'John, we _can_ begin again!--we're not so old. You'll have a long

rest--and I'll work for you night and day. We'll go abroad with some

of my money. Don't you know how you always said, if you could study

abroad a bit, what good it'd do you? We'll go, won't we? And you'll

paint as well as ever--you'll get everything back. Oh, John! don't

hate me!--don't hate me! I've loved you always--always--even when I

was so mad and cruel to you. Every night in Canada, I used to long for

it to be morning--and then in the morning I longed for it to be night.

Nothing was any good to me, or any pleasure--without you. But at

first, I was just in despair--I thought I'd lost you for ever--could

never, never come back. And then afterwards--when I wanted to come

back--when I knew I'd been wicked--I didn't know how to do it--how

to face it. I was frightened--frightened of what you'd say to me--how

you'd look!'

She paused, her arms flung round him, her tear-stained face upraised.

In her despair, and utter sincerity, she was once more beautiful--with

a tragic beauty of character and expression, not lost for one moment

upon the man beside her.

He laid his right hand on her head amid the masses of her fair hair,

and held it there, forcing her head back a little, studying her in

a bitter passion--the upper lip drawn back a little over the teeth,

which held and tormented the lower.

'Twelve years!' he said, slowly, after a minute, his eyes plunging

into hers--'twelve years! What do you know of me now?--or I of you?

I should offend you twenty times a day. And--perhaps--it might be the

same with me.'

Phoebe released herself, and laid her head against his knee.

'John!--take me back--take me back!'

'Why did you torture me?' he said, hoarsely. 'You sent me Carrie six

weeks ago--and then swept her away again.'

She cried out. 'It was the merest accident!' And

volubly--abjectly--she explained.

He listened to her, but without seeming to understand--his own mind

working irrelevantly all the time. And presently he interrupted her.

'Besides--I'm unhinged--I'm not fit to have women dependent on me. I

can't answer for myself. Yesterday--if that picture had come at eight

o'clock instead of seven--it would have been too late!'

His voice altered strangely.

Phoebe fell back upon the floor, huddled together--staring at him.

'What do you mean?'

'I should have destroyed myself. That's what I mean. I had made up my

mind. It was just touch and go.'

Phoebe sat speechless. It seemed as though her eyes--so wide and

terrified--were fixed in their places, and could not release him. He

moved impatiently; the appeal, the horror of them, were more than he

could bear.

'And much better for you if I had!--and as for Carrie!--Ah!--good

Heavens! there she is.'

He sprang up in agitation, looking through the open window, yet

withdrawing from it. Phoebe too rose, the colour rushing back into

her cheeks. This was to be her critical, her crucial moment. If she

recovered him, she was to owe it to her child.

Carrie and Miss Mason came along the path together. They had been in

a wood beside the Elterwater road; not knowing how to talk to each

other; wandering apart, and gathering flowers idly, to pass the time.

Carrie held a large bunch of bluebells in her hand. She wore a cotton

dress of greyish-blue, just such a dress as Phoebe might have worn in

her first youth. The skirt was short, and showed her tripping feet.

Under her shady hat with its pink rose, her eyes glanced timidly

towards the house, and then withdrew themselves again. Fenwick saw

that the eyes were in truth darker than Phoebe's, and the hair much

darker--no golden mist like her mother's, but nearer to his own--a

warm brown, curly and vigorous. Her face was round and rosy, but so

delicately cut and balanced, it affected him with a thrill of delight.

He perceived also that she was very small--smaller than he had

thought, in the theatre. But at the same time, her light proportions

had in them no hint of weakness or fragility. If she were a fairy, she

was no twilight spirit, but rather a cheerful dawn-fairy--one of those

happy household sprites that help the work of man.

He went and opened the door for them, trembling.

Carrie saw him there--paused--and then walked on quickly--ahead of

Miss Mason.

'Father!' she said, gravely, and looking at him, she held out her

hand.

He took it, and then, drawing her to him, he kissed her hurriedly.

Carrie's cheeks grew very red, and her eyes moist, for a moment. But

she had long since determined not to cry--because poor mummy would be

sure to.

'I guess you'll be wanting your tea,' she said, shyly, looking from

him to her mother; 'I'll go and see to it.'

Miss Anna came up behind, concealing as best she could the impression

made upon her by the husband and wife as they stood in the porch,

under the full western light. Alack! here was no happy meeting!--and

it was no good pretending.

[Illustration: _Robin Ghyll Cottage_]

Fenwick greeted her with little or no demonstration of any sort,

though he and she, also, had never met since the year of Phoebe's

flight. His sunken eyes indeed regarded her with a look that seemed to

hold her at bay--a strange look full of bitterness. She understood it

to mean that he was not there to lend himself to any sham sentimental

business; and that physically he was ill, and could stand no strain,

whatever women might wish.

After a few questions about his journey, Miss Anna quietly begged him

to come in and rest. He hesitated a moment, then with his hands in his

pockets followed her to the parlour; while Phoebe, with Carrie's arm

round her, went falteringly upstairs.

Miss Anna made no scene and asked for no information. She and Carrie

bustled to and fro, preparing supper. Fenwick at his own request

remained alone in the parlour. But when supper-time came, it was

evident that he was too feeble to face an ordinary meal. He lay

back in Miss Anna's armchair with closed eyes, and took no notice

of Phoebe's timid summons. The women looked in upon him, alarmed and

whispering together. Then Miss Anna drew Phoebe away, and mixing some

milk and brandy sent Carrie in with it. 'He will go away to-morrow!'

she said, in Phoebe's ear, referring to a muttered saying of the

patient,--'we shall see!'

As Carrie entered the parlour with the milk and brandy, Fenwick looked

up.

'Where am I to sleep?' he asked her, abruptly, his eyes lingering on

her.

'In my room,' she said, softly; 'I'm going in to Miss Anna. I've

lengthened the bed!'

A faint smile flickered over his face.

'How did you do that?'

'I nailed on a packing-case. Isn't it queer?--Miss Anna hadn't any

tools. I had to borrow some at the farm--and they were the poorest

scratch lot you ever saw. Why, everybody in Canada has tools.'

He held her with a shaking hand, still looking intently at her bright

face.

'Did you like Canada?'

She smiled.

'Why, it's _lovely_!'

Then her lips parted eagerly. She would have liked to go on talking,

to make acquaintance. But she refrained. This man--this strange new

father--was 'sick'--and must be kept quiet.

'Will you help me up to bed?' he murmured--as she was just going away.

She obeyed, and he leant on her shoulder as they mounted the steep

cottage stair. Her physical strength astonished him--the amount of

support that this child of seventeen was able to give him.

She led him into his room, where she had already brought his bag, and

unpacked his things.

'Is it all right, father? Do you want anything else? Shall I send

mother?'

'No, no,' he said, hastily--'I'm all right. Tell them I'm all right; I

only want to go to sleep.'

She turned at the door, and looked at him wistfully.

'I did make that mattress over--part of it. But it's a real bad one.'

He nodded, and she went.

'A dream!' he said to himself--'_a dream_!'

He was thinking of the child as she stood bathed in the mingled glory

of sunset and moonlight flowing in upon her from the open window; for

the long day of northern summer was still lingering in the valley.

'Ah! if I could only _paint_!--oh, God, if I could _paint_!' he

groaned aloud, rubbing his hands together in a fever of impotence and

misery.

Then he tumbled into bed, and lay there weak and passive, feeling the

strangeness of the remembered room, of the open casement window, of

the sycamore outside, and the mountain forms beyond it; of this pearly

or golden light in which everything was steeped.

In the silence he heard the voice of the beck, as it hurried down the

ghyll. Twelve years since he had heard it last; and the eternal water

'at its priestlike task' still murmured with the rocks, still drank

the rain, and fed the river. No rebellion there, no failure; no

helpless will!

He tried to think of Phoebe, to remember what she had said to him. He

wondered if he had been merely brutal to her. But his heart seemed a

dry husk within him. It was, as it had been. He could neither think

nor feel.

Next day he was so ill that a doctor was sent for. He prescribed long

rest, said all excitement must be avoided, all work put away.

Four or five dreary weeks followed. Fenwick stayed in bed most of the

day, struggled down to the garden in the afternoon, was nursed by the

three women, and scarcely said a word from morning till night that

was not connected with some bodily want or discomfort. He showed no

repugnance to his wife, would let her wait upon him, and sit beside

him in the garden. But he made no spontaneous movement towards her

whatever; and the only person who evidently cheered him was Carrie.

He watched the child incessantly--in her housework, her sewing, her

gardening, her coaxing of her pale mother, her fun with Miss Anna, who

was by now her slave. There was something in the slight foreignness

of her ways and accent, in her colonial resource and independence that

delighted and amused him like a pleasant piece of acting. She had the

cottage under her thumb. By now she had cleaned all the furniture,

'coloured' most of the walls, and mended all the linen, which had been

in a sad condition--Miss Anna's powers being rather intellectual

than practical. And through it all she kept a natural daintiness and

refinement, was never clumsy, or loud, or untidy. She came and went

so lightly--and always bringing with her the impression of something

hidden and fragrant, a happiness within, that gave a dancing grace and

perfume to all her life.

To her father she chattered mostly of Canada, and he would sit in the

shade of the cottage, listening to her while she described their life;

the big, rambling farm, the children she had been brought up with,

the great lake with its ice and its storms, the apple-orchards, the

sleighing in winter, the beauty of the fall, the splendour of the

summers, the boom that was beginning 'up west.' Cunningly, in fact,

she set the stage for an actor to come; but his 'cue' was not yet.

It was only from her, indeed, that he would hear of these things.

If Phoebe ventured on them his manner stiffened at once. Miss Anna's

strong impression was, still, that with his wife he was always on his

guard against demands he felt himself physically unable to meet. Yet

it seemed to her, as time went on, that he was more and more aware of

Phoebe, more sensitive to her presence, her voice.

She too watched Phoebe, and with a growing, involuntary respect.

This changed woman had endured 'hardness,' had at last followed her

conscience; and, rebuffed and unforgiven as she seemed to be, she was

clothed none the less in a new dignity, modest and sad, but real. She

might be hopeless of recovering her husband; but all the same, the

law which links that strange thing, spiritual peace, with certain

surrenders, had already begun to work, unknown even to herself.

As she moved about the cottage and garden, indeed, new contacts, new

relations, slowly established themselves, unseen and unexpressed,

between her and the man who scarcely noticed her in words, from

morning till night. 'I should offend you twenty times a day,' he had

said to her--'and perhaps it might be the same with me!' But they

did not offend each other!--that was the merciful new fact, asserting

itself through this silent, suspended time. She was still beautiful.

The mountain air restored her clear, pure colour; and what time had

robbed her of in bloom it had given her back in _character_--the

artist's supreme demand. Self-control, bitterly learnt--fresh

capacities, moral or practical--these expressed themselves in a

thousand trifles. Not only in her tall slenderness and fairness was

she presently a challenge to Fenwick's sharpening sense; she began,

in a wholly new degree, to interest his intelligence. Her own had

blossomed; and in spite of grief, she had brought back with her some

of the ways of a young and tiptoe world. Soon he was, in secret,

hungry for her history--the history he had so far refused to hear.

Who was this man who had made love to her?--how far had it gone?--he

tossed at nights thinking of it. There came a time when he would

gladly have exchanged Carrie's gossip for hers; and through her soft

silence, as she sat beside him, he would hear suddenly, in memory,

the echoes of her girlish voice, and make a quick movement towards

her--only to check himself in shyness or pride.

Meanwhile he could not know that he too had grown in her eyes, as she

in his. In spite of all his errors and follies, he had not wrestled

with his art, he had not lived among his intellectual peers, he had

not known Eugénie de Pastourelles through twelve years, for nothing.

Embittered he was, but also refined. The nature had grown harsher and

more rugged--but also larger, more complex, more significant,

better worth the patiences of love. As for his failure, the more

she understood it, the more it evoked in her an angry advocacy, a

passionate championship, a protesting faith--which she had much ado to

hide.

And all this time letters came occasionally from Madame de

Pastourelles--indifferently to her or to him--full of London artistic

gossip, the season being now in full swim, of sly stimulus and cheer.

As they handed them to each other, without talking of them, it was as

though the shuttle of fate flew from life to life--these in Langdale,

and that in London--weaving the three into a new pattern which day by

day replaced and hid away the old.

The days lengthened towards midsummer. After a spell of rain, June

descended in blossom and sunshine on the Westmoreland vales. The

hawthorns were out, and the wild cherries. The bluebells were

fading in the woods, but in the cottage gardens the lilacs were all

fragrance, and the crown-imperials showed their heads of yellow and

red. Each valley and hillside was a medley of soft and shimmering

colour, save in the higher, austerer dales, where, as in Langdale,

the woods scarcely climb, and the bare pastures have only a livelier

emerald to show, or the crags a warmer purple, as their testimony to

the spring.

Fenwick was unmistakeably better. The signs of it were visible in many

directions. His passive, silent ways, so alien to his natural self and

temperament, were at last breaking down.

One evening, Carrie, who had been to Elterwater, brought back some

afternoon letters. They included a letter from Canada, which Carrie

read over her mother's shoulder, laughing and wondering. Phoebe was

sitting on a bench in the garden, an old yew-tree just above her on

the slope. The heads of both mother and child were thrown out sharply

on the darkness of the yew background--Phoebe's profile, upturned, and

the abundant coils of her hair, were linked in harmonious line with

the bending figure and beautiful head of the girl.

Suddenly Fenwick put down the newspaper which Carrie had brought him.

He rose, muttered something, and went into the house. They could hear

him rummaging in his room, where Phoebe had lately unpacked some boxes

forwarded from London. He had never so far touched brush or crayon

during his stay at the cottage.

Presently he returned with a canvas and palette.

'Don't go!' he said, peremptorily, to Carrie, raising his hand. 'Stand

as you were before.'

'You don't want me?' asked Phoebe, startled, her pale cheeks suddenly

pink.

'Yes, yes, I do!' he said, impatiently. 'For God's sake, don't move,

either of you!'

He went back for an easel, then sat down and began to paint.

They held themselves as still as mice. Carrie could see her mother's

hands trembling on her lap.

Suddenly Fenwick said, in emotion:

'I don't know how it is--but I _see_ much better than I did.'

Miss Anna looked up from the low wall on which she was sitting.

'The doctor said you would, John, when you got strong,' she put in,

quickly. 'He said you'd been suffering from your eyes a long time

without knowing it. It was nerves like the rest.'

Fenwick said nothing. He went on painting, painting fast and

freely--for nearly an hour. All the time Phoebe could hardly breathe.

It was as though she felt the doors opening upon a new room in the

House of Life.

[Illustration: _Fenwick stood looking at the canvas_]

Then the artist threw his canvas on the grass, and stood looking at

it.

'By Jove!' he said, presently. 'By Jove!--that'll do.'

Phoebe said nothing. Carrie came up to him and put her hand in his

arm.

'Father, that's enough. Don't do any more.'

'All right. Take it away--and all these things.'

She lifted the sketch, the palette and brushes, and carried them into

the house.

Then Fenwick looked up irresolutely. His wife was still sitting on the

bench. She had her sewing in her hands.

'Your hair's as pretty as ever, Phoebe,' he said, in a queer voice.

Phoebe raised her deep lids slowly, and her eyes spoke for her. She

would offer herself no more--implore no more--but he knew in that

moment that she loved him more maturely, more richly, than she had

ever loved him in the old days. A shock, that was also a thrill, ran

through him. They remained thus for some seconds gazing at each other.

Then, as Carrie returned, Phoebe went into the house.

Carrie studied her father for a little, and then came to sit down on

the grass beside him. Miss Anna had gone for a walk along the fell.

'Are you feeling better, father?'

'Yes--a good deal.'

'Well, then--now--I can tell you _my_ news.'

And she deliberately drew out a photograph from her pocket, and held

it up to him.

'Well'--said Fenwick, mystified. 'Who's the young man?'

'He's _my_ young man'--was Carrie's entirely self-possessed reply.

'I'm going to marry him.'

'_What_?' cried Fenwick. 'Show him to me.'

Carrie yielded up her treasure rather timidly.

Fenwick looked at the picture, then put it down angrily.

'What nonsense are you talking, Carrie! Why, you're only a baby. You

oughtn't to be thinking of any such things.'

Carrie shook her head resolutely. 'I'm not a baby. I've been in love

with him more than a year.'

'Upon my word!' said Fenwick; 'who allowed you to be in love with him?

And has it never occurred to you--lately--that you'd have to ask my

leave?'

Carrie hesitated. 'In Canada I wouldn't have to,' she said, at last,

decidedly.

'Oh! they've abolished the Fifth Commandment there, have they?'

'No, no. But the girls choose for themselves!' said Carrie, tossing

back her brown curls with the slightest touch of defiance.

Fenwick observed her, his brow clouding.

'And you suppose that I'm going to say "Yes" at once to this mad

proposal?--that I'm going to give you up altogether, just as I've got

you back? I warn you at once, I shall not consent to any such thing!'

There was silence. Fenwick sat staring at her, his lips moving,

angry sentences of authority and reproach forming themselves in his

mind--but without coming to speech. It was intolerable, inhuman--that

at this very moment, when he wanted her most, this threat of fresh

loss should be sprung upon him. She was _his_--his property. He would

not give her up to any Canadian fellow, and he altogether disapproved

of such young love-affairs.

'Father,' said Carrie, after a moment, 'when George asked me--we

didn't know--'

'About me? Well, now you do know,' said Fenwick, roughly. 'I'm

here--and I have my rights.'

He put out his hand and seized her arm, looking at her, devouring her,

in a kind of angry passion.

Carrie grew a little pale, and, coming nearer, she laid her head

against his knee.

'Father, you don't understand what we propose.'

'Well, out with it, then!'

'We wouldn't think about being married for three years. Why, of course

we wouldn't! I don't want to be all settled that soon. And, besides,

we're going abroad--you and mummy and I. I'm going to take you!' She

sat up, tossing her pretty head, her eyes as bright as stars.

'And be thinking all the time of the Canadian chap?--bored with

everything!' growled Fenwick.

Carrie surveyed him. A film of tears sparkled.

'I'm never bored. Father!'--she held herself erect, throwing all her

soul into every word--'George is--_awfully--nice!_'

Ah! the 'life-force'! There it was before him, embodied in this light,

ardent creature, on whose brown head and white dress the June sun

streamed through the sycamore-leaves. With a groan--suddenly--Fenwick

weakened.

'What's his horrid name?--who is he?--quick!'

Carrie gave a little crow--and began to talk, sitting there on the

grass, with her hands round her knees. The interloper, it appeared,

had every virtue and every prospect. What was to be done? Presently

Carrie crept up to him again.

'Father!--he wants to come to Europe. When you've found a plan--if we

let him come and hitch up alongside of us somewhere--why, he

wouldn't be any trouble!--_I'd_ see to that! And you don't know

whether--whether a son--mightn't suit you! Why!--you've never tried!'

He made an effort, and held her at arm's length.

'I tell you, I can say nothing about it--nothing--till George has

written to _me_!'

'But he has--this mail!' And in triumph she hastily dragged a letter

out of the little bag at her waist, and gave it him. 'It came this

afternoon, only I didn't know if you might have it.'

He laughed excitedly, and took it.

An hour later Fenwick rose. The day had grown cool. A fresh breeze was

blowing from the north down the fell-side. He put his arm round Carrie

as she stood beside him, kissed her, and in a gruff, unintelligible

voice, murmured something that brought the tears again to her eyes.

Then he announced that he was going for a short walk. Neither Phoebe

nor Miss Anna were to be seen. Carrie protested on the score of his

health.

'Nonsense! The doctor said I might do what I felt I could do.'

'Then you must say good-bye to me. For Miss Anna and I are going

directly.'

Fenwick looked scared, but was soon reminded that Miss Anna was

to drive the child that evening to Bowness, where Carrie was to be

introduced to some old friends of Miss Anna's and stay with them a

couple of days. He evidently did not like the prospect, but he made

no audible protest against it, as he would perhaps have done a week

before.

Carrie watched him go--followed his figure with her eyes along the

road.

'And I'm glad _we're_ off!'--she said to herself, her small feet

dancing--'we've been cumbering this ground, Miss Anna and I--a deal

too long!'

He was soon nearly a mile from home; rejoicing strangely in his

recovered power of movement, and in the freshness of the evening air.

He found himself on a hill above Elterwater, looking back on the

lake, and on a wide range of hills beyond, clothed, in all their lower

slopes, with the full leaf of June. Wood rose above wood, in every

gradation of tone and loveliness, creeping upwards through blue haze,

till they suddenly lost hold on the bare peaks, which rose, augustly

clear, into the upper sky. The lake with its deep or glowing

reflexions--its smiling shore--the smoke of its few houses--lay below

him; and between him and it, glistening sharply, in a sun-steeped

magic, upon the blue and purple background of the hills and woods--a

wild cherry, in its full mantle of bridal white.

What tranquillity!--what colour!--what infinite variety of beauty!

His heart swelled within him. Life of the body--and life of the

soul--seemed to be flowing back upon him, lifting him on its wave,

steeping him in its freshening strength. 'My God!' he thought,

remembering the sketch he had just made, and the mastery with which he

had worked--'if I am able to paint again!--if I am!'

An ecstasy of hope arose in him. What if really there had been

something wrong with his eyes!--something that rest might set right?

What if he had wanted rest for years?--and had gone on defying nature

and common sense?

And in a moment, as he sat there, looking out into the evening, the

old whirl of images invaded him--the old tumult of ideas--clamouring

for shape and form--flitting, phantom-like, along the woods and over

the bosom of the lake. He let himself be carried along, urging his

brain, his fancy, filled with indescribable happiness. It was years

since the experience had last befallen him! Did it mean the return

of youth?--conception?--creative power? What matter!--years, or

hardship?--if the mind could still imagine, the hand still shape?

He thought of his own series of the 'Months'--which he had planned

among these hills, and had carried out perfunctorily and vulgarly,

in the city, far from the freshness and infinity of Nature. All

the faults of his designs appeared to him, and the poverty of their

execution. But he was only exultant, not depressed. Now that he could

judge himself, now that his brain had begun to react once more, with

this vigour, this wealth of idea--surely all would be well.

Then for the first time he thought of the money which Phoebe had

saved. Abroad! Italy?--or France? To go as a wanderer and a student,

on pilgrimage to the sources of beauty and power. What was old, or

played out? Not Beauty!--not the mind within him--not his craftsman's

sense. He threw himself on the grass, face downwards, praying as he

had been wont to do in his youth, but in a far more mystical, more

inward way; not to a far-off God, invited to come down and change or

tamper with external circumstance; but to something within himself,

identified with himself, the power of beauty in him, the resurgent

forces of hope--and love.

At last, after a long time, as the summer twilight was waning,

there struck through his dream the thought of Phoebe--alone in the

cottage--waiting for him. He sprang up, and began to hurry down the

hill.

Phoebe was quite alone. The little servant who only came for the day

had gone back to the farm where she slept, and Carrie and Miss Anna

had long since departed on their visit.

Carrie had told her mother that 'father' had gone for a walk. And

strangely enough, though he was away two hours, and she knew him

still far from his usual strength, Phoebe was not anxious. But she

was mortally tired--as though of a sudden a long tension had been

loosened, a long effort relaxed.

So she had gone upstairs to bed. But she had not begun to undress, and

she sat in a low chair near the window, with the casements wide open,

and the twin-peaks visible through them under a starry sky. Her head

had fallen back against the chair; her hands were folded on her lap.

Then she heard Fenwick come in and his step coming up the stairs.

It paused outside her door, and her heart beat so that she could

hardly bear it.

'May I come in?'

It seemed to her that he did not wait for her low reply. He came in,

and shut the door. There was a bright colour in his face, and his

breath came fast, as he stood beside her, with his hands on his sides.

'Are you sure you like my coming?' he said, brusquely.

She did not answer in words, but she put out her hand, and drew him

towards her.

He knelt down by her, and she flung an arm round his neck, and laid

her fair head on his shoulder with a long sigh.

'You are very tired?'

'No. I knew you would come.'

A silence. Then he said, waveringly, stooping over her:

'Phoebe--I was very hard to you. But there was a black pall on me--and

now it's lifting. Will you forgive me?--my dear--my dear!'

She clung to him with a great cry. And once more the torrent of love

and repentance was unsealed, which had been arrested through all

these weeks. In broken words--in mutual confession--each helping, each

excusing the other--the blessed healing time passed on its way; till

suddenly, as her hand dropped again upon her knee, he noticed, as he

had often bitterly noticed before, the sham wedding-ring on the third

finger.

She saw his eyes upon it, and flushed.

'I had to, John,' she pleaded. 'I had to.'

He said nothing, but he thrust his hand into the breast-pocket of his

coat, and brought out the same large pocket-book which still held her

last letter to him. He took out the letter, and offered it to her.

'Don't read it,' he said, peremptorily. 'Tear it up.'

She recognised it, with a sob, and, trembling, did as he bade her. He

gathered up the small fragments of it, took them to the grate, and lit

a match under them. Then he returned to her--still holding the open

pocket-book.

'Give me your hand.'

She held it out to him, bewildered. He slowly drew off the ring, put

it aside; then from the inmost fold of the pocket-book he took another

ring, slipt it on her finger, and kissed the hand. After which he

knelt down again beside her, and they clung to each other--close and

long.

'I return it'--he murmured--'after twelve years! God bless you for

Carrie. God bless you for coming back to me. We'll go to Italy. You

shall do that for me. But I'll repay you--if I live. Now, are you

happy? Why, we're young yet!'

And so they kissed; knowing well that the years are irreparable, and

yet defying them; conscious, as first youth is never conscious, of

the black forces which surround our being, and yet full of passionate

hope; aware of death, as youth is never aware of it, and yet

determined to shape something out of life; sad and yet rejoicing,

'cast down, but not destroyed.'

EPILOGUE

Of Eugénie, still a few words remain to say. About a year after

Fenwick's return she lost her father. A little later Elsie Welby died.

To the end of her life she had never willingly accepted Eugénie's

service, and the memory of this, alack, is for Eugénie among the pains

that endure. What influence it may have had upon her later course can

hardly be discussed here. She continued to live in Westminster, and

to be the friend of many. One friend was tacitly accepted by all

who loved her as possessing a special place and special privileges.

Encouraged and inspired by her, Arthur Welby outlived the cold and

academic manner of his later youth, and in the joy of richer powers,

and the rewards of an unstained and pure affection, he recovered much

that life seemed once to have denied him. Eugénie never married him.

In friendship, in ideas, in books, she found the pleasures of her

way. Part of her life she spent--with yearning and humility--among

the poor. But with them she never accomplished much. She was timid in

their presence, and often unwise; neither side understood the other.

Her real sphere lay in what a great Oxford preacher once enforced

at St. Mary's, as--'our duty to our equals'--the hardest of all. Her

influence, her mission, were with her own class; with the young girls

just 'out,' who instinctively loved and clung to her; with the tired

or troubled women of the world, who felt her presence as the passage

of something pure and kindling which evoked their better selves; and

with those men, in whom the intellectual life wages its difficult

war with temperament and circumstance, for whom beauty and truth are

realities, and yet--great also is Diana of the Ephesians! Thus in her

soft, glancing, woman's way, she stood with 'the helpers and friends

of mankind.' But she never knew it. In her own opinion, few persons

were so unprofitable as she; and but for her mystical belief, the

years would have brought her melancholy. They left her smile, however,

undimmed. For the mystic carries within a little flame of joy, very

hard to quench. The wind of Death itself does but stir and strengthen

it.

[Illustration: _Robin Ghyll Cottage_]