Chapter X (2)

The door opened. On the threshold stood Arthur Welby. Fenwick gazed at him open-mouthed.

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

He advanced, head foremost, hand outstretched.

'I have something important to say to you.' Welby took no notice of the hand. 'Shall we be undisturbed?'

'I imagine so!' said Fenwick, fiercely retreating; 'but, as you see, I am extremely busy!' He pointed to the room and its contents.

'I am sorry to interrupt you'--Welby's voice was carefully controlled--'but I think you will admit that I had good reason to come and find you.' He looked round to see that the door was shut, then advanced a step nearer. 'You are, I think, acquainted with that lady?'

He handed Fenwick a card. Fenwick took it to the light. On it was lithographed 'Miss Isabel Morrison,' and a written address, 'Corso de Madrid, Buenos Ayres,' had been lightly scratched out in one corner.

Fenwick put down the card.

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

Welby began to speak--paused--and cleared his throat. He was standing, with one hand lightly resting on the table, his eyes fixed on Fenwick. There was a moment of shock, of mutual defiance.

'This lady seems to have observed the movements of our party here,' said Welby, commanding himself. 'She followed my wife and me to-day, after we met you in the Park. She spoke to us. She gave us the astonishing news that you were a married man--that your wife--'

Fenwick rushed forward and gripped the speaker's arm.

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

His eyes starting out of his head--his crimson face--his anguish, seemed to affect the other with indescribable repulsion.

Welby wrenched himself free.

'That was what Miss Morrison wished to ask _you_. She says that when you and she last met you were not on very good terms; she shrank, therefore, from addressing you. But she had a respect for your wife--she wished to know what had become of her--and her curiosity impelled her to speak to us. She seems to have been in Buenos Ayres for many years. This year she returned--as governess--with the family of a French engineer, who have taken an apartment in Versailles. She first saw you in the street nearly a month ago.'

Fenwick had dropped into a chair, his face in his hands. As Welby ceased speaking, he looked up.

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

'Nothing. She knows nothing.'

'Nor of why she left me?'

Welby hesitated.

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

'Where is she?' Fenwick rose hurriedly.

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

'No'--said Fenwick, sitting down again, like a man in a dream--'no. Did she say anything else?'

'She mentioned something about a debt you owed her,' said Welby, coldly--'some matter that she had only just discovered. I had no concern with that.'

Fenwick's face, which had become deathly pale, was suddenly overspread with a rush of crimson. More almost than by the revelation of his long deception as to his wife was he humiliated and tortured by these words relating to his debt to Morrison on Welby's lips. This successful rival, this fine gentleman!--admitted to his sordid affairs. He rose uncertainly, pulling himself passionately together.

'Now that she has reappeared, I shall pay my debt to Miss Morrison--if it exists,' he said, haughtily; 'she need be in no fear as to that. Well, now then'--he leaned heavily on the mantelpiece, his face still twitching--'you know, Mr. Welby--by this accident--the secret of my life. My wife left me--for the maddest, emptiest reasons--and she took our child with her. I did everything I could to discover them. It was all in vain--and if Miss Morrison cannot enlighten me, I am as much in the dark to-night as I was yesterday, whether my wife is alive--or dead. Is there anything more to be said?'

'By God, yes!' cried Welby, with a sudden gesture of passion, approaching Fenwick. 'There is everything to be said!'

Fenwick was silent. Their eyes met.

'When you first made acquaintance with Lord Findon,' said Welby, controlling himself, 'you made him--you made all of us--believe that you were an unmarried man?'

'I did. It was the mistake--the awkwardness of a moment. I hadn't your easy manners! I was a raw country fellow--and I hadn't the courage, the mere self-possession, to repair it.'

'You let Madame de Pastourelles sit to you,' said Welby, steadily--'week after week, month after month--you accepted her kindness--you became her friend. Later on, you allowed her to advise you--write to you--talk to you about marrying, when your means should be sufficient--without ever allowing her to guess for a moment that you had already a wife and child!'

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

'The consequence! You had but to say a word--one honest word! Then, when your conduct, I suppose--I don't dare to judge you--had driven your wife away--for twelve years'--he dragged the words between his teeth--'you masquerade to Madame de Pastourelles--and when her long martyrdom as a wife is at last over--when in the tenderness and compassion of her heart she begins to show you a friendship which--which those who know her'--he laboured for breath and words--'can only--presently--interpret in one way--you who owe her everything--everything!--you _dare_ to play with her innocent, her stainless life--you _dare_ to let her approach--to let those about her approach--the thought of her marrying you--while all the time you knew--what you know! If there ever was a piece of black cruelty in this world, it is you, _you_ that have been guilty of it!'

The form of Arthur Welby, drawn to its utmost height, towered above the man he accused. Fenwick sat, struck dumb. Welby's increasing stoop, which of late had marred his natural dignity of gait; the slight touches of affectation, of the _petit-maître_, which were now often perceptible; the occasional note of littleness, or malice, such as his youth had never known:--all these defects, physical and moral, had been burnt out of the man, as he spoke these words, by the flame of his only, his inextinguishable passion. For his dear mistress--in the purest, loftiest sense of that word--he stood champion, denouncing with all his soul the liar who had deceived and endangered her; a stern, unconscious majesty expressed itself in his bearing, his voice; and the man before him--artist and poet like himself--was sensible of it in the highest, the most torturing degree.

Fenwick turned away. He stooped mechanically to the fire, put it together, lifted a log lying in front of it, laid it carefully on the others. Then he looked at Welby, who on his side had walked to the window and opened it, as though the room suffocated him.

'Everything that you say is just'--said Fenwick, slowly--'I have no answer to make--except that--No!--I have no answer to make.'

He paced once or twice up and down the length of the room, slowly, thoughtfully; then he resumed:

'I shall write to Madame de Pastourelles to-night, and by the first train to-morrow, as soon as these things'--he looked round him--'can be gathered together, I shall be gone!'

Welby moved sharply, showing a face still drawn and furrowed with emotion--'No! she will want to see you.'

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

'You will bear that for her,' said Welby, quietly. 'The more completely you can enlighten her, the better for us all.'

Fenwick's lips moved, but without speaking. Welby's ignorance of the whole truth oppressed him; yet he could make no effort to remove it.

Welby came back towards him.

'There is no reason, I think, why we should carry this conversation further. I will let Miss Morrison know that I have communicated with you.'

'No need,' said Fenwick, interrupting him. 'I shall see her first thing in the morning--'

'And'--resumed Welby, lifting a book and letting it fall uncertainly--'if there is anything I can do--with Lord Findon--for instance--'

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

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

Welby winced. Was the reference to his wife?

'I agree with you--of course.'

He paused a moment--irresolute--wondering whether he had said all he had to say. Then, involuntarily, his eyes rested questioningly, piercingly, on the man beside him. They seemed to express the marvel of his whole being that such an offence could ever be--they tried to penetrate a character, a psychology which in truth baffled them altogether.

He moved to the door, and Fenwick opened it.

As his visitor walked away, Fenwick stood motionless, listening to the retreating step, which echoed in the silence of the vast, empty hotel, once the house of Madame de Pompadour.

He looked at his watch. Past midnight. By about three o'clock, in the midst of a wild autumnal storm, he had finished his letter to Madame de Pastourelles; and he fell asleep at his table, worn out, his head on his arms.

Before ten on the following morning Fenwick had seen Bella Morrison. A woman appeared--the caricature of something he had once known, the high cheek-bones of his early picture touched with rouge, little curls of black hair plastered on her temples, with a mincing gait, and a manner now giggling and now rude. She was extremely sorry if she had put him out--really particularly sorry! She wouldn't have done so for the world; but her curiosity got the better of her. Also, she confessed, she had wished to see whether Mr. Fenwick would acknowledge his debt to her. It was only lately that she had come across a statement of it amongst her father's papers. It was funny he should have forgotten it so long; but there--she wasn't going to be nasty. As to poor Mrs. Fenwick, no, of course she knew nothing. She had inquired of some friends in the North, and they also knew nothing. They had only heard that husband and wife couldn't hit it off, and that Mrs. Fenwick had gone abroad. It was a pity--but a body might have expected it, mightn't they?

The crude conceit and violence of her girlhood had given place, under the pressure of a hard life, to something venomous and servile. She never mentioned her visit to Phoebe; but her eyes seemed to mock her visitor all the time. Fenwick cut the interview short as soon as he could, hastily paid her a hundred pounds, though it left him overdrawn and almost penniless, and then rushed back to his hotel to see what might be waiting for him.

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

'I have received your letter. There is nothing to say, except that I must see you. I wish to keep what you have told me from my father, for the present, at any rate. There would be no possibility of our talking here. We have only one sitting-room, and my sister is there all the time. I will be at the Bosquet d'Apollon, by 11.30.'

Only that! He stared at the delicate, almost invisible writing. The moment he had dreaded for twelve years had arrived; and the world still went on, and quiet notes like that could still be written.

Long before the hour fixed he was in the Bosquet d'Apollon, walking up and down in front of the famous grotto, on whose threshold the white Apollo, just released from the chariot of the Sun, receives the ministrations of the Muses, while his divine horses are being fed and stalled in the hollows of the rock to either side. No stranger fancy than this ever engaged the architects and squandered the finances of the Builder-King. Reared in solid masonry on bare sandy ground now entirely disguised, the artificial rock that holds the grotto towers to a great height, crowned by ancient trees, weathered by wind and rain, overgrown by leaf and grass, and laved at its base by clear water. All round, the trees stand close--the lawns spread their quiet slopes. On this sparkling autumn morning, a glory of russet, amber, and red, begirt the white figures and the gleaming grotto. The Immortals, the champing horses, locked behind their _grilles_ lest the tourist should insult them--all the queer crumbling romance of the statuary, all the natural beauty of leaf and water, of the white clouds overhead and their reflexions below--combined to make Fenwick's guilty bewilderment more complete, to turn all life to dream, and all its figures into the puppets of a shadow-play.

A light step on the grass. A shock passed through him. He made a movement, then checked it.

Eugénie paused at some distance from him. In this autumnal moment of the year, and on week-days, scarcely any passing visitor disturbs the quiet of the Bosquet d'Apollon. In its deep dell of trees and grass, they were absolutely alone; the sunlight which dappled the white bodies of the Muses, and shone on the upstretched arm of Apollo, seemed the only thing of life besides themselves.

She threw back her veil as she came near him--her long widow's veil, which to-day she had resumed. Beneath it, framed in it, the face appeared of an ivory rigidity and pallor. The eyes only were wild and living as she came up to him, clasping her hands, evidently shrinking from him--yet composed.

'There is one thing more I want to know. If I have ever been your friend!--if you have ever felt any kindness for me, tell me--tell me frankly--why did your wife leave you?'

Fenwick's face fell. Had she come so soon to this point?--by the sureness of her own instinct?

'There were many troubles between us,' he said, hoarsely, walking on beside her, his eyes on the grass.

'Was she--was she jealous?'--she breathed with difficulty--'of any of your models?--I know that sometimes happens--or of your sitters--of _me_, for instance?'

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

'She was jealous of my whole life--away from her. And I was utterly blind and selfish--I ought to have known what was going on--and I had no idea.'

'And what happened? I know so little.'

Her voice so peremptorily strange--so remote--compelled him. With difficulty he gave an outline of Phoebe's tragic visit to his studio. His letter of the night before had scarcely touched on the details of the actual crisis, had dwelt rather on the months of carelessness and neglect on his own part, which had prepared it.

She interrupted.

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

He assented mutely.

She closed her eyes a moment, seeing, in her suffering, the face of the young mother and her child.

'But go on. And you were away? Please, please go on! When was it? It must have been that spring when--'

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

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

'You were out?'

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

His voice dropped.

Her hands caught each other again.

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

He nodded.

'But why?--what was it made her do such a thing?--go--for ever--without seeing you--without a word? She must have had some desperate reason.'

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

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

He was almost at the end of his resistance.

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

'Yes--yes! But there must have been something more--something sudden--that maddened her?'

He was silent. She grew whiter than before.

'Mr. Fenwick--I--I have much to forgive. There is only one course of action--that can ever--make amends--and that is--an entire--an absolute frankness!'

Her terrible suspicion--her imperious will had conquered. Anything was better than to deny her, torture her--deceive her afresh.

He looked at her in a horrible indecision. Then, slowly, he put his hand within the breast of his coat.

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

And he drew out the crumpled letter from his pocket-book, which he had worn thus almost from the day of Phoebe's disappearance.

Eugénie fell upon it, devoured it. Not a demur, not a doubt, as to this!--in one so strictly, so tenderly scrupulous. Even at that moment, it struck him pitifully. It seemed to give the measure of her pain.

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

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

She understood. Her lips trembled. Returning the letter, she sank upon a seat. He saw that her forces were almost failing her. And he dared not say a word or make a movement of sympathy.

For some little time she was silent. Her eyes ranged the green circuit of the hollow--the water, the reeds, the rock, and that idle god among his handmaidens. Her attitude, her look expressed a moral agony, how strangely out of place amid this setting! Through her--innocent, unconscious though she were--the young helpless wife had come to grief--a soul had been risked--perhaps lost. Only a nature trained as Eugénie's had been, by suffering and prayer and lofty living, could have felt what she felt, and as she felt it.

Fumbling, Fenwick put back the letter in his pocket-book--thrust it again into his coat. Never once did the thought cross Eugénie's mind that he had probably worn it there, through these last days, while their relation had grown so intimate, so dear. All recollection of herself had left her. She was possessed with Phoebe. Nothing else found entrance.

At last, after much more questioning--much more difficult or impetuous examination--she rose feebly.

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

She stood, her hands loosely clasped, her eyes gazing into the sunny vacancy of sky, above the rock.

Fenwick advanced a step. He felt that he must speak, must grovel to her--repeat some of the things he had said in his letter. But here, in her presence, all words seemed too crude, too monstrous. His voice died away.

So there was no repetition of the excuses, the cry for pardon he had spent the night on; and she made no reference to them.

They walked back to the hotel, talking coldly, precisely, almost as strangers, of what should be done. Fenwick--whose work indeed was finished--would return to England that night. After his departure, Madame de Pastourelles would inform her father of what had happened; a famous solicitor, Lord Findon's old friend, was to be consulted; all possible measures were to be taken once more for Phoebe's discovery.

At the door of the hotel, Fenwick raised his hat. Eugénie did not offer her hand; but her sweet face suddenly trembled afresh--before her will could master it. To hide it, she turned abruptly away; and the door closed upon her.