Fenwick's Career Part 38

Watson sat in a deep armchair, propped up by pillows. The room in which they met had been a very distinguished room in the eighteenth century. It had still some remains of carved panelling, a graceful mantelpiece of Italian design, and a painted ceiling half-effaced. It was now part of a lodging-house, furnished with shabby cheapness; but the beauty, once infused, persisted; and it made no unworthy setting for a painter's death.

The signs of desperate illness in Richard Watson were indeed plainly visible. His s.h.a.ggy hair and thick, unkempt beard brought into relief the waxen or purple tones of the skin. The breath was laboured and the cough frequent. But the eyes were still warm, living, and pa.s.sionate, the eyes of a Celt, with the Celtic gifts, and those deficiencies, also, of his race, broadly and permanently expressed in the words of a great historian--'The Celts have shaken all States, and founded none!'

No founder, no _achiever_, this--no happy, harmonious soul--but a man who had vibrated to life and Nature, in their subtler and sadder aspects, through whom the n.o.bler thoughts and ambitions had pa.s.sed, like sound through strings, wringing out some fine, tragic notes, some memorable tones. 'I can't last more than a week or two,' he said, presently, in a pause of Fenwick's talk, to which he had hardly listened--'and a good job too. But I don't find myself at all rebellious. I'm curiously content to go. I've had a good time.'

This from a man who had pa.s.sed from one disappointed hope to another, brought the tears to Fenwick's eyes.

'Some of us may wish we were going with you,' he said, in a low voice, laying his hand a moment on his friend's knee.

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

'How's the money?'

Fenwick hastily drew himself up. 'All right.'

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

'Is that so?' said Watson. The slight incredulity in his voice touched some raw nerve in Fenwick.

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

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

His morbid pride took offence at once.

'Mine'll just hold out,' said Watson, presently, with a humorous inflexion--'it'll bury me, I think--with a few s.h.i.+llings over. But I couldn't have afforded another year.'

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

Fenwick began to talk of old friends, and current exhibitions; and presently tea made its appearance. Watson's strength seemed to revive.

He sat more upright in his chair, his voice grew stronger, and he dallied with his tea, joking hoa.r.s.ely with his nurse, and asking Fenwick all the questions that occurred to him. His face, in its rugged pallor and emaciation, and his great head, black or iron-grey on the white pillows, were so fine that Fenwick could not take his eyes from him; with the double sense of the artist, he saw the _subject_ in the man; a study in black and white hovered before him.

When the nurse had withdrawn, and they were alone again, in a silence made more intimate still by the darkness of the panelled walls, which seemed to isolate them from the rest of the room, enclosing them in a glowing ring of lamp and firelight, Fenwick was suddenly seized by an impulse he could not master. He bent towards the sick man.

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

'Perfectly.'

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

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

'Well--I _am_ married.'

Watson gave a hoa.r.s.e 'Phew!'--and waited.

'My wife left me twelve years ago and took our child with her. I don't know whether they are alive or dead. I thought I'd like to tell you.

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

'Great Scott!' said Watson, slowly, bringing the points of his long, emaciated fingers together, like one trying to master a new image. 'So that's been the secret--'

'Of what?' said Fenwick, testily; but as Watson merely replied by an interrogative and attentive silence, he threw himself into his tale--headlong. He told it at far greater length than Eugenie had ever heard it; and throughout, the subtle, instinctive appeal of man to man governed the story, differentiating it altogether from the same story, told to a woman.

He spoke impetuously, with growing emotion, conscious of an infinite relief and abandonment. Watson listened with scarcely a comment.

Midway a little pattering, scuffling noise startled the speaker. He looked round and saw the monkey, Anatole, who had been lying asleep in his basket. Watson nodded to Fenwick to go on, and then feebly motioned to his knee. The monkey clambered there, and Watson folded his bony arms round the creature, who lay presently with his weird face pressed against his master's dressing-gown, his melancholy eyes staring out at Fenwick.

'It was Madame she was jealous of?' said Watson, when the story came to an end.

Fenwick hesitated--then nodded reluctantly. He had spoken merely of 'one of my sitters.' But it was not possible to fence with this dying man.

'And Madame knows?'

'Yes.'

But Fenwick sharply regretted the introduction of Madame de Pastourelles' name. He had brought the story down merely to the point of Phoebe's flight and the search which followed, adding only--with vagueness--that the search had lately been renewed, without success.

Watson pondered the matter for some time. Fenwick took out his handkerchief and wiped a brow damp with perspiration. His story--added to the miseries of the day--had excited and shaken him still further.

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

'Lucky dog!'

'What on earth do you mean?'

'You've lost them--but you've had a woman in your arms--a child on your knee! You don't go to your grave--[Greek: apraktos]--an ignorant, barren fool--like me!'

Fenwick looked at him in amazement. Self-scorn--bitter and pa.s.sionate regret--transformed the face beside him. He pressed the fevered hand.

'Watson!--dear fellow!'

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

'There are plenty of men like me,' he muttered. 'We are afraid of living--and art is our refuge. Then art takes its revenge--and we are bad artists, because we are poor and sterilised human beings.

But you'--he spoke with fresh energy, composing himself--'don't talk rot!--as though _your_ chance was done. You'll find her--she'll come back to you--when she's drunk the cup. Healthy young women don't die before thirty-five;--and by your account she wasn't bad--she had a conscience. The child'll waken it. Don't you be hard on her!'--he raised himself, speaking almost fiercely--'you've no right to!

Take her in--listen to her--let her cry it out. My G.o.d!'--his voice dropped, as his head fell back on the pillows--'what happiness--what happiness!'

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

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

Fenwick asked him whether he remembered the incident of the sketch-book at their first meeting--the drawing of the mother and child in the kitchen of the Westmoreland farm.

'Perfectly. And she was the model for the big picture, too? I see. A lovely creature! How old is she now?'

'Thirty-six--if she lives.'

'I tell you, she _does_ live! Probably more beautiful now than she was then. Those Madonna-like women mellow so finely. And the child?

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

But he pressed the little animal closer to him as he spoke. Fenwick rose to go, conscious that he had stayed too long. Watson looked up.