Fenwick's Career. Mrs. Humphry Ward
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careless air.
'I read—'
'You do not need to say it.'
She opened her eyes at this readiness of reply; but still pursued:
'And I have a Chinese pug.'
'And no children?' The words rose to Fenwick's lips, but remained unspoken. Perhaps she divined them, for she began hastily to describe her dog—its tricks and fidelities. Fenwick could meet her here; for a mongrel fox-terrier—taken, a starving waif, out of the streets—had been his companion since almost the first month of his solitude. Each stimulated the other, and they fell into those legends of dog-life in which every dog-lover believes, however sceptical he may be in other directions. Till presently she said, with a sigh and a stiffening of her delicate features:
'But mine shows some symptoms of paralysis. He was run over last summer. I'm afraid it will be long and painful.'
Fenwick replied that she should send for the vet. and have the dog painlessly killed.
'No. I shall nurse him.'
'Why should you look on at suffering?'
'Why not—if sometimes he enjoys life?'
'I am thinking of the mistress.'
'Oh, for us,' she said, quickly, 'for me—it is good to be with suffering.'
As she spoke, she drew herself slightly more erect. Neither tone nor manner showed softness, made any appeal. The words seemed to have dropped from her, and the strange pride and dignity she at once threw around them made a veiling cloud through which only a man entirely without the finer perceptions would have tried to penetrate. Fenwick, for all his surface gaucherie, did not attempt it. But he attacked her generalisation. With some vehemence he developed against it a Neo-pagan doctrine of joy—love of the earth and its natural pleasures—courage to take and dare—avoidance of suffering—and war on asceticism. He poured out a number of undigested thoughts, which showed a great deal of reading, and at least betrayed a personality, whatever value they might have as a philosophy.
She listened with a charming kindness, laughing now and then, putting in a humorous comment or two, and never by another word betraying her own position. But he was more and more conscious of the double self in her—of the cultivated, social self she was bringing into play for his benefit, and of something behind—a spirit watchful and still—wrapt in a great melancholy—or perhaps a great rebellion? And by this sense of something concealed or strongly restrained, she began to affect his imagination, and so, presently, to absorb his attention. Something exquisite in her movements and looks, also in the quality of her voice and the turn of her phrases, drew from his own crude yet sensitive nature an excited response. He began to envisage what these highly trained women of the upper class, these raffinées of the world, may be for those who understand them—a stimulus, an enigma, an education.
It flashed on him that women of this type could teach him much that he wanted to know; and his ambition seized on the idea. But what chance that she would ever give another thought to the raw artist to whom her father had flung a passing invitation?
He made haste, indeed, to prove his need of her or some other Egeria; for she was no sooner departed with the other ladies than he came to mischief. Left alone with the gentlemen, his temperament asserted itself. He had no mind in any company to be merely a listener. Moreover, that slight, as he regarded it, of sending him down without a lady, still rankled; and last, but not least, he had drunk a good deal of champagne, to which he was quite unaccustomed. So that when Lord Findon fell into a discussion with the Ambassador of Irving's Hamlet and Othello, then among the leading topics of London—when the foreigner politely but emphatically disparaged the English actor and Lord Findon with zeal defended him—who should break into the august debate but this strong-browed, black-eyed fellow, from no one knew where, whose lack of some of the smaller conventions had already been noticed by a few of the company.
At first all looked well. A London dinner-party loves novelty, and is always ready to test the stranger within its gates. Fenwick slipped into the battle as a supporter of Lord Findon's argument, and his host with smiling urbanity welcomed him to the field. But in a few minutes the newcomer had ravaged the whole of it. The older men were silenced, and Fenwick was leaning across the table, gesticulating with one hand, and lifting his port-wine with the other, addressing now Lord Findon and now the Ambassador—who stared at him in amazement—with an assurance that the world only allows to its oldest favourites. Lord Findon in vain tried to stop him.
'Didn't know this was to be a dinner with speeches,' murmured the financier, after a few minutes, in his neighbour's ear. 'Think I'll get up and propose a vote of thanks to the chairman.'
'There ought, at least, to be a time-limit,' said the neighbour, with a shrug. 'Where on earth did Findon pick him up?'
'I say, what an awfully rum chap!' said the young son of the house—wondering—to Arthur Welby. 'What does he talk like that for?'
'He doesn't talk badly,' said Welby, whose mouth showed the laughter within.
Meanwhile Fenwick—loud-voiced, excited—had brought his raid to a climax by an actual attack upon the stately Frenchman opposite, whose slight sarcastic look pricked him intolerably. All other conversation at the table fell dumb.
Lord Findon coloured, and rose.
'You are a great deal more sure of my own opinion than I am myself,' he said, coldly. 'I am much obliged to you, but—shall we adjourn this conversation?'
As the men walked upstairs, Fenwick realised that he had blundered; he felt himself isolated and in disfavour. Arthur Welby had approached him, but Lord Findon had rather pointedly drawn an arm through Welby's and swept him away. No one else spoke to him, and even the private secretary, who had before befriended him, left him severely alone. None of the ladies in the drawing-room upstairs showed, as it seemed to him, any desire for his company, and he was reduced to looking at a stand of miniatures near the door, while his heart swelled fiercely. So this was what society meant?—a wretched pleasure purchased on degrading terms! A poor dependant like himself, he supposed, was to be seen and not heard—must speak when he was spoken to, play chorus, and whisper humbleness. As to meeting these big-wigs on equal terms, that clearly was not expected. An artist may be allowed to know something about art; on any other subject let him listen to his betters.
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