Fenwick's Career. Mrs. Humphry Ward
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to see my wife. As to the rest—I'll repay you within the year—unless—well, unless I go utterly to grief, which of course I may.'
'Wait here a moment. I'll fetch you the money. Better not promise to repay me in cash. It'll be a millstone round your neck. I'll take it in pictures.'
'Very well; then I'll either paint you an original finished picture—historical or romantic subject—medium size, by the end of the year, or make you copies—you said you wanted two or three—one large or two small, from anything you like in the National Gallery.'
Morrison laughed good-temperedly. He touched a copy of The Art Journal lying on the table.
'There's an article here about that German painter—Lenbach—whom they crack up so nowadays. When he was a young man, Baron Schack, it appears, paid him one hundred pounds a year, for all his time, as a copyist in Italy and Spain.' He spoke very delicately, mincing his words a little.
Fenwick's colour rose suddenly. Morrison was not looking at him, or he would have seen a pair of angry eyes.
'Prices have gone up,' said the painter, dryly. 'And I guess living in London's dearer now than living in Italy was when Lenbach (which he pronounced Lenback) was young!'
'Oh! so you know all about Lenbach?'
'You lent me the article. However'—Fenwick rose—'is that our bargain?'
The note in the voice was trenchant, even aggressive. Nothing of the suppliant, in tone or attitude. Morrison surveyed him, amused.
'If you like to call it so,' he said, lifting his delicate eyebrows a moment. 'Well, I'll take the risk.'
He left the room. Fenwick thrust his hands into his pockets, with a muttered exclamation, and walked to the window. He looked out upon a Westmoreland valley in the first flush of spring; but he saw nothing. His blood beat in heart and brain with a suffocating rapidity. So his chance was come! What would Phoebe say?
As he stood by the large window, face and form in strong relief against the crude green without, the energy of the May landscape was, as it were, repeated and expressed in the man beholding it. He was tall, a little round-shouldered, with a large, broad-browed head, covered with brown, straggling hair; eyes, glancing and darkish, full of force, of excitement even, curiously veiled, often, by suspicion; nose, a little crooked owing to an injury at football; and mouth, not coarse, but large and freely cut, and falling readily into lines of sarcasm.
The general look was one of great acuteness, rather antagonistic, as a rule, than sympathetic; and the hands, which were large and yet slender, were those of a craftsman finely endowed with all the instincts of touch.
Suddenly the young man turned on his heel and looked at the water-colours on the wall.
'The old hypocrite!' he thought; 'they're worth hundreds—and I'll be bound he got them for nothing. He'll try to get mine for nothing; but he'll find I'm his match!'
For among these pictures were a number of drawings by men long since well known, and of steady repute among the dealers or in the auctions, especially of Birmingham and the northern towns. Morrison had been for years a bank-clerk in Birmingham before his appointment to the post he now held. A group of Midland artists, whose work had become famous, and costly in proportion, had evidently been his friends at one time—or perhaps merely his debtors. They were at any rate well represented on the wall of this small Westmoreland house in which he spent his holidays.
Presently Mr. Morrison was heard returning. He placed an envelope in Fenwick's hand, and then, pointing him to a chair at the table, he dictated a form of IOU, specifying that the debt was to be returned within a year, either in money or in the pictures agreed upon.
'Oh, no fine speeches, please, my boy—no fine speeches!' said Morrison, as the artist rose, stammering out his thanks. 'That's been my nature all my life, I tell you—to help the lame dogs—ask anybody that knows me. That'll do; that'll do! Now then, what's going to be your line of action?'
Fenwick turned on him a face that vainly endeavoured to hide the joy of its owner.
'I shall look out, of course, first of all, for some bread-and-butter work. I shall go to the editors of the illustrated papers and show them some things. I shall attend some life-school in the evenings. And the rest of the time I shall paint—paint like Old Harry!'
The words caused a momentary wrinkling of Mr. Morrison's brow.
'I should avoid those expressions, if I were you, Fenwick. But paint what, my dear boy?—paint what?'
'Of course I have my ideas,' said Fenwick, staring at the floor.
'I think I have earned a right to hear them.'
'Certainly. I propose to combine the colour and romance of the Pre-Raphaelites with the truth and drawing of the French school,' said the young man, suddenly looking up.
Surprise betrayed his companion into a broad grin.
'Upon my word, Fenwick, you won't fail for lack of ambition!'
The young man reddened, then quietly nodded.
'No one gets on without ambition. My ideas have been pretty clear for a long time. The English Romantic school have no more future, unless they absorb French drawing and French technique. When they have done that, they will do the finest work in the world.'
Morrison's astonishment increased. The decision and self-confidence with which Fenwick spoke had never yet shown themselves so plainly in the harassed and humbly born painter of Miss Bella's portrait.
'And you intend to do the finest work in the world?' said the patron, in a voice of banter.
Fenwick hesitated.
'I shall do good work,' he said, doggedly, after a pause. Then, suddenly raising his head, he added, 'And if I weren't sure of it, I'd never let you lend me money.'
Morrison laughed.
'That's all right.—And now what will Mrs. Fenwick say to us?'
Fenwick turned away. He repossessed himself of the envelope, and buttoned his coat over it, before he replied.
'I shall, of course, consult her immediately. What shall I do with this picture?' He pointed to the portrait on the easel.
'Take it home with you, and see if you can't beautify it a little,' said Morrison, in a tone of good-humour. 'You've got a lot of worldly wisdom to learn yet, my dear Fenwick. The women must be flattered.'
Fenwick repeated that he was sorry if Miss Bella was disappointed, but the tone was no less perfunctory than before. After stooping and looking sharply for a moment into the picture—which was a strong, ugly thing, with some passages of remarkable technique—he put it aside, saving that he would send for it in the evening. Then, having packed up and shouldered the rest of his painter's gear, he stood ready to depart.
'I'm awfully obliged to you!' he said, holding out his hand.
Morrison looked at the handsome young fellow, the vivacity of the eyes, the slight agitation of the lip.
'Don't mention it,' he said, with redoubled urbanity. 'It's my way—only my way! When'll you be off?'
'Probably next week. I'll come and say good-bye.'
'I must have a year! But Phoebe will take it hard.' John Fenwick had paused on his way home, and was leaning over a gate beside a stream, now thinking anxiously of his domestic affairs, and now steeped in waves of delight—vague, sensuous, thrilling—that flowed from the colours and forms around him. He found himself in an intricate and lovely valley, through which lay his path to Langdale. On either side of the stream, wooded or craggy fells, gashed with stone-quarries, accompanied the windings of the water, now leaving room for a scanty field or two, and now hemming in the river with close-piled rock and tree. Before him rose a white Westmoreland farm, with its gabled porch and moss-grown roof, its traditional yews and sycamores; while to his left, and