Fenwick's Career — Context and Discussion

looked at the picture, and then at her daughter.

'It's not flattered,' she said, slowly. 'But I can't say it isn't like you, Bella.'

'Oh, I knew _you'd_ say something like that, mother!' said the daughter, scornfully. She stooped and threw a shawl round her shoulders; gathered up some working materials and a book with which she had been toying during the sitting; and then straightened herself with an air at once tragic and absurd.

'Well, good-bye, Mr. Fenwick.' She turned to the painter. 'I'd rather not sit again, please.'

'I shouldn't think of asking you, Miss Morrison,' murmured the young man, moving aside to let her pass.

'Hullo, hullo! what's all this?' said a cheery voice at the door. 'Bella, where are you off to? Is the sitting done?'

'It's been going on two hours, papa, so I should think I'd had about enough,' said Miss Bella, making for the door.

But her father caught her by the arm.

'I say, we _are_ smart!--aren't we, mamma? Well, now then--let me have a look.'

And drawing the unwilling girl once more towards the painter, he detained her while he scrutinised the picture.

'Do I squint, papa?' said Miss Morrison, with her head haughtily turned away.

'Wait a minute, my dear.'

'_Have_ I got the colour of a barmaid, and a waist like Fanny's?' Fanny was the Morrison's housemaid, and was not slim.

'Be quiet, Bella; you disturb me.'

Bella's chin mounted still higher; her foot once more beat the ground impatiently, while her father looked from the picture to her, and back again.

Then he released her with a laugh. 'You may run away, child, if you want to. Upon my word, Fenwick, you're advancing! You are: no doubt about that. Some of the execution there is astonishing. But all the same I don't see you earning your bread-and-butter at portrait-painting; and I guess you don't either.'

The speaker threw out a thin hand and patted Fenwick on the shoulder, returning immediately to a close examination of the picture.

'I told you, sir, I should only paint portraits if I were compelled!' said the young man, in a proud, muffled voice. He began to gather up his things and clean his palette.

'But of course you'll be compelled--unless you wish to die "clemmed," as we say in Lancashire,' returned the other, briskly. 'What do _you_ say, mamma?'

He turned towards his wife, pushing up his spectacles to look at her. He was a tall man, a little bent at the shoulders from long years of desk-work; and those who saw him for the first time were apt to be struck by a certain eager volatility of aspect--expressed by the small head on its thin neck, by the wavering blue eyes, and smiling mouth--not perhaps common in the chief cashiers of country banks.

As his wife met his appeal to her, the slight habitual furrow on her own brow deepened. She saw that her husband held a newspaper crushed in his right hand, and that his whole air was excited and restless. A miserable, familiar pang passed through her. As the chief and trusted official of an old-established bank in one of the smaller cotton-towns, Mr. Morrison had a large command of money. His wife had suspected him for years of using bank funds for the purposes of his own speculations. She had never dared to say a word to him on the subject, but she lived in terror--being a Calvinist by nature and training--of ruin here, and Hell hereafter.

Of late, some instinct told her that he had been forcing the pace; and as she turned to him, she felt certain that he had just received some news which had given him great pleasure, and she felt certain also that it was news of which he ought rather to have been ashamed.

She drew herself together in a dumb recoil. Her hands trembled as she put down her knitting.

'I'd be sorry if a son of mine did nothing but paint portraits.'

John Fenwick looked up, startled.

'Why?' laughed her husband.

'Because it often seems to me,' she said, in a thin, measured voice, 'that a Christian might find a better use for his time than ministering to the vanity of silly girls, and wasting hours and hours on making a likeness of this poor body, that's of no real matter to anybody.'

'You'd make short work of art and artists, my dear!' said Morrison, throwing up his hands. 'You forget, perhaps, that St. Luke was a painter?'

'And where do you get that from, Mr. Morrison, I'd like to ask?' said his wife, slowly; 'it's not in the Bible--though I believe you think it is. Well, good-night to you, Mr. Fenwick. I'm sorry you haven't enjoyed yourself, and I'm not going to deny that Bella was very rude and trying. Good-night.'

And with a frigid touch of the hand, Mrs. Morrison departed. She looked again at her husband as she closed the door--a sombre, shrinking look.

Morrison avoided it. He was pacing up and down in high spirits. When he and Fenwick were left alone, he went up to the painter and laid an arm across his shoulders.

'Well!--how's the money holding out?'

'I've got scarcely any left,' said the painter, instinctively moving away. It might have been seen that he felt himself dependent, and hated to feel it.

'Any more commissions?'

'I've painted a child up in Grasmere, and a farmer's wife just married. And Satterthwaite, the butcher, says he'll give me a commission soon. And there's a clergyman, up Easedale way, wants me to paint his son.'

'Well; and what do you get for these things?'

'Three pounds--sometimes five,' said the young man, reluctantly.

'A little more than a photograph.'

'Yes. They say if I won't be reasonable there's plenty as'll take their pictures, and they can't throw away money.'

'H'm! Well, at this rate, Fenwick, you're not exactly galloping into a fortune. And your father?'

Fenwick made a bitter gesture, as much as to say, 'What's the good of discussing _that_?'

'H'm!--Well, now, Fenwick, what are your plans? Can you live on what you make?'

'No,' said the other, abruptly. 'I'm getting into debt.'

'That's bad. But what's your own idea? You must have some notion of a way out.'

'If I could get to London,' said the other, in a low, dragging voice, 'I'd soon find a way out.'

'And what prevents you?'

'Well, it's simple enough. You don't really, sir, need to ask. I've no money--and I've a wife and child.'

Fenwick's tone was marked by an evident ill-humour. He had thrown back his handsome head, and his eyes sparkled. It was plain that Mr. Morrison's catechising manner had jarred upon a pride that was all on edge--wounded by poverty and ill-success.

'Yes--that was an imprudent match of yours, my young man! However--however--'

Mr. Morrison walked up and down ruminating. His long, thin hands were clasped before him. His head hung in meditation. And every now and then he looked towards the newspaper he had thrown down. At last he again approached the artist.

'Upon my word, Fenwick, I've a mind to do something for you--I have indeed. I believe you'd justify it--I do! And I've always had a soft heart for artists. You look at the things in this room'--he waved his hand towards the walls, which were covered with water-colour drawings--'I've known most of the men who painted them, and I've assisted a very great many of them. Those pictures--most of them--represent loans, sir!--loans at times of difficulty, which I was _proud_ to make'--Mr. Morrison struck his hand on the table--'yes, proud--because I believed in the genius of the men to whom I made them. I said, "I'll take a picture"--and they had the money--and the money saved their furniture--and their homes--and their wives and children. Well, I'm glad and proud to have done it, Fenwick!--you mark my words.'

He paused, his eyes on the artist, his attitude grasping, as it were, at the other's approval--hungry for it. Fenwick said nothing. He stood in the shadow of a curtain, and the sarcasm his lip could not restrain escaped the notice of his companion. 'And so, you see, I'm only following out an old custom when I say, I believe in you, Fenwick!--I believe in your abilities--I'm sorry for your necessities--and I'll come to your assistance. Now, how much would take you to London and keep you there for six months, till you've made a few friends and done some work?'

'A hundred pounds,' said the painter, breathing hard.

'A hundred pounds. And what about the wife?'

'Her father very likely would give her shelter, and the child. And of course I should leave her provided.'

'Well, and what about my security? How, John, in plain words, do you propose to repay me?'

Mr. Morrison spoke with extreme mildness. His blue eyes, whereof the whites were visible all round the pupils, shone benevolently on the artist--his mouth was all sensibility. Whereas, for a moment, there had been something of the hawk in his attitude and expression, he was now the dove--painfully obliged to pay a passing attention to business.

'You mentioned six guineas, I think, for this portrait?' He nodded towards the canvas, on which he had been at work.

'I did. It is unfortunate, of course, that Bella dislikes it so. I shan't be able to hang it. Never mind. A bargain's a bargain.'

The young man drew himself up proudly.

'It is so, Mr. Morrison. And you wished me to paint your portrait, I think, and Mrs. Morrison's.' The elder man made a sign of assent. 'Well, I could run up to your place--to Bartonbury--and paint those in the winter, when I come 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.

'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.'

'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 above the farm, hung a mountain-face, dark with rock, and purple under the evening shadows--a rich and noble shape, lost above in dim heights of cloud, and, below, cleft to the heart by one deep ghyll, whence the golden trees--in the glittering green of May--descended single or in groups, from shelf to shelf, till their separate brilliance was lost in the dense wood which girdled the white farmhouse.

The pleasure of which he was conscious in the purple of the mountain, the colour of the trees, and all that magic of light and shade which filled the valley--a pleasure involuntary, physical, automatic, depending on certain delicacies of nerve and brain--rose and persisted, while yet his mind was full of harassing and disagreeable thoughts.

Well, Phoebe might take her choice!--for they had come to the parting of the ways. Either a good painter, a man on the level of the best, trained and equipped as they, or something altogether different--foreman, a clerk, perhaps, in his uncle's upholstery business at Darlington, a ticket-collector on the line--anything! He could always earn his own living and Phoebe's. There was no fear of that. But if he was finally to be an artist, he would be a first-rate one. Let him only get more training; give him time and opportunity; and he would be as good as any one.

Morrison, plainly, had thought him a conceited ass. Well, let him!

What chance had he ever had of proving what was in him? As he hung over the gate smoking, he thought of his father and mother, and of his childhood in the little Kendal shop--the bookseller's shop which had been the source and means of his truest education.

Not that he had been a neglected child. Far from it. He remembered his gentle mother, troubled by his incessant drawing, by his growing determination to be an artist, by the constant effort as he grew to boyhood to keep the peace between him and his irritable old father. He remembered her death--and those pictorial effects in the white-sheeted room--effects of light and shadow--of flowers--of the grey head uplifted; he remembered also trying to realise them, stealthily, at night, in his own room, with chalk and paper--and then his passion with himself, and the torn drawing, and the tears, which, as it were, another self saw and approved.