Fenwicks Career | Page 9

once so sweet, so docile, so receptive, had begun to be
critical, to resist him now and then. He knew that in some ways he had
disappointed her; and there was gall in the thought. As to the London
plan, his word would no longer be enough. He would have to wrestle
with and overcome her.
London!--the word chimed him from the past--threw wide the future.
He moved on along the rough road, possessed by dreams. He had a
vision of his first large picture; himself rubbing in the figures, life-size,
or at work on the endless studies for every part--fellow-students
coming to look, Academicians, buyers; he heard himself haranguing,
plunging headlong into ideas and theories, holding his own with the
best of 'the London chaps.' Between whiles, of course, there would be
hack-work--illustration--portraits--anything to keep the pot boiling.
And always, at the end of this vista, there was success--success great
and tangible.
He was amused by his own self-confidence, and laughed as he walked.
But his mood never wavered.
He had the power--the gift. Nobody ever doubted that who saw him
draw. And he had, besides, what so many men of his own class made
shipwreck for want of--he had imagination--enough to show him what
it is that makes the mere craftsman into the artist, enough to make him
hunger night and day for knowledge, travel, experience. Thanks to his
father's shop, he had read a great deal already; and with a little money,
how he would buy books, how he would read them!--
And at the thought, fresh images, now in rushing troops, and now in
solitary fantastic beauty, began to throng before the inward eye, along
the rich background of the valley; images from poetry and legend,
stored deep in a greedy fancy, a retentive mind. They came from all
sources--Greek, Arthurian, modern; Hephaestus, the lame god and
divine craftsman, receiving Thetis in his workshop of the skies, the

golden automata wrought by his own hands supporting him on either
side; the maidens of Achilles washing the dead and gory body of
Hector in the dark background of the hut, while in front swift-foot
Achilles holds old Priam in talk till the sad offices are over, and the
father may be permitted to behold his son; Arthur and Sir Bedivere
beside the lake; Crusaders riding to battle--the gleam of their
harness--the arched necks of their steeds--the glory of their
banners--the shade and sunlight of the deep vales through which they
pass; the Lady of Shalott as the curse conies upon
her--Oenone--Brunhilda--Atalanta. Swift along the May woods the
figures fled, vision succeeding vision, beauty treading on beauty. It
became hallucination--a wildness--an ecstasy. Fenwick stood still, gave
himself up to the possession--let it hold him--felt the strangeness and
the peril of it--then, suddenly, wrenched himself free.
Running down to the edge of the river, he began to pick up stones and
throw them violently into the stream. It was a remedy he had long
learnt to use. The physical action released the brain from the tyranny of
the forms which held it. Gradually they passed away. He began to
breathe more quietly, and, sitting down by the water, his head in his
hands, he gave himself up to a quieter pleasure in the nature round him,
and in the strength of his own faculty.
To something else also. For while he was sitting there, he found
himself praying ardently for success--that he might do well in London,
might make a name for himself, and leave his mark on English art. This
was to him a very natural outlet of emotion; he was not sure what he
meant by it precisely; but it calmed him.
CHAPTER II
Meanwhile Phoebe Fenwick was watching for her husband.
She had come out upon the green strip of ground in front of Green Nab
Cottage, and was looking anxiously along the portion of high-road
which was visible from where she stood.
The small, whitewashed house--on this May day, more than a

generation ago--stood on a narrow shelf that juts out from the face of
one of the eastern fells, bounding the valley of Great Langdale.
When Phoebe, seeing no one on the road, turned to look how near the
sun might be to its setting, she saw it, as Wordsworth saw it of old,
dropping between the peaks of those 'twin brethren' which to the
northwest close in the green bareness of the vale. Between the two
pikes the blaze lingered, enthroned; the far winding of the valley,
hemmed in also by blue and craggy fells, was pierced by rays of sunset;
on the broad side of the pikes the stream of Dungeon Ghyll shone
full-fed and white; the sheep, with their new-born lambs beside them,
studded the green pastures of the valley; and sounds of