Fenwick's Career Part 34

Fenwick put down the card.

'Well,' he said, sharply--'and if I am--what then?'

Welby began to speak--paused--and cleared his throat. He was standing, with one hand lightly resting on the table, his eyes fixed on Fenwick.

There was a moment of shock, of mutual defiance.

'This lady seems to have observed the movements of our party here,'

said Welby, commanding himself. 'She followed my wife and me to-day, after we met you in the Park. She spoke to us. She gave us the astonis.h.i.+ng news that you were a married man--that your wife--'

Fenwick rushed forward and gripped the speaker's arm.

'My G.o.d! Tell me!--is she alive?'

His eyes starting out of his head--his crimson face--his anguish, seemed to affect the other with indescribable repulsion.

Welby wrenched himself free.

'That was what Miss Morrison wished to ask _you_. She says that when you and she last met you were not on very good terms; she shrank, therefore, from addressing you. But she had a respect for your wife--she wished to know what had become of her--and her curiosity impelled her to speak to us. She seems to have been in Buenos Ayres for many years. This year she returned--as governess--with the family of a French engineer, who have taken an apartment in Versailles. She first saw you in the street nearly a month ago.'

Fenwick had dropped into a chair, his face in his hands. As Welby ceased speaking, he looked up.

'And she said nothing about my wife's where-abouts?'

'Nothing. She knows nothing.'

'Nor of why she left me?'

Welby hesitated.

'Miss Morrison seems to have her own ideas as to that.'

'Where is she?' Fenwick rose hurriedly.

'Rue des Ecuries, 27. Naturally, you can't see her to-night.'

'No'--said Fenwick, sitting down again, like a man in a dream--'no.

Did she say anything else?'

'She mentioned something about a debt you owed her,' said Welby, coldly--'some matter that she had only just discovered. I had no concern with that.'

Fenwick's face, which had become deathly pale, was suddenly overspread with a rush of crimson. More almost than by the revelation of his long deception as to his wife was he humiliated and tortured by these words relating to his debt to Morrison on Welby's lips. This successful rival, this fine gentleman!--admitted to his sordid affairs. He rose uncertainly, pulling himself pa.s.sionately together.

'Now that she has reappeared, I shall pay my debt to Miss Morrison--if it exists,' he said, haughtily; 'she need be in no fear as to that.

Well, now then'--he leaned heavily on the mantelpiece, his face still twitching--'you know, Mr. Welby--by this accident--the secret of my life. My wife left me--for the maddest, emptiest reasons--and she took our child with her. I did everything I could to discover them. It was all in vain--and if Miss Morrison cannot enlighten me, I am as much in the dark to-night as I was yesterday, whether my wife is alive--or dead. Is there anything more to be said?'

'By G.o.d, yes!' cried Welby, with a sudden gesture of pa.s.sion, approaching Fenwick. 'There is everything to be said!'

Fenwick was silent. Their eyes met.

'When you first made acquaintance with Lord Findon,' said Welby, controlling himself, 'you made him--you made all of us--believe that you were an unmarried man?'

'I did. It was the mistake--the awkwardness of a moment. I hadn't your easy manners! I was a raw country fellow--and I hadn't the courage, the mere self-possession, to repair it.'

'You let Madame de Pastourelles sit to you,' said Welby, steadily--'week after week, month after month--you accepted her kindness--you became her friend. Later on, you allowed her to advise you--write to you--talk to you about marrying, when your means should be sufficient--without ever allowing her to guess for a moment that you had already a wife and child!'

'That is true,' said Fenwick, nodding. 'The second false step was the consequence of the first.'

'The consequence! You had but to say a word--one honest word! Then, when your conduct, I suppose--I don't dare to judge you--had driven your wife away--for twelve years'--he dragged the words between his teeth--'you masquerade to Madame de Pastourelles--and when her long martyrdom as a wife is at last over--when in the tenderness and compa.s.sion of her heart she begins to show you a friends.h.i.+p which--which those who know her'--he laboured for breath and words--'can only--presently--interpret in one way--you who owe her everything--everything!--you _dare_ to play with her innocent, her stainless life--you _dare_ to let her approach--to let those about her approach--the thought of her marrying you--while all the time you knew--what you know! If there ever was a piece of black cruelty in this world, it is you, _you_ that have been guilty of it!'

The form of Arthur Welby, drawn to its utmost height, towered above the man he accused. Fenwick sat, struck dumb. Welby's increasing stoop, which of late had marred his natural dignity of gait; the slight touches of affectation, of the _pet.i.t-maitre_, which were now often perceptible; the occasional note of littleness, or malice, such as his youth had never known:--all these defects, physical and moral, had been burnt out of the man, as he spoke these words, by the flame of his only, his inextinguishable pa.s.sion. For his dear mistress--in the purest, loftiest sense of that word--he stood champion, denouncing with all his soul the liar who had deceived and endangered her; a stern, unconscious majesty expressed itself in his bearing, his voice; and the man before him--artist and poet like himself--was sensible of it in the highest, the most torturing degree.

Fenwick turned away. He stooped mechanically to the fire, put it together, lifted a log lying in front of it, laid it carefully on the others. Then he looked at Welby, who on his side had walked to the window and opened it, as though the room suffocated him.

'Everything that you say is just'--said Fenwick, slowly--'I have no answer to make--except that--No!--I have no answer to make.'

He paced once or twice up and down the length of the room, slowly, thoughtfully; then he resumed:

'I shall write to Madame de Pastourelles to-night, and by the first train to-morrow, as soon as these things'--he looked round him--'can be gathered together, I shall be gone!'

Welby moved sharply, showing a face still drawn and furrowed with emotion--'No! she will want to see you.'

Fenwick's composure broke down. 'I had better not see her'--he said--'I had better not see her!'

'You will bear that for her,' said Welby, quietly. 'The more completely you can enlighten her, the better for us all.'

Fenwick's lips moved, but without speaking. Welby's ignorance of the whole truth oppressed him; yet he could make no effort to remove it.

Welby came back towards him.

'There is no reason, I think, why we should carry this conversation further. I will let Miss Morrison know that I have communicated with you.'

'No need,' said Fenwick, interrupting him. 'I shall see her first thing in the morning--'

'And'--resumed Welby, lifting a book and letting it fall uncertainly--'if there is anything I can do--with Lord Findon--for instance--'

Fenwick had a movement of impatience. He felt his endurance giving way.

'There is nothing to do!--except to tell the truth--and to as few people as possible!'

Welby winced. Was the reference to his wife?

'I agree with you--of course.'

He paused a moment--irresolute--wondering whether he had said all he had to say. Then, involuntarily, his eyes rested questioningly, piercingly, on the man beside him. They seemed to express the marvel of his whole being that such an offence could ever be--they tried to penetrate a character, a psychology which in truth baffled them altogether.

He moved to the door, and Fenwick opened it.

As his visitor walked away, Fenwick stood motionless, listening to the retreating step, which echoed in the silence of the vast, empty hotel, once the house of Madame de Pompadour.