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Updated: July 2, 2025
But when she and Eugénie next met, Eugénie was astonished by her gaiety and good temper her air of smiling mystery. Madame de Pastourelles hoped it meant real physical improvement, and would have liked to talk of it to Arthur; but all talk between them grew rarer and more difficult.
Not that the rules always led you right witness De Pastourelles and his villainies. But matrimonial anarchy was not to be justified, any more than social anarchy, by the failures and drawbacks of arrangements which were on the whole for people's good.
It should perhaps be explained that some two years after Fenwick's arrival in London, Madame de Pastourelles had thought it best to establish a little ménage of her own, distinct from the household in St. James's Square. Her friends and her stepmother's were not always congenial to each other; and in many ways both Lord Findon and she were the happier for the change.
'I didn't understand at first, said Eugénie, with emotion; 'I only saw that he was ill and terribly broken. But he has told me since in a letter I got just before I started. And I want you to advise me to tell me whether you think Mrs. Fenwick should know 'Know what? cried Miss Anna. Madame de Pastourelles bent forward again, and said a few words under her breath. Anna Mason recoiled.
Madame de Pastourelles had in her hand a recent book in which a French man of letters, both historian and poet, had told once again the most piteous of stories; a story, however, which seemed then, and still seems, to be not even yet ripe for history so profound and living are the sympathies and the passions which to this day surround it in France.
Carrie and Miss Mason were entering the little garden. Eugénie's smile, as she motioned towards the girl, seemed to reflect the May sunshine and Carrie's young charm. But after Madame de Pastourelles was gone, a cloud of nervous dread fell upon the little cottage and its inmates. Phoebe wandered restlessly about the garden, waiting and listening hour after hour.
'Lord Findon tells me you're sending in a most awfully jolly thing to the Academy! he said, bending across Madame de Pastourelles, his musical voice full of cordiality. Fenwick made a muttered reply. It might have been thought he disliked being talked to about his own work. Welby accordingly changed the subject at once; he returned to the picture he had been pressing on Lord Findon.
'Papa! said Madame de Pastourelles, jumping up in very evident relief her teeth chattering. The door opened and Lord Findon put in a reconnoitring head. 'May I or we come in? And behind him, on the landing, Fenwick with a start perceived the smiling face of Arthur Welby. 'I've come to carry off my daughter, said Findon, with a friendly nod to the artist.
The beautiful surface and keeping which connected them with the old tradition, together with the modern spirit, the trenchant simplicity of their portraiture, had sent him back eager and palpitating to his own work on the picture of Madame de Pastourelles, or on the last stages of the 'Genius Loci.
Here was no danger to be feared! nothing but a little kind help to a man of genius, whose great gifts might be so easily nullified and undone by his thorny vehemence of character, his lack of breeding and education. The correspondence indeed which had arisen between them out of Fenwick's first remarkable letter to her, had led unconsciously to a new attitude on the part of Madame de Pastourelles.
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