Fenwick's Career

Excerpt

CHAPTER I

Really, mother, I can't sit any more. I'm that stiff!—and as cold as anything.'

So said Miss Bella Morrison, as she rose from her seat with an affected yawn and stretch. In speaking she looked at her mother, and not at the painter to whom she had been sitting for nearly two hours. The young man in question stood embarrassed and silent, his palette on his thumb, brush and mahlstick suspended. His eyes were cast down: a flush had risen in his cheek. Miss Bella's manner was not sweet; she wished evidently to slight somebody, and the painter could not flatter himself that the somebody was Mrs. Morrison, the only other person in the room beside the artist and his subject. The mother looked up slightly, and without pausing in her knitting—'It's no wonder you're cold,' she said, sharply, 'when you wear such ridiculous dresses in this weather.'

It was now the daughter's turn to flush; she coloured and pouted. The artist, John Fenwick, returned discreetly to his canvas, and occupied himself with a fold of drapery.

'I put it on, because I thought Mr. Fenwick wanted something pretty to paint. And as he clearly don't see anything in me!'—she looked over her shoulder at the picture, with a shrug of mock humility concealing a very evident annoyance—'I thought anyway he might like my best frock.'

'I'm sorry you're not satisfied, Miss Morrison,' said the artist, stepping back from his canvas and somewhat defiantly regarding the picture upon it. Then he turned and looked at the girl—a coarsely pretty young woman, very airily clothed in a white muslin dress, of which the transparency displayed her neck and arms with a freedom not at all in keeping with the nipping air of Westmoreland in springtime—going up to his easel again after the look to put in another touch.

As to his expression of regret, Miss Morrison tossed her head.

'It doesn't matter to me!' she declared. 'It was father's fad, and so I sat. He promised me, if I didn't like it, he'd put it in his own den, where my friends couldn't see it. So I really don't care a straw!'

'Bella! don't be rude!' said her mother, severely. She rose and came to look at the picture.

Bella's colour took a still sharper accent; her chest rose and fell; she fidgeted an angry foot.

'I told Mr. Fenwick hundreds of times,' she protested, 'that he was making my upper lip miles too long—and that I hadn't got a nasty staring look like that—nor a mouth like that—nor—nor anything. It's—it's too bad!'

The girl turned away, and Fenwick, glancing at her in dismay, saw that she was on the point of indignant tears.

Mrs. Morrison put on her spectacles. She was a small, grey-haired woman with a face, wrinkled and drawn, from which all smiles seemed to have long departed. Even in repose, her expression suggested hidden anxieties—fears grown habitual and watchful; and when she moved or spoke, it was with a cold caution or distrust, as though in all directions she was afraid of what she might touch, of possibilities she might set loose....