almost as soon as they entered the flat, french had again to hail the reappearance of his “luck.” better, a thousand times better, to stand in this place with donald paul than with horace fingall’s widow!
donald paul, slipping the key into the rusty lock, had opened the door and drawn back to let the visitor pass. the studio was cold and empty — how empty and how cold! no one had lived in the flat since fingall’s death: during the first months following it the widow had used the studio to store his pictures, and only now that the last were sold, or distributed for sale among the dealers, had the place been put in the hands of the agents — like mrs. morland’s house in kensington.
in the wintry overhead light the dust showed thick on the rough paint-stained floor, on the few canvases leaning against the walls, and the painter’s inconceivably meagre “properties.” french had known that fin-gall’s studio would not be the upholstered setting for afternoon teas of lady brankhurst’s vision, but he had not dared to expect such a scornful bareness. he looked about him reverently.
donald paul remained silent; then he gave one of his shy laughs. “not much in the way of cosy corners, eh? looks rather as if it had been cleared for a prize fight.”
french turned to him. “well, it was. when he wrestled with the angel until dawn.”
mr. paul’s open gaze was shadowed by a faint perplexity, and for half a second french wondered if his metaphor had been taken as referring to the former mrs. fin-gall. but in another moment his companion’s eyes cleared. “of course — i see! like what’s-his-name: in the bible, wasn’t he?” he stopped, and began again impulsively: “i like that idea, you know; he did wrestle with his work! bessy says he used to paint a thing over twenty times — or thirty, if necessary. it drove his sitters nearly mad. that’s why he had to wait so long for success, i suppose.” his glance seemed to appeal to french to corroborate this rather adventurous view.
“one of the reasons,” french assented.
his eyes were travelling slowly and greedily about the vast cold room. he had instantly noted that, in lady brankhurst’s description of the place, nothing was exact but the blackness of the stairs that led there. the rest she must have got up from muddled memories of other studios — that of jolyesse, no doubt, among the number. french could see jolyesse, in a setting of bibelots, dispensing turkish coffee to fashionable sitters. but the nakedness of fingall’s studio had assuredly never been draped: as they beheld it now, so it must have been when the great man painted there — save, indeed, for the pictures once so closely covering the walls (as french saw from the number of empty nails) that to enter it must have been like walking into the heart of a sunset.
none were left. paul had moved away and stood looking out of the window, and timidly, tentatively, french turned around, one after another, the canvases against the wall. all were as bare as the room, though already prepared for future splendours by the hand from which the brush had dropped so abruptly. on one only a few charcoal strokes hinted at a head — unless indeed it were a landscape? the more french looked the less intelligible it became — the mere first stammer of an unuttered message. the young man put it back with a sigh. he would have liked, beyond almost everything, here under fingall’s roof to discover just one of his pictures.
“if you’d care to see the other rooms? you know he and bessy lived here,” he heard his companion suggest.
“oh, immensely!”
donald paul opened a door, struck a match in a dark passage, and preceded him. “nothing’s changed.”
the rooms, which were few and small, were still furnished; and this gave french the measure of their humbleness — for they were almost as devoid of comfort as the studio. fingall must have lived so intensely and constantly in his own inner vision that nothing external mattered. he must have been almost as detached from the visible world as a great musician or a great ascetic; at least till one sat him down before a face or a landscape — and then what he looked at became the whole of the visible world to him.
“rather doleful diggings for a young woman,” donald paul commented with a half-apologetic smile, as if to say: “can you wonder that she likes the nouveau luxe?”
french acquiesced. “i suppose, like all the very greatest of them, he was indifferent to lots of things we think important.”
“yes — and then . . . ” paul hesitated. “then they were so frightfully poor. he didn’t know how to manage — how to get on with people, either sitters or dealers. for years he sold nothing, literally nothing. it was hard on her. she saw so well what he ought to have done; but he wouldn’t listen to her!”
“oh — ” french stammered; and saw the other faintly redden.
“i don’t mean, of course, that an artist, a great creative artist, isn’t always different . . . on the contrary . . . ” paul hesitated again. “i understand all that . . . i’ve experienced it . . . ” his handsome face softened, and french, mollified, murmured to himself; “he was awfully kind to emily morland — i’m sure he was.”
“only,” mrs. paul’s husband continued with a deepening earnestness, as if he were trying to explain to french something not quite clear to himself, “only, if you’re not a great creative artist yourself, it is hard sometimes, sitting by and looking on and feeling that if you were just allowed to say a word — . of course,” he added abruptly, “he was very good to her in other ways; very grateful. she was his inspiration.”
“it’s something to have been that,” french said; and at the words his companion’s colour deepened to a flush which took in his neck and ears, and spread up to his white forehead.
“it’s everything,” he agreed, almost solemnly.
french had wandered up to a book-shelf in what had apparently been fingall’s dressing-room. he had seen no other books about, and was curious to learn what these had to tell him. they were chiefly old tauchnitz novels — mild mid-victorian fiction rubbing elbows with a few odd volumes of dumas, maupassant and zola. but under a loose pile the critic, with beating heart, had detected a shabby sketch-book. his hand shook as he opened it; but its pages were blank, and he reflected ironically that had they not been the dealers would never have left it there.
“they’ve been over the place with a fine-toothcomb,” he muttered to himself.
“what have you got hold of?” donald paul asked, coming up.
french continued mechanically to flutter the blank pages; then his hand paused at one which was scribbled over with dots and diagrams, and marginal notes in fingall’s small cramped writing.
“tea-party,” it was cryptically entitled, with a date beneath; and on the next page, under the beading: “for tea-party,” a single figure stood out — the figure of a dowdily-dressed woman seated in a low chair, a cup in her hand, and looking up as if to speak to some one who was not yet sketched in. the drawing, in three chalks on a gray ground, was rapidly but carefully executed: one of those light and perfect things which used to fall from fingall like stray petals from a great tree in bloom. the woman’s attitude was full of an ardent interest; from the forward thrust of her clumsily-shod foot to the tilt of her head and the high light on her eye-glasses, everything about her seemed electrified by some eager shock of ideas.
“who was talking to her — and what could he have been saying?” was the first thought the little drawing suggested. but it merely flashed through french’s mind, for he had almost instantly recognized the portrait — just touched with caricature, yet living, human, even tender — of the woman he least expected to see there.
“then she did know him!” he triumphed out aloud, forgetting who was at his elbow. he flushed up at his blunder and put the book in his companion’s hand.
donald paul stared at the page.
“she — who?”
french stood confounded. there she sat — emily morland — aquiver in every line with life and sound and colour: french could hear her very voice running up and down its happy scales! and beside him stood her lover, and did not recognize her . . .
“oh — ” paul stammered at length. “it’s — you mean?” he looked again. “you think he meant it for mrs. morland?” without waiting for an answer he fixed french with his large boyish gaze, and exclaimed abruptly: “then you knew her?”
“oh, i saw her only once — just once.” french couldn’t resist laying a little stress on the once.
but donald paul took the answer unresentfully. “and yet you recognized her. i suppose you’re more used than i am to fingall’s way of drawing. do you think he was ever very good at likenesses? i do see now, of course . . . but, come, i call it a caricature, don’t you?”
“oh, what does that matter?”
“you mean, you think it’s so clever?”
“i think it’s magnificent!” said french with emotion.
the other still looked at him ingenuously, but with a dawning light of eagerness. it recalled to french the suppressed, the exaggerated warmth of his greeting on the hotel stairs. “what is it he wants of me? for he wants something.”
“i never knew, either,” paul continued, “that she and fingall had met. some one must have brought her here, i suppose. it’s curious.” he pondered, still holding the book. “and i didn’t know you knew her,” he concluded.
“oh, how should you? she was probably unconscious of the fact herself. i spent a day with her once in the country, years ago. naturally, i’ve never forgotten it.”
donald paul’s eyes continued obscurely to entreat him. “that’s wonderful!”
“what — that one should never forget having once met emily morland?” french rejoined, with a smile he could not repress.
“no,” said emily morland’s lover with simplicity. “but the coincidence. you see, i’d made up my mind to ask you — .” he broke off, and looked down at the sketch, as if seeking guidance where doubtless he had so often found it. “the fact is,” he began again, “i’m going to write her life. she left me all her papers — i daresay you know about all that. it’s a trust — a sacred trust; but it’s also a most tremendous undertaking! and yesterday, after hearing something of what you’re planning about fingall, i realized how little i’d really thought the book out, how unprepared i was — what a lot more there was in that sort of thing than i’d at first imagined. i used to write — a little; just short reviews, and that kind of thing. but my hand’s out nowadays; and besides, this is so different. and then, my time’s not quite my own any longer . . . so i made up my mind that i’d consult you, ask you if you’d help me . . . oh, as much as ever you’re willing . . . ” his smile was irresistible. “i asked bessy. and she thought you’d understand.”
“understand?” gasped french. “understand?”
“you see,” paul hurried on, “there are heaps and heaps of letters — her beautiful letters! i don’t mean — ” his voice trembled slightly — “only the ones to me; though some of those . . . well, i’ll leave it to you to judge . . . but lots of others too, that all sorts of people have sent me. apparently everybody kept her letters. and i’m simply swamped in them,” he ended helplessly, “unless you will.”
french’s voice was as unsteady as his. “unless i will? there’s nothing on earth i’d have asked . . . if i could have imagined it . . . ”
“oh, really?” paul’s voice dropped back with relief to its everyday tone. he was clearly unprepared for exaltation. “it’s amazingly kind of you — so kind that i don’t in the least know how to thank you.”
he paused, his hand still between the pages of the sketch-book. suddenly he opened it and glanced down again at the drawing, and then at french.
“meanwhile — if you really like this thing; you do?” he smiled a little incredulously and bent his handsome head to give the leaf a closer look. “yes, there are his initials; well, that makes it all the more . . . ” he tore out the page and handed it to french. “do take it,” he said. “i wish i had something better of her to give you — but there’s literally nothing else; nothing except the beautiful enlarged photograph she had done for me the year we met; and that, of course — ”
