IV

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

Fingall’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. Fingall. 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 heading: “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—”

V

Mrs. Paul, as French had foreseen she would be, was late at their second

appointment; later even than at the first. But what did French care? He

could have waited contentedly for a week in that blatant drawing-room,

with such hopes in his bosom and such a treasure already locked up in

his portmanteau. And when at last she came she was just as cordial, as

voluble and as unhelpful as ever.

The great difficulty, of course, was that she and her husband were

leaving Paris so soon, and that French, for his part, was under orders

to return at once to America. “The things I could tell you if we only

had the time!” she sighed regretfully. But this left French unmoved, for

he knew by now how little she really had to tell. Still, he had a good

many more questions to ask, a good many more dates and facts to get at,

than could be crowded into their confused hour over a laden tea-table,

with belated parcels perpetually arriving, the telephone ringing, and

the maid putting in her head to ask if the orange and silver brocade was

to go to Biarritz, or to be sent straight on with the furs and the

sports clothes to St. Moritz.

Finally, in the hurried parenthesis between these weightier matters, he

extracted from her the promise to meet him in Paris in March—March at

the latest—and give him a week, a whole week. “It will be so much

easier, then, of course,” she agreed. “It’s the deadest season of the

year in Paris. There’ll be nobody to bother us, and we can really settle

down to work—” her lovely eyes kindled at the thought—“and I can give

you all the papers you need, and tell you everything you want to know.”

With that he had to be content, and he could afford to be—now. He rose

to take leave; but suddenly she rose also, a new eagerness in her eyes.

She moved toward the door with him, and there her look detained him.

“And Donald’s book too; you can get to work with Donald at the same

time, can’t you?” She smiled on him confidentially. “He’s told me that

you’ve promised to help him out—it’s so angelically good of you! I do

assure you he appreciates it immensely. Perhaps he’s a little too modest

about his own ability; but it _is_ a terrible burden to have had imposed

on him, isn’t it, just as he and I were having our first real holiday!

It’s been a nightmare to him all these months. Reading all those letters

and manuscripts, and deciding—. Why don’t authors do those things for

themselves?” She appealed to French, half indignantly. “But after all,”

she concluded, her smile deepening, “I understand that you should be

willing to take the trouble, in return for the precious thing he’s given

you.”

French’s heart gave a frightened thump: her smile had suddenly become

too significant.

“The precious thing?”

She laughed. “Do you mean to say you’ve forgotten it already? Well, if

you have, I don’t think you deserve it. The portrait of Mrs. Morland—the

_only_ one, apparently! A signed drawing of Horace’s; it’s something of

a prize, you’ll admit. Donald tells me that you and he made the

discovery of the sketch-book together. I can’t for the life of me

imagine how it ever escaped those harpies of dealers. You can fancy how

they went through everything ... like detectives after finger-prints, I

used to say! Poor me—they used to have me out of bed every day at

daylight! How furious they’d be if they knew what they’ve missed!” She

paused and laughed again, leaning in the doorway in one of her long

Artemis-attitudes.

French felt his head spinning. He dared not meet her eyes, for fear of

discovering in them the unmasked cupidity he fancied he had once before

detected there. He felt too sick for any thought but flight; but every

nerve in him cried out: “Whatever she says or does, she shall never

never have that drawing back!”

She said and did nothing; which made it even more difficult for him. It

gave him the feeling that if he moved she would move too—with a spring,

as if she herself were a detective, and suspected him of having the

treasure in his pocket (“Thank God I haven’t!” he thought). And she had

him so entirely at her mercy, with all the Fingall dates and documents

still in her hold; there was nothing he could do but go—pick up the

portmanteau with the drawing in it, and fly by the next train, if need

be!

The idea traversed him in a flash, and then gave way again to the

desolating sense of who she was, and what it was that they were

manœuvring and watching each other about.

That was the worst of all—worse even than giving up the drawing, or

renouncing the book on Fingall. He felt that he must get away at any

cost, rather than prolong their silent duel; and, sick at heart, he

reached out for the door-knob.

“Oh, no!” she exclaimed, her hand coming down on his wrist.

He forced an answering smile. “No?”

She shook her head, her eyes still on his. “You’re not going like that.”

Though she held him playfully her long fine fingers seemed as strong as

steel. “After all, business is business, isn’t it? We ordinary mortals,

who don’t live in the clouds among the gods, can’t afford to give

nothing for nothing.... _You_ don’t—so why should I?”

He had never seen her so close before, and as her face hovered over him,

so warm, persuasive, confident, he noted in it, with a kind of savage

satisfaction, the first faint lines of age.

“So why should I?” she repeated gaily. He stood silent, imprisoned; and

she went on, throwing her head back a little, and letting her gaze

filter down on him through her rich lowered lashes: “But I know you’ll

agree with me that it’s only fair. After all, Donald has set you the

example. He’s given you something awfully valuable in return for the

favour you’re going to do him—the immense favour. Poor darling—there

never was anybody as generous as Donald! Don’t be alarmed; I’m not going

to ask you to give me a present on _that_ scale.” She drew herself up

and threw back her lids, as if challenging him. “You’d have difficulty

in finding one—anybody would!”

French was still speechless, bewildered, not daring to think ahead, and

all the while confusedly aware that his misery was feeding some obscure

springs of amusement in her.

“In return for the equally immense favour I’m going to do you—coming

back to Paris in March, and giving you a whole week—what are you going

to give _me_? Have you ever thought about _that_?” she flung out at him;

and then, before he could answer: “Oh, don’t look so miserable—don’t

rack your brains over it! I told you I wasn’t grasping—I’m not going to

ask for anything unattainable. Only, you see—” she paused, her face

grown suddenly tender and young again—“you see, Donald wants so

dreadfully to have a portrait of me, one for his very own, by a painter

he really admires; a _likeness_, simply, you see, not one of those wild

things poor Horace used to do of me—and what I want is to beg and

implore you to ask Jolyesse if he’ll do me. I can’t ask him myself:

Horace despised his things, and was always ridiculing him, and Jolyesse

knew it. It’s all very well—but, as I used to tell Horace, success does

mean something after all, doesn’t it? And no one has been more of a

success than Jolyesse—I hear his prices have doubled again. Well, that’s

a proof, in a way ... what’s the use of denying it? Only it makes it

more difficult for poor me, who can’t afford him, even if I dared to

ask!” She wrinkled her perfect brows in mock distress. “But if _you_

would—an old friend like you—if you’d ask it as a personal favour, and

make him see that for the widow of a colleague he ought to make a

reduction in his price—really a _big_ reduction!—I’m sure he’d do it.

After all, it’s not my fault if my husband didn’t like his pictures. And

I should be so grateful to you, and so would Donald.”

She dropped French’s arm and held out both her shining hands to him.

“You _will_—you really will? Oh, you dear good man, you!” He had slipped

his hands out of hers, but she caught him again, this time not

menacingly but exuberantly.

“If you could arrange it for when I’m here in March, that would be

simply perfect, wouldn’t it? You can, you think? Oh, bless you! And

mind, he’s got to make it a full-length!” she called after him joyfully

across the threshold.