His modesty was disarming. French answered with sincerity: “I assure you I shall like nothing better than going there with you,” and Donald Paul, who was evidently used to assuming that the sentiments of others were as genuine as his own, at once brightened into recovered boyishness.
“That’s jolly.—Taxi!” he cried, and they were off.
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.