Part 7

And the long talks in the improvised studio, she sitting under the big north window in the softened light of the sheet; the joy she took in his work; the charm of his sympathetic companionship. Then the long rides on horseback when the morning's work was over, she on Black Bess, he on his own mare; the rompings and laughter in the cool woods; the delight over the bursting of new blossoms; the budding of new leaves and tendrils, and the ceaseless song of the birds! Were there ever days like these!

And the swing and dash and freedom of it all! The perfect trust, each in the other. The absence of all coquetry and allurement, of all pretence or sham. Just chums, good fellows, born comrades; joining in the same laugh, stilled by the same thoughts; absorbed in the same incidents, no matter how trivial: the hiving of a swarm of bees, the antics of a pair of squirrels, or the unfolding of a new rose. He twenty-five, clean-souled, happy-hearted; lithe as a sapling and as graceful and full of spring. She twenty-two, soft-cheeked as a summer rose and as sweet and wholesome and as innocent of all guile as a fawn, drinking in for the first time, in unknown pastures, the fresh dew of the morning of life.

And the little comedy in the garret was played to the very end.

Each day my lady would dress herself with the greatest care in the flowered satin and coax the stray curl into position, and each day Adam would go through the ceremony of receiving her at the door with his mahlstick held before him like a staff of state. Then, bowing like a courtier, he would lead her past the yellow satin screen and big jar of blossoms and place her in the high-back chair, little Phil acting as page, carrying her train.

* * * * *

And so the picture was finished!

On that last day, as he stood in front of it, the light softened by the screening sheet falling full upon it, his heart swelled with pride. He knew what his brush had wrought. Not only had he given the exact pose he had labored for--the bent head, the full throat, the slope of the gently falling line from the ear to the edge of the corsage, the round of the white shoulders relieved by the caressing curl; but he had caught a certain joyous light in the eyes--a light which he had often seen in her face when, with a sudden burst of affection, she had strained little Phil to her breast and kissed him passionately.

"I'm not so beautiful as that," she had said to Adam with a deprecatory tone in her voice, as the two stood before it. "It's only because you think I am, and because you've kept on saying it over and over until you believe it. It's the gown and the peach blossoms in the jar behind my chair--not me."

The servants were none the less enthusiastic. Bundy screwed up his toad eyes and expressed the opinion that it was "de 'spress image," and fat old Aunt Dinah, who had stumbled up the garret stairs from the kitchen, the first time in years--her quarters being on the ground floor of one of the cabins--put on her spectacles, and lifting up her hands, exclaimed in a camp-meeting voice:

"De Lawd wouldn't know t'other from which if both on ye went to heaben dis minute! Dat's you, sho' nuff, young mist'ess."

Only one thing troubled the young painter: What would the Judge say when he returned in the morning? What alterations would he insist upon? He had been compelled so many times to ruin a successful picture, just to please the taste of the inexperienced, that he trembled lest this, the best work of his brush, should share their fate. Should the Judge disapprove Olivia's heart would well nigh be broken, for she loved the picture as much as he did himself.

* * * * *

The night before Judge Colton's return the two sat out on the porch in the moonlight. The air was soft and full of the coming summer. Fire-flies darted about; the croaking of tree-toads could be heard. From the quarters of the negroes came the refrain of an old song:

"Corn top's ripe and de meadow's in de bloom, Weep no mo' me lady."

"I feel as if I had been dreaming and had just waked up," sighed Olivia. "Is it all over?"

"Yes, I can't make it any better," he answered in a positive tone, his thoughts on his picture.

"Must you go away after you finish Phil's?" Her mind was not on the portrait.

"Yes, unless the Judge wants his own painted. I wish he would. I'd love to stay with you--you've been so kind to me. Nobody has ever been so good."

"And you've been very kind to me," Olivia sighed. "Oh, so kind!"

"And just think how beautiful it is here," he rejoined; "and the wonderful weather; and the lovely life we have led. You ought to be very contented in so beautiful a home, with everybody so good to you."

"It's all been very, very happy, hasn't it?" She had not listened, nor had she answered him. It was the refrain of the old song that filled her ears.

"Yes, the happiest of my life. If you'd been my own sister you couldn't have been lovelier to me."

"Where shall you go?" She was not looking at him. Her eyes were fixed on the group of trees breaking the sky line.

"Home, to my people," he answered slowly.

"How far away is it?"

"Oh, a long distance! It takes me three days' constant riding to get home."

"And you love them?"

"Yes."

"Do they love you?"

"Yes."

Again the song rolled out:

"Few mo' days to tote de weary load, Weep no mo' me lady."

II

The home-coming of the master brought everybody on the run to the porch: the men in the neighboring field; the gardener, who came bounding over his flower-beds; Aunt Dinah, drying her fat hands on her apron, to grasp her master's; Bundy, who helped him to alight; half a dozen pickaninnies and twice as many dogs, and last Adam and Olivia, who came flying down the front stairs, followed by little Phil.

The Judge alighted from the gig with some difficulty, Bundy guiding his foot so that it rested on the iron step, and helped him to the ground. The ride had been a trying one, and the heat and dust had left their marks on his face.

"And how about the portrait?" were his first words after kissing his wife and child and shaking hands with Gregg. "Is it finished, and are you pleased, my dear?"

"Yes, and it's lovely, only it's not me, I tell him."

"Not you? Who is it, then?"

"Oh, somebody twice as pretty!"

"No. It's not one-quarter, not one-tenth as beautiful!" There was a ring in Adam's voice that showed the tribute came from his heart.

"But that's the dress and the background; and the lovely blossoms. Oh, you'd never believe that old jar could look so well!"

"Background! Jar! Where did you sit?" He had changed his coat now, and Bundy was brushing the dust from his trousers and shoes.

"Oh, up in the garret. You wouldn't know the place. Mr. Gregg pulled everything round until it is the cosiest room you ever saw."

The Judge shot a quick, searching glance at Adam. Then his eye took in the lithe, graceful figure of the young man, so buoyant with health and strength.

"Up in the garret! Why didn't you paint it here, or in the front room?"

"I needed a north light, sir."

"And you could only find that in a garret? I should have thought the parlor was the place for a lady. And are you satisfied with the result?" he asked in a more formal tone, as he dropped into a chair and turned to Adam. The long ride had fatigued him more than he had thought possible.

"Well, it certainly is the best thing I have ever done. The flesh tones are purer, and the----"

The Judge looked up: "Of the face?"

"All the flesh tones--especially the tones around the curl where it lies on the bare shoulder."

He was putting his best foot forward, arguing his side of the case. Half of Olivia's happiness would be gone if her husband were disappointed in the portrait.

"Let us go up and look at it," the Judge said, as if impelled by some sudden resolve.

When he reached the garret--Adam and Olivia and little Phil had gone ahead--he stopped and looked about him.

"Well, upon my soul! You _have_ turned things upside down," he remarked in a graver tone. "And here's where you two have spent all these days, is it?" Again his eye rested on Adam's graceful figure, whose cheeks were flushed with his run upstairs. With the glance came a certain feeling of revolt, as if the lad's very youth were an affront.

"Only in the morning, sir, while the light lasted," explained Adam, noticing the implied criticism in the coldness of the Judge's tones.

"Turn the picture, please, Mr. Gregg."

For a brief moment the Judge, with folded arms, gazed into the canvas; then the straight lips closed, the brow tightened, and an angry glow mounted to the very roots of his gray hair.

"Mr. Gregg," said the Judge in the same measured tone with which he would have sentenced a criminal, "if I did not know you to be a gentleman, and incapable of dishonor, I should ask you to leave my house. You may not have intended it, sir, but you have abused my hospitality and insulted my home. My wife is but a child, and easily influenced, and you should have protected her in my absence, as I would have protected yours. The whole thing is most disturbing, sir--and I----"

"Why--why--what is the matter?" gasped Adam. The suddenness of the attack had robbed him of his breath.

"Matter!" thundered the Judge. "Bad taste is the matter, if not worse! No woman should ever uncover her neck to any man but her husband! You have imposed upon her, sir, with your foreign notions. The picture shall never be hung!"

"But it is your own mother's dress," pleaded Olivia, a sudden flush of indignation rising in her face. "We found it in the trunk. It's on my bed now--I'll go and get it----"

"I don't want to see it! What my mother wore at her table in the presence of my father and his guests is not what she would have worn in her garret day after day for a month with her husband away. You should have remembered your blood, Olivia, and my name and position."

"Judge Colton!" cried Adam, stepping nearer and looking the Judge square in the eyes--all the forces of his soul were up in arms now--"your criticisms and your words are an insult! Your wife is as unconscious as a child of any wrong-doing, and so am I. I found the dress in the trunk and made her put it on. Mrs. Colton has been as safe here with me as if she had been my sister, and she has been my sister every hour of the day, and I love her dearly. I have told her so, and I tell you so!"

The Judge was accustomed to read the souls of men, and he saw that this one was without a stain.

"I believe you, Gregg," he said, extending his hand. "I have been hasty and have done you a wrong. Forgive me! And you, too, Olivia. I am over-sensitive about these things: perhaps, too, I am a little tired. We will say no more about it."

* * * * *

That night when the Judge had shut himself up in his study with his work, and Olivia had gone to her room, Adam mounted the stairs and flung himself down on one of the old sofas. The garret was dark, except where the light of the waning moon filtering through the sheet, fell upon the portrait and patterned the floor in squares of silver. Olivia's eyes still shone out from the easel. In the softened, half-ghostly light there seemed to struggle out from their depths a certain pleading look, as if she needed help and was appealing to him for sympathy. He knew it was only a trick the moonlight was playing with his colors--lowering the reds and graying the flesh tones--that when the morning came all the old joyousness would return; but it depressed him all the same.

The Judge's words with their cruelty and injustice still rankled in his heart. The quixotic protest, he knew, about his mother's faded old satin must have had some other basis than the one of immodesty--an absurd position, as any one could see who would examine the picture. Olivia could never be anything but modest. Had it really been the gown that had offended him? or had he seen something in his wife's portrait which he had missed before in her face--something of the joy which a freer and more untrammelled life had given her, and which had, therefore, aroused his jealousy. He would never forgive him for the outburst, despite the apology, nor would he ever forget Olivia cowering, when she listened, as if from a blow, hugging little Phil to her side. While the Judge's words had cut deep into his own heart they had scorched Olivia's like a flame. He had seen it in her tear-dried face seamed and crumpled like a crushed rose, when without a word to her husband or himself, except a simple--"Good-night, all," she had left the room but an hour before.

Suddenly he raised his head and listened: A step was mounting the stairs. Then came a voice from the open door.

"Adam, are you in there?"

"Yes, Olivia."

"May I come in?"

Like a wraith of mist afloat in the night she stole into the darkened room and settled slowly and noiselessly beside him. He tried to struggle to his feet in protest, but she clung to him, her fingers clutching his arm, her sobs choking her.

"Don't--don't go! I must talk to you--nobody else understands--nobody----"

"But you must not stay here! Think what----"

"No! Please--please--I can't go; you must listen! I couldn't sleep. Help me! Tell me what I must do! Oh, Adam, please--please! I shall die if I have to keep on as I have done."

She slipped from the low cushion and lay crouching at his feet, her arms and face resting on his knees; her wonderful hair, like spun gold, falling about him, its faint perfume stirring his senses.

Then, with indrawn, stifling sobs she laid bare her innermost secrets; all her heartaches, misunderstandings, hidden sorrows, and last that unnamed pain which no human touch but his could heal. Only once, as she crouched beside him, did he try to stop the flow of her whispered talk; she pleading piteously while he held her from him, he looking into her eyes as if he were afraid to read their meaning.

When she had ended he lifted her to her feet, smoothed the dishevelled hair from her face, and kissed her on the forehead:

"Go now," he said in a broken voice, as he led her to the door. "Go, and let me think it over."

* * * * *

With the breaking of the dawn he rose from the lounge where he had lain all night with staring eyes, took the portrait from the easel, held it for a brief instant to the gray light, touched it reverently with his lips, turned it to the wall, and then, with noiseless steps, descended to his bedroom. Gathering his few belongings together he crept downstairs so as to wake no one, pushed open the front door, crossed the porch and made his way to the stable, where he saddled his mare. Then he rode slowly past the lilacs and out of the gate.

When he reached the top of the hill and looked back, the rising sun was gilding the chimneys and quaint dormers of Derwood Manor. Only the closed shutters of Olivia's room were in shadow.

"It's the only way," he said with a sigh, and turned his horse's head towards the North.

III

The few weeks Adam Gregg spent in his father's home on his return from Derwood Manor were weeks of suffering such as he had never known in his short career. No word had come from Olivia, and none had gone from him in return. He dared not trust himself to write; he made no inquiries. He made no mention, even at home, of his visit, except to say that he had painted Judge Colton's wife and had then retraced his steps. It was not a matter to be discussed with any one--not even with his mother, to whom he told almost every happening of his life. He had seen a vision of transcendent beauty which had filled his soul. Then the curtain had fallen, blotting out the light and leaving him in darkness and despair. What was left was the memory of a tear-stained face and two pleading eyes. These would haunt him all his days.

At the end of the year he found himself in London: Gainsborough, Romney and Lawrence beckoned to him. He must master their technique, study their color. The next year was spent in Madrid studying Velasquez and Goya. It was the full brush that enthralled him now--the sweep and directness of virile methods. Then he wandered over to Granada, and so on to the coast and Barcelona, and at last to Paris.

When his first salon picture was exhibited it could only be properly seen when the crowd opened, so great was the throng about it. It was called "A Memory," and showed the figure of a young girl standing in the sunlight with wreaths of blossoms arched above her head. On her golden hair was a wide hat which half shaded her face; one beautiful arm, exquisitely modelled and painted, rested on the neck of a black horse. A marvellous scheme of color, the critics said, the blossoms and flesh tones being wonderfully managed. No one knew the model--English, some suggested; others concluded that it was the portrait of some lady of the court in a costume of the thirties.

The day after the opening of the salon Clairin called and left his card, and the day following Fortuny mounted the stairs to shake his hand, although he had never met Gregg before. When, later on, Honorable Mention was awarded him by the jury, Boisseau, the art dealer, rang his bell and at once began to inquire about the price of portraits. Madame X. and the Countess M. had been captivated, he said, by "A Memory," and wanted sittings. If the commissions were sufficient the dealer could arrange for very many orders, not only for many women of fashion, but of members of the Government.

The following year his portrait of Baron Chevrail received the Gold Medal and he himself a red ribbon, and a few months later his picture of "Columbus before the Council" took the highest honors at Genoa, and was bought by the Government.

During almost all the years of his triumphal progress he lived alone. So seldom was he seen outside of his studio that many of his brother painters were convinced that he never spent more than a few days at a time in Paris. They would knock, and knock again, only to be told by the concierge that monsieur was out, or in London, or on the Riviera. His studio in London and his occasional visits to Vienna, where he shared Makart's atelier while painting a portrait of one of the Austrian grand dukes, helped in this delusion. The truth was that he had no thought for things outside of his art. The rewards of fame and money never appealed to him. What enthralled him was his love of color, of harmony, of the mastering of subtleties in composition and mass. That the public approved of his efforts, and that juries awarded him honors, caused him no thrill of exultation. He knew how far short his brush had come. He was glad they liked the picture. Next time he would do better. These triumphs ruffled his surface--as a passing wind ruffles a deep pool.

As he grew in years there came a certain dignity of carriage, a certain poise of bearing. The old-time courtliness of manner was strengthened; but the sweetness of nature was still the same--a nature that won for him friends among the best about him. Not many--only three or four who had the privilege of knocking with three light taps and one loud one at his door, a signal to which he always responded--but friends whose proudest boast was their intimacy with Adam Gregg.

The women smiled at him behind their lorgnons as they passed him riding in the Bois, for he had never given up this form of out-door exercise, his erect military figure, fine head and upturned mustache lending him a distinction which attracted attention at once; but he seldom did more than return their salutations. Sometimes he would accept an invitation to dinner, but only on rare occasions. When he did it was invariably heralded in advance that "Gregg was coming," a fact which always decided uncertain guests to say "Yes" to their hostess's invitation.

And yet he was not a recluse in the accepted sense of the word, nor did he lead a sad life. He only preferred to enjoy it alone, or with one or two men who understood him.

While casual acquaintances--especially those in carriages--were denied access when he was absorbed on some work of importance, the younger painters--those who were struggling up the ladder--were always welcome. For these the concierge was given special instructions. Then everything would be laid aside; their sketches gone over and their points settled, no matter how long it took or how many hours of his precious time were given to their service. Many of these lads--not alone his own countrymen, but many who could not speak his language--often found a crisp, clean bank-note in their hands when the painter's fingers pressed their own in parting. Of only one thing was he intolerant, and that was sham. The insincere, the presuming and the fraudulent always irritated him; so did the slightest betrayal of a trust. Then his dark-brown eyes would flash, his shoulders straighten, and there would roll from his lips a denunciation which those who heard never forgot--an outburst all the more startling because coming from one of so gentle and equable a temperament.

During all the years of his exile no word had come from Olivia. He had once seen Judge Colton's name in one of the Paris papers in connection with a railroad case in which some French investors were interested, but nothing more had met his eye.

Had he been of a different temperament he would have forgotten her and that night in the improvised studio, but he was not constituted to forget. He was constituted to remember, and to remember with all his soul. Every day of his life he had missed her; never was there a night that she was not in his thoughts before he dropped to sleep. What would have been his career had fate brought them together before the blight fell upon her? What intimacies, what enjoyment, what ideals nurtured and made real. And the companionship, the instant sympathy, the sureness of an echo in her heart, no matter how low and soft his whisper! These thoughts were never absent from his mind.

Moreover, his life had been one of standards: the greatest painter, the greatest picture, the finest piece of bronze. It was so when he looked over curios at the dealer's: it was the choicest of its kind that he must have; anything of trifling value, or anything commonplace--he ignored. Olivia had also fixed for him a standard. Compared to her, all other women were trite and incomplete. No matter how beautiful they might be, a certain simplicity of manner was lacking, or the coloring was bad, or the curve of the neck ungraceful. All of these perfections, and countless more, made up Olivia's personality, and unless the woman before him possessed these several charms she failed to interest him. The inspection over and the mental comparison at an end, a straightening of the shoulders and a knitting of the brow would follow, ending in a far-away look in his brown eyes and an unchecked sigh--as if the very hopelessness of the comparison brought with it a certain pain. As to much of the life of the Quartier about him, he shrank from it as he would from a pestilence. Certain men never crossed his threshold--never dared.