"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.