The same poise that restrained Adam Gregg when he came suddenly upon
Olivia's portrait in the auction-room sustained him when he looked
into the eyes of the young man whom, years before, he had left as a
child at Derwood Manor.
"Are you sure?" he asked. He knew he was--he only wanted some fresh
light on the dark record. For years the book had been sealed.
"Am I sure? Why it used to be in the garret till my father died, and
then my mother brought it down into her room. I have seen her sit
before it for hours--she loved it. And once I found her kissing it.
Strange, isn't it, how a woman will regret her youth?--and yet I
always thought my mother beautiful even when her hair turned gray."
Gregg turned his head and tightened his fingers. For an instant he
feared his tears would unman him.
"If it is your mother's portrait," he said, "the picture belongs to
you, not to me. I bought it because it recalled a face I once knew,
and for its beauty. A man has but one mother, and if your own was like
this one she must be your most precious memory. I did not intend to
part with it, but I'll give it to you."
"Oh! you are very good, Mr. Gregg," burst out the young man, grasping
Adam's hand (Adam caught Olivia's smile now, flashing across his
features), "but I have no place for it--not yet. I may have later,
when I have a home of my own; that depends upon my business. I'll only
ask you to let me come in once in a while to see it."
Gregg returned the grasp heartily, declaring that his door was always
open to him at any time and the picture at his disposal whenever he
should claim it. He did not tell him he had painted it. He did not
tell him that he had known either Olivia or his father, or of his
visit ten years later. That part of his life had had a sad and bitter
end. Both of them were dead; the house in ruins--why rake among the
cinders?
* * * * *
All that spring, in response to Adam's repeated welcomes, Philip
Colton made excuses to drop into Gregg's studio. At first to postpone
the time for Mr. Eggleston's sittings; then to invite Gregg to dinner
at his club to meet some brother financiers, which Gregg declined;
again to get his opinion on some trinkets he had bought, and still
again to bring him some flowers, he having noticed that the painter
was never without them--nor was the portrait, for that matter, Adam
always placing a cluster of blossoms or a bunch of roses near the
picture, either on the mantel beneath or on the table beside it.
Sometimes Adam when leaving his door on a crack would find that in his
absence in an adjoining studio, Colton had come and gone, the only
record of his visit being a mass of roses he himself had placed
beneath his mother's portrait. Once he surprised the young man
standing before it looking up into the eyes as if waiting for her to
speak. Incidents like these showed his better and more sympathetic
nature and drew Adam to him the closer.
And the growth of the friendship was not all on one side. Not only was
Gregg's type of man absolutely new to the young financier, but his
workshop was a never-ending surprise. The fact that neither bonds nor
stocks, nor anything connected with them, was ever discussed inside
its tapestried walls, opened up for him new vistas in life. The latest
novel might be gone into or a character in a recent play; or the
rendering of a symphony, or some fresh discovery in science, but
nothing of gain. What struck him as more extraordinary still was the
air of repose that was everywhere apparent, so different from his own
busy life, and at any hour of the day, too. This was apparent not only
in the voices, but in the attitude and bearing of the men who formed
the painter's circle of friends.
Sometimes he would find Macklin, the sculptor--up from his atelier in
the basement--buried in a chair and a book, pipe in mouth, before
Gregg's fire--had been there for hours when Phil entered. Again he
would catch the sound of the piano as he mounted the stairs, only to
discover Putney, the landscape painter, running his fingers over the
keys, while Adam stood before his easel touching his canvas here or
there; or he would interrupt old Sonheim, who kept the book-shop at
the corner, and who had known Adam for years--while he read aloud this
and that quotation from a musty volume, Adam stretched out at full
length on his divan, the smoke of his cigarette drifting blue in the
overhead light.
These restful contrasts to his own life interested and astonished him.
Since his father's death he had had few hours of real repose. While
not yet fifteen he had been thrown out into the world to earn his
bread. A successful earning, for he was already head of his firm, in
which his prospective father-in-law, Mr. Eggleston, the rich banker,
was special partner, and young Eggleston the junior member. An
honorable career, too, for the house stood high in the Street, and its
credit was above reproach in the commercial world, their company--the
Portage Copper Company, whose securities they financed--being one of
the many important mining properties in the great Northwest. All this
he owed to his own indomitable will and pluck, and to his untiring
industry--a quality developed in many another young Southerner the
victim of the war and its aftermath.
And he was always welcome.
Apart from the tie that bound them together--of which Philip was
unconscious--Adam's heart went out to the young fellow as many another
childless, wifeless man's has gone out to youth. He loved his
enthusiasms, his industry, his successes. Most of all he loved the
young man's frankness--the way in which he kept nothing back--even
his earlier escapades, many of which he should have been ashamed of.
Then again he loved the reverence with which Phil treated him, the
deference to his opinions, the acceptance of his standards. Most of
all he loved him for the memory of the long ago.
It was only when the overmastering power of money became the dominant
force--the one recognized and gloated over by Philip--that his face
grew grave. It was then that the older and wiser man, with his keen
insight into the human heart, trembled for the younger, fearing that
some sudden pressure, either of fortune or misfortune, might sweep him
off his feet. It was at these times--Philip's face all excitement with
the telling--that Adam's penetrating eyes, searching into the inner
places, would find the hard, almost pitiless lines which he remembered
so well in the father's face repeated in the son's.
There was, however, one subject which swept these lines out of his
face. That was when Phil would speak of Madeleine, the rich banker's
daughter--Madeleine with her sunny eyes and merry laugh--"Only up to
my shoulder--such a dear girl!" Then there would break over the young
man's face that joyous, irradiating smile, that sudden sparkle of the
eye and quiver of the lip that had made his own mother's face so
enchanting. On these occasions the Street and all it stood for, as
well as books and everything else, was forgotten and Madeleine would
become the sole topic. These two influences struggled for mastery in
the young man's heart; influences unknown to Philip, but clear as
print to the eye of the thoughtful man of the world who, day by day,
read his companion's mind the clearer.
As to Madeleine no subject could be more congenial.
When a young fellow under thirty has found a sympathetic old fellow of
fifty to listen to talks of his sweetheart, and when that old fellow
of fifty has found a companion with a look in his eyes of the woman he
loved and who carries in his face something of the joy he knew in
youth, it is no wonder that these two became still greater friends, or
that Philip's tread outside Adam Gregg's door was always followed by a
quick beat of the painter's heart and a warm grasp of his hand.
One afternoon Philip came in with a spring quite different from either
his nervous walk or his more measured tread--his "bank director's
step" Adam used to call it with a smile. This time he was on his toes,
his hands in the air tossing the velvet curtains aside with a swing as
he sprang inside.
"Madeleine's home from the West!" he burst out. "Now at last you'll
see her, and you've got to paint her, too. Oh, she knows all about the
portrait and how you found it; and this studio and the blossoms you
love, and everything. My letters have been full of nothing else all
winter. She's crazy to see you."
"Not any more crazy than I am to see her," laughed Adam, with his hand
on the young man's shoulder.
And so one spring morning--all beautiful things came to him on spring
mornings, Adam told her--Madeleine pushed her pretty little head
between the velvet curtains and peered in, Phil close behind her, a
bunch of violets in his button-hole.
"This is dear Adam Gregg, Madeleine," was her lover's introduction,
"and there's nobody like him, and never will be."
The girl stopped, the overhead light falling on her dainty hat and
trim figure; her black eyes in comprehensive glance taking in Adam
standing against a hazy background of beautiful things with both hands
outstretched.
"And I am so glad to be here and to know you," she said, walking
straight towards him and laying her little hands in his.
"And so am I," answered Adam. "And I know everything about you. Phil
says you can ride like the wind, and dance so that your toes never
touch the floor, and that you----"
"Yes, and so do I know every single thing about you"--here she looked
at him critically--"and you--yes, you are just as I hoped you would
be. Phil's letters have had nothing else in them since you bewitched
him and I've just been wild to get home and have him bring me here.
What a lovely place! Isn't it wonderful, Phil?... And is that the
portrait? Oh! what a beautiful, beautiful woman!"
She had left Gregg now--before he had had time to say another word in
praise of her--and was standing under the picture, her eyes gazing
into its depths. Adam kept perfectly still, completely charmed by her
dainty joyousness. He felt as if some rare bird had flown in which
would be frightened away if he moved a hair's breadth. Phil stood
apart watching every expression that crossed her happy face. He had
been waiting weeks for this moment.
"You haven't her eyes or her hair, Phil," she continued without
turning her head, "but you look at me that way sometimes. I don't know
what it is--she's happy, and she's not happy. She loved
somebody--that's it, she _loved_ somebody and her eyes follow you
so--they seem alive--and the lips as if they could speak.
"And now, Mr. Gregg, please show me every one of these beautiful
things." She had already, with her quick intuition, seen through
Adam's personality at a glance, and found out how thoroughly she could
trust him.
He obeyed as gallantly and as cheerfully as if he had been her own
age, pulling open the drawers of the cabinets, taking out this curio
and that, lifting the lid of the old Venetian wedding-chest that she
might herself pry among the velvets and embroideries; she dropping on
her knees beside it with all the fluttering joy of a child who had
come suddenly upon a box of toys; Phil following them around the room
putting in a word here and there, reminding Adam of something he had
forgotten, or calling her attention to some object hidden in a shadow
that even her quick absorbing glance had overlooked.
Once more she stopped before the portrait, her eyes drinking in its
beauty.
"Don't you love it, Mr. Gregg?"
"Yes, but I'm going to give it to your--to Philip."
"Oh! you know! do you? Yes, just say it out. We _are_ going to be
married just as soon as we can--next October is the very latest date.
I told father we were tired of waiting and he has promised me; we
would have been married this spring but for that horrid copper mine
that the deeper you go the less copper----"
"Oh, but Madeleine," protested Philip with a sudden flush in his face,
"that was some time ago; everything's all right now."
"Well, I don't know much about it; I only repeated what father said."
And then having had her fill of all the pretty things--some she must
go back to half a dozen times in her delight--especially some "ducky"
little china dogs that were "just too sweet for anything"; and having
discussed to her heart's content all the details of the coming
wedding--especially the part where Adam was to walk close behind them
on their way up the aisle of the church as a sort of fairy godfather
to give Phil away--the joyous little bird, followed by the happy young
lover, spread her dainty wings and flew away.
And thus it was that two new spirits were added to Adam Gregg's long
list of friends: One the young man, earnest, alert, losing no chance
in his business, awake to all the changes in the ever-shifting market,
conversant with every move of his opponents and meeting them with a
shrewdness--and sometimes, Adam thought--with a cunning far beyond his
years. The other, the fresh, outspoken, merry young girl, fluttering
in and out like a bird in her ever-changing plumage--now in hat loaded
with tea-roses, now in trim walking costume fitting her dainty figure;
now in her waterproof, her wee little feet "wringing wet" she would
tell Adam with a laugh--always a welcome guest, no matter who had his
chair, or whose portrait or what work required his brush.