Part 22

The masses of blossoms arranged in the big jar--the tops of their branches reaching the water-stained roof; a canvas for a half-length tacked on a stretcher and placed on an improvised easel, Adam began prying into the dark corners for a seat for his model, Olivia following his every movement, her eyes twice their usual size in her ever-increasing astonishment and delight.

"Hello, here's just the thing!" he shouted, dragging out a high-back chair with some of the lower rungs gone, and dusting it off with his handkerchief. "Sit here and let me see how the light falls. No, that isn't good; that dress won't do at all." (The gown came too far up on her neck to suit this artistic young gentleman's ideas regarding the value of curved lines in portraiture.) "That collar spoils everything. Can't you wear something else? I'd rather see you in full dress. I want the line of the throat ending in the sweep of the shoulder, and then I want the long curl against the flesh tones. You haven't worn your hair that way since I came; and where's the dress you had on the day I arrived? The colors suited you perfectly. I shall never forget how you looked--it was all blossoms, you and everything--and the background of the dark door, and the white of the porch columns, with just a touch of yellow ochre to break it--Oh, it was delicious! Please, now, put that dress on again and wear a low-neck waist with it. The flesh tones of the throat and shoulders will be superb and I know just how to harmonize them with this background."

It was the picture, not the woman, that filled his soul. Flesh tones heightened by a caressing, lingering curl, and relieved by green leaves and flowers, were what had made the Munich picture a success.

"But I haven't any low-necked gowns. Those I had when I was married are all worn out, and I've never needed any since. My nearest neighbors are ten miles away, and half the time I dine with only Phil."

"Well, but can't you fix something?" persisted Adam, bent on the composition he had in his mind. "Everybody's been so good to me here I want this portrait to be the very best I can do. What is in these trunks? There must be some old dresses belonging to somebody's grandmother or somebody's aunt. Do you mind my opening this one? It's unlocked."

Adam lifted the lid. A faded satin gown belonging to the Judge's mother lay on the top. The old lady had been born and brought up under this roof, and was still alive when the Judge's first wife died.

"Here's the very thing."

"And you really want that old frock? All right, Mr. Autocrat, I'll run down and put it on."

She was like a child dressing for her first party. Twice did her hair fall about her shoulders and twice must she gather it up, fingering carefully the long curl, patting it into place; hooking the bodice so that all its modesty would be preserved and yet the line of the throat show clear, shaking out the full, pannier-like skirt until it stood out quite to her liking. Then with a mock curtsey to herself in the glass, she dashed out of the room, up the narrow stairs and into the garret again before he had had time to sort over his brushes.

"Lovely!" he burst out enthusiastically when she had whirled round so he could see all sides of her. "It's more beautiful than the one I first saw you in. Now you look like a bit of old Dresden china--No, I think you look like a little French queen. No, I don't know what you do look like, only you're the loveliest thing I ever saw!"

The gown fitted her perfectly; part of her neck was bare, the single curl, just as he wanted it, straying over it. Then came the waist of ivory-white flowered satin with elbow sleeves, and then the puffy panniers drooped about the slender bodice. As he drank in her beauty the blood went tingling through his veins. He had thought her lovely that first morning when he saw her on the porch: then she was all blossoms; now she was a vision of the olden time for whose lightest smile brave courtiers fought and bled.

"That's it, keep your head up!" he cried, as with many steppings backward and forward, he conducted her to the old chair, and with the air of a grand chamberlain placed her upon it, adding in mock gallantry:

"Sit there, fair lady mine, while your humble slave makes obeisance. To touch the hem of your garment would be--Oh, but aren't you lovely! And the tone of old ivory in the satin, and the exquisite flesh notes--and the way the curl lies on the shoulder! You are adorable!"

And so the picture was begun.

The hours and the days that followed were hours and days of never-ending joy and frolic. While it was still "Mr. Gregg" and "Mrs. Colton," it was as often "Uncle Adam" by little Phil (the three were never separated) and now and then "Marse Adam" by old Bundy, who sought in this way to emphasize his master's injunction to "look after Mr. Gregg's comfort."

Nor did the supervision stop here. Under Olivia's instructions and with Bundy's help, the big dining-room table, with the Judge's seat at one end, hers at the other, and little Phil in his high chair in the middle, was given up and moved out as being altogether too formal and the seats too far apart, and a small one, sprinkled daily with fresh damask roses that she herself had culled from the garden, was substituted. The great window in the library, which had always been kept closed by reason of a draught which carromed on the door of the study and struck the Judge somewhere between his neck and his shoulders, was now thrown wide and kept wide, and the porch chairs, three of them, which had precise positions fixed for them between the low windows, were dragged out under the big apple-tree shading the lawn and moved up to another table that Bundy had carried down from one of the spare rooms.

And then the joy of being for the first time the real head of the house when "company" was present--free to pour out her hospitality in her own way--free to fix the hours of breakfast, dinner, and supper, and what should be cooked, and how served; free to roam the rooms at her pleasure, in and out of the silent study without the never-infringed formality of a knock.

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.