Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman Part 17

Gregg made no reply. Rich directors did not appeal to him; they were generally flabby and well fed and out of drawing. If this one had some color in him--and the dealer knew--some of the sort of vigor and snap that would have appealed to Franz Hal, the case might be different. The little man waited a moment, saw that Gregg was absorbed in some brush stroke, and stepped back a pace or two. Better wait until the master's mind was free. Then again he could sweep his eyes around the interior without being detected--there was no telling what might happen: some day there might be a sale, and then it would be just as well to know where things like these could be found. Again he tiptoed across the s.p.a.cious room, stopping to gaze at the rich tapestries lining the walls, examining with eye-gla.s.s held close the gold snuffboxes and rare bits of Sevres and Dresden on the shelves of the cabinet, and testing with his nervous fingers the quality of the rich Utrecht velvet screening the door of an adjoining room.

Gregg kept at work, his square, strong shoulders, well-knit back and straight limbs--a fulfilment of the promise of his youth--in silhouette against the glare of the overhead light, its rays silvering his iron-gray hair and the tips of his upturned mustache.

The tour of the room complete, the little man again bowed to the floor and said in his softest voice:

"And you will receive him at four o'clock?"

"Yes, at four o'clock," answered Gregg, his eyes still on the canvas.

Again the little man's head bent low as he backed from the room. There was no need of further talk. What Adam Gregg meant he said, and what he said he meant. As he reached the velvet curtain through which he had entered, he stopped.

"And now will you do something for me?"

Gregg lifted his chin with the movement of a big mastiff throwing up his head when he scents danger. "I was waiting for that; then there is a string to it?" he laughed.

The little man reddened to his eyebrows. The fish had not only seen the hook under the bait, but knew who held the line.

"No, only that you come with me to Schenck's to see a portrait by Gilbert Stuart," he pleaded. "I quite forgot--it is not often I do forget; I must be getting old. It's to be sold to-morrow; Mr. Morlon will buy it if you approve; he said so. I'm just from his house."

"I have a sitter at three."

"Yes, I know, but you always have a sitter. You must come--it means something to me. I'll go and get a cab. It will not take half an hour.

It is such a beautiful Stuart. There's no doubt about it, not the slightest; only you know Mr. Morlon, he's very exacting. He says, 'If Mr. Gregg approves I will buy it.' These were his very words."

Gregg laid down his brushes. Little men like the one before him wasted his time and irritated him. It was always this way--some underhand business. Then the better side of him triumphed.

"All right!" he cried, the old sympathetic tone ringing out once more in his voice. "Never mind about the cab; I need the air and the walk will do me good; and then you know I can't see Mr. Morlon swindled,"

and he laughed merrily as he looked quizzically at the dealer.

The entrance of the distinguished painter into the gallery of the auctioneer with his quick, alert manner and erect, military bearing, the Legion of Honor in his lapel, soon attracted attention. Schenck came up and shook Gregg's hands cordially, repeating his name aloud so that every one could hear it--especially the prospective buyers, some of whom gazed after him, remarking to their fellows, as they s.h.i.+elded their lips with their catalogues: "That's Gregg!"--a name which needed no further explanation.

"I have come to look at a Stuart that Mr. Morlon wants to buy if it is genuine," said Gregg. "Tell me what you know about it. Where did it come from?"

"I don't know; it was left on storage and is to be sold for expenses."

"Is it to be sold to the highest bidder?"

"No, at private sale."

"Where is it?"

"There--behind you."

Gregg turned and caught his breath.

Before him was a portrait of a young woman in an old-fas.h.i.+oned gown, her golden hair enshrining a face of marvellous beauty, one long curl straying down a shoulder of exquisite mould and finish, the whole relieved by a background of blossoms held together in a quaint earthen jar.

Strong man as he was, the shock almost overcame him. He reached out his hand and grasped the back of a chair. Tears welled up in his eyes.

The auctioneer had been watching him closely.

"You seem to like it, Mr. Gregg."

"Yes," answered Adam in restrained, measured tones. "Yes, very much.

But you have been misinformed; it is not by Gilbert Stuart. It is by a man I know, I saw him paint it. Tell Mr. Morlon so. Send it to my studio, please, and credit this gentleman with the commission--I'll buy it for old a.s.sociation's sake."

That night, when it grew quite dark, he took the portrait from where the cartman had left it in his studio with its face to the wall--never again would it suffer that indignity--and placed it under his skylight. He wanted to see what the fading light would do--whether the changed colors would once more unlock the secrets of a soul. Again, as in the dim s.h.i.+mmer of the dawn, there struggled out from the wonderful eyes that same pleading look--the look he had seen on its face the morning he had left Derwood Manor--as if she needed help and was appealing to him for sympathy. Then he flashed up the circle of gas jets, flooding the studio with light. Instantly all her joyousness returned. Once more there shone out the old happy smile and laughing eyes. Loosening the nails that held the canvas, he freed the portrait from its gaudy frame, and with the remark--"It was unframed when I kissed it last," placed it over the mantel moving some curios out of the way so it would rest the more firmly; then he dropped into a chair before it.

He was in the past again--twenty-five years before, living once more the long hours in the garret with its background of blossoms; roaming the woods; listening to the sound of her joyous laughter when she caught little Phil to her breast. Then there rang in his ear that terrible moan when Judge Colton denounced them both; and the sob in her voice as she sank at his feet that night. He could catch the very perfume of her hair and feel the hot tears on his hand. If only the lips would open and once more whisper his name! What had sent her back, to soothe him with her beauty?

His whole life pa.s.sed in review--his hopes, his ambitions, his struggles; the years of loneliness, of misunderstanding, and the final triumph--a triumph made all the more bitter by a fate which had prevented her sharing it with him. With this there arose in his mind the picture of two gaunt chimneys outlined against a cold, gray sky; the trees bare of leaves, the gra.s.s shrivelled and brown--and then, like a refrain, came the long-forgotten song:

"Weep no mo', me lady."

Raising himself to his feet he leaned over the mantel and looked long and steadily into the eyes of the portrait.

"Olivia," he whispered--in a voice that was barely audible--"I did not intend to be cruel. Forgive me, dear; there was nothing else to do--it was the only way, my darling!"

He was still in his chair, the studio a blaze of light, when a brother painter from the studio opposite, whose knock had been unheeded, pushed open the door. Even then Gregg did not stir until the intruder laid a hand upon his shoulder.

VI

By noon the next day half the occupants of the old studio building came in to see the new portrait. He had not told of this one, but the brother painter had spread the news of the "find" through the building.

It was not the first time Adam Gregg's "finds" had been the subject of discussion among his fellows. The sketch by Velasquez--now the pride of the gallery that owned it--and which had been discovered by him in a lumber-room over a market, and the Romney which had been doing duty as a chimney-screen, had been the talk of the town for weeks.

"Looks more like a Sully than a Stuart," said the brother painter, his eyes half closed to get the better effect. "Got all Sully's coloring."

"Stunning girl, anyway; doesn't make any difference who painted it,"

suggested another. "That kind seem to have died out. You read about them in books, but I've never met one."

"Wonderful flesh," remarked a third with meaning in his voice. "If it isn't by Sully it's by somebody who believed in him."

No one suspected Gregg's brush. His style had changed with the years--so had his color: that palette had been set with the yellow, red, and blue of suns.h.i.+ne, blossom and sky, and the paints had been mixed with laughter. Nor did he tell them he himself had painted it.

This part of his life was guarded with the same care with which he would have guarded his mother's secrets. Had he owned a shrine he would have placed the picture over its altar that he might kneel before it.

"These blue-eyed blondes," continued the first speaker meditatively with his eyes on the portrait, "send a lot of men to the devil."

Gregg looked up, but made no reply. Both the tone of the man and his words jarred on him.

"You can forget a brunette," he went on, "no matter how bewitching she may be, but one of these peaches-and-cream girls--the blue-eyed, red-lipped, white-skinned combination--takes hold of a fellow. This man knew all about it--" and he waved his hand at the portrait.

"Is that all you see in it?" rejoined Gregg coldly. "Is there nothing under the paint that appeals to you? Something of the soul of the woman?"