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.