And so the picture was begun.
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.