Had I had a thousand dollars of my own to dispose
of, the bargain would have been concluded on the spot;
but I was in the impossible position of being materially
unable to buy the picture and morally unable to tell
her that it was not worth acquiring for the Museum.
I dashed into the first evasion in sight. I had
no authority, I explained, to purchase pictures for
the Museum without the consent of the committee.
Mrs. Fontage coped for a moment in silence with the
incredible fact that I had rejected her offer; then
she ventured, with a kind of pale precipitation:
“But I understood—Miss Copt tells
me that you practically decide such matters for the
committee.” I could guess what the effort
had cost her.
“My cousin is given to generalizations.
My opinion may have some weight with the committee—”
“Well, then—” she timidly prompted.
“For that very reason I can’t buy the
picture.”
She said, with a drooping note, “I don’t
understand.”
“Yet you told me,” I reminded her, “that
you knew museums didn’t buy unsigned pictures.”
“Not for what they are worth! Every one
knows that. But I—I understood—the
price you named—” Her pride shuddered
back from the abasement. “It’s a
misunderstanding then,” she faltered.
To avoid looking at her, I glanced desperately at
the Rembrandt. Could I—? But reason
rejected the possibility. Even if the committee
had been blind—and they all were
but Crozier—I simply shouldn’t have
dared to do it. I stood up, feeling that to cut
the matter short was the only alleviation within reach.
Mrs. Fontage had summoned her indomitable smile; but
its brilliancy dropped, as I opened the door, like
a candle blown out by a draught.
“If there’s any one else—if
you knew any one who would care to see the picture,
I should be most happy—” She kept
her eyes on me, and I saw that, in her case, it hurt
less than to look at the Rembrandt. “I shall
have to leave here, you know,” she panted, “if
nobody cares to have it—”
That evening at my club I had just succeeded in losing
sight of Mrs. Fontage in the fumes of an excellent
cigar, when a voice at my elbow evoked her harassing
image.
“I want to talk to you,” the speaker said,
“about Mrs. Fontage’s Rembrandt.”
“There isn’t any,” I was about to
growl; but looking up I recognized the confiding countenance
of Mr. Jefferson Rose.
Mr. Rose was known to me chiefly as a young man suffused
with a vague enthusiasm for Virtue and my cousin Eleanor.
