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Updated: May 9, 2025
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.
"Some day," Eleanor encouraged her, "you might feel that the picture ought to belong to some one who has more more opportunity of showing it letting it be seen by the public for educational reasons " "I have tried," Mrs. Fontage admitted, "to see it in that light." The crucial moment was upon me. To escape the challenge of Mrs. Fontage's brilliant composure I turned once more to the picture.
This was indeed a topic on which she could dilate. The Rembrandt, it appeared, had come into Mr. Fontage's possession many years ago, while the young couple were on their wedding-tour, and under circumstances so romantic that she made no excuse for relating them in all their parenthetic fulness. Mrs.
"I've been so fortunate. Miss Copt was kind enough to get Mrs. Fontage's permission; we went this afternoon." I inwardly wished that Eleanor had selected another victim; unless indeed the visit were part of a plan whereby some third person, better equipped for the cultivation of delusions, was to be made to think the Rembrandt remarkable. Knowing the limitations of Mr.
"And she must leave this in a month!" she whispered across her knock. I had prepared myself for the limp widow's weed of a woman that one figures in such a setting; and confronted abruptly with Mrs. Fontage's white-haired erectness I had the disconcerting sense that I was somehow in her presence at my own solicitation.
And then you'll remember, please, that I have the floor that I'm still speaking for the committee and secondly, as a slight recognition of your services in securing the Bartley Reynolds at a very much lower figure than we were prepared to pay, we beg you the committee begs you to accept the gift of Mrs. Fontage's Rembrandt. Now we'll go in and look at that little head...." The news of Mrs.
Fontage's aid, and if, as her letter denoted, she had now yielded to the closer pressure of need, the business of finding a purchaser for the Rembrandt might well be left to my cousin's ingenuity. But here conscience put in the uncomfortable reminder that it was I who, in putting a price on the picture, had raised the real obstacle in the way of Mrs. Fontage's rescue.
My deflected argument ran on somewhat aimlessly till it found itself plunging full tilt against the barrier of Mrs. Fontage's silence. She sat as impassive as though I had not spoken. Eleanor loosed a few fluttering words of congratulation and encouragement, but their flight was suddenly cut short. Mrs. Fontage had risen with a certain solemnity.
My one hope was that in this case the object, being a picture, might reasonably be rated beyond my means; and as our cab drew up before a blistered brown-stone door-step I formed the self-defensive resolve to place an extreme valuation on Mrs. Fontage's Rembrandt. It is Eleanor's fault if she is sometimes fought with her own weapons.
Fontage's dress had the air of being a last expedient, the ultimate outcome of a much-taxed ingenuity in darning and turning. One felt that all the poor lady's barriers were falling save that of her impregnable manner. To this manner I found myself conveying my appreciation of being admitted to a view of the Rembrandt. Mrs. Fontage's smile took my homage for granted.
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