Maurice could see that Saltonstall was trembling with emotion. In a flash, he remembered Amouretta. “Oh,” he cried out, in a shocked voice, “a landscape, a thousand times a landscape! Did you think I could have meant the other, the one on the back? Amouretta?”
Mr. Saltonstall looked relieved, triumphant, ashamed. “Yes, I did, at first! And why not, when it was just that ribald portrait, and nothing else, that Wrayne showed me there, in an exquisite frame, in his confounded Court of New Departures? I tell you, Maurice Price, I was wild when I saw it. In my heart I vowed vengeance on you and all your tribe. I couldn’t believe it of you—you, of all men; yet there it was before my eyes. I couldn’t let that thing stay there! No man, who felt as I did about Amouretta, could let it stay, to be gaped at by the multitude looking for new sensations in art, and to be written up in the art column of the Sunday papers! Oh, I admit, of course, there was something captivating about it, too; captivating as well as desecrating, yes. Well, I made Wrayne take an oath to put it away, away, out of the world’s sight, and send you a wire.”
Maurice of the compassionate eyes saw the drops of sweat gather on Saltonstall’s lean temples.
“You must know,” said the artist gently, “it was never I who painted that portrait of Amouretta. It was Anthony’s studio assistant; you remember, the lad that died just before our Roman Prize was awarded. If you’ve looked at the painting, you know, of course, there’s diabolically clever work in it. Those pearls—I couldn’t surpass them! But if you saw only that portrait (and right there, if you please, there’s something that Master Hal will have to explain off the map!) how on earth did you happen to find my landscape?”
Saltonstall smiled in his sad way. “Well, I wanted to be sure Wrayne had kept his word about hiding the picture, so I dropped in on him unexpectedly, yesterday afternoon. Wrayne was all right! The thing was swathed and roped and even sealed. In fact, he had insisted on calling in that famulus of his the day before, when I was there, and having him do all that in my very presence, while he and I sat back and watched.”
“Perfectly good gesture,” laughed Maurice.
“Oh, yes, and in the grand style, I assure you! Queer chap, Wrayne, but he’ll succeed, even though he doesn’t yet know the rudiments of his trade. Can you believe it, he had not observed that the painting was on wood instead of canvas! I was wild to see it again; I made him uncover it and show it to me. My wrath hadn’t gone down with the sun, I can tell you, but I had sense enough left to see that the frame was quite out of the common; good as the Stanford White frames, but different. So I stepped behind to find the maker’s name, if I could; and behold, a landscape of great Price! Wrayne never even knew it was there. Mistake of that famulus, I believe.”
“You liked it?” Maurice put the question almost timidly. The landscape he loved seemed to him suddenly to lose importance, in the presence of his friend’s deep feeling.
“You’ve surpassed your best self in it! I can’t tell why, but there’s something in it that assuages for me the grief of things; something of yourself that you’ve put into it, I suppose,—some beauty or solemnity that was not there, really, until you yourself brought it there, with your own two hands. Perhaps I never knew, till now, why men buy landscapes—” Saltonstall spoke dreamily. His recollective eyes, looking far beyond his listener, seemed to peer into some Paradise not wholly lost.