Part 29 (2/2)
”Then there are no obstacles in our path after all. We've been apart too long, Isabella. That is all there is to it.” His voice softened deliberately to the tender note that in the past had never failed to have an effect on her. If only she was nearer he could touch her, for he knew her intimately and how to arouse her to fiery desire under his caresses. ”Remember the last time we made love when we escaped to the stairs during your parents' dreary party!”
”For mercy's sake keep your voice down!” She half rose from her chair in panic as she looked toward the door that she had left open. ”Mother may be on her way up here! I've only been allowed a few minutes to be on my own with you!”
”Or that time in the rose garden?” he urged, not mocking now, for on a sudden renewal of hope he saw that he was getting through to her after all.
There was anguish in her eyes. ”Those days are gone. I did love you, Constantijn. I suppose I still do.”
”Then give me my ring that you're holding and let me put it back on your finger.”
She opened her hand and looked down at the ring lying in her palm, a large emerald set in pearls and winking with all the colors of the sea. ”No,” she said, her voice thick with regret.
”Why not? Nothing has really changed.”
”But it has.” She raised her sloe eyes swimming with tears, but all unconsciously her lips twisted with aversion. ”I could never marry half a man.”
For a brain-splitting second he thought how easy it would be to slip from the ultimate pitch of rage into murder. Beyond speech, he held out his hand for the ring. She left the chair to give it to him and was within his reach at last. He seized her by the wrist, which sent the ring flying, and brought her falling with such force against him that the chair rocked as if it might have tipped them both backward. Before she could get away he drove his fingers into her hair to hold her head as he kissed her violently. Lost in their pa.s.sionate struggle, neither heard her mother enter the room with a shriek of outrage.
The woman flew forward and struck him about the head. It was when she wrenched her daughter free that he was jerked forward and toppled, unable to save himself. He fell face downward to the floor, landing with a heavy thud, his arms sprawled awkwardly. Isabella gave a piercing scream and would instinctively have knelt to him, only to hesitate when she realized the covering rug now lay tangled beneath him. As she saw him without his legs, which previously had given him such a fine height that she had had to stand on tiptoe for his kisses, she began to scream again hysterically. Her mother, who had a fierce hold on her arm, drove her forward out of the room. He heard the piercing sounds continue with increasing force as she was bundled down the stairs. Then for the first time since the accident, and for as long as he could remember, he wept where he lay.
That night when Aletta looked out of her window across the square before closing the curtains, her heart seemed to stop. There was no light in Constantijn's window. The whole house was in darkness. In the morning her fears were confirmed. He had left Delft and, as yet, n.o.body knew where he had gone.
SYBYLLA CONTINUED TO suppose that her only chance of finding a rich husband was at the Korvers' house, but she did not visit as often as in the past, because the girls were all wed and away from home. Yet she never forgot that her aunt Janetje had met her husband there, which sustained hopes in that direction. She no longer expected any invitation to be forthcoming from Ludolf when his period of mourning should come to an end and she blamed her father for that. Hendrick was scarcely civil when Ludolf had taken the trouble to call and say he had seen Francesca in Delft. There was always a show of bad temper if Hendrick had to see his patron on business.
”Why do you have to scowl whenever there's anything to do with Ludolf?” she had asked him once. ”He buys your paintings and yet you make it so obvious that you don't like him.”
”I would wish my work to hang in any house but his,” Hendrick had growled in reply.
”But why? You should be exceptionally considerate toward him since he is in mourning.”
”Huh!” Hendrick had given a hollow, derisive laugh before stamping off into the studio and slamming the door behind him.
Aunt Janetje had sent each of her nieces a gold bracelet for the last St. Nicholaes's Day, the designs varying. They had come late, not reaching Amsterdam until well into the new year, and the two for Francesca and Aletta had not been sent on, but were being kept until Francesca made a visit home, which should have been at Christmas and was now overdue. Sybylla was particularly proud of her bracelet, it being the prettiest she had ever owned, and she had taken to wearing it daily. She loved the feel of it on her wrist and its expensive little tinkle when she rested her arm on anything. Maria did not approve.
”Such fripperies are for best wear, Sybylla. If you don't keep it for special occasions you'll lose it one day, mark my words!”
Sybylla took no notice. She liked always to be stylish and had developed an instinctive knowledge of what suited her. She recalled that when a child she had been amazed when a visiting cousin had not worn all her jewels; now she knew that a single piece of adornment could set off to perfection a lovely neck, or arm or hand. Whenever she played her viol she knew that the glint of gold about her wrist further enhanced her graceful movements, almost as if the links of the bracelet were dancing to the music.
Eventually Maria's warning came true. Sybylla lost the bracelet somewhere between Willem's house and her own. She had been on an errand for her father and remembered glancing proudly at it as she drew on her gloves while Willem bade her good day. There had been no marketing to do on her way home, which had been a relief, because she was like her father in hating to carry anything in the street and it did not please her to have a basket on her arm with cabbages or cauliflower or the tail of a fish sticking up out of it. Fortunately Griet was taking over the running of the house more and more, which even Maria welcomed in her increasing infirmity. Sybylla was congratulating herself on Griet having gone to the butcher's that day, relieving her of the ch.o.r.e, when she sensed an emptiness about her wrist. She turned back the cuff of her glove and gave a sharp cry. Her precious bracelet was gone.
She panicked, tearing off her glove and pulling up her sleeve. Frantically she shook the side of her cloak and skirt to see if it had fallen and caught on the cloth, but there was no welcome sound of it falling to the cobbles. In despair she began to retrace her steps, searching as she went. Such a light object could have been unknowingly kicked aside by pa.s.sing feet and she zigzagged as she returned along the way she had taken. It was difficult when she had to cross a road where there was traffic, for wagoners shouted at her for being in their path and some coaches came at speed. Once she was caught in the middle of a flock of sheep being driven home from market. She was almost back to Willem's house when somebody spoke to her.
”Juffrouw Visser! What have you lost? May I be of a.s.sistance?”
She looked up and saw a man in his mid-forties whose face she remembered, although she could not think where they had met. Then it came to her. ”Heer Cents! We sat next to each other at Heer van Deventer's banquet last May! Oh, I'm in such trouble. I've lost a gold bracelet and I can't find it anywhere.”
”Have you just missed it?”
”No, but I've searched a long way back without result. All that's left is just round the corner to a house there.”
”I'll help in looking for your bracelet. I'm going in that direction in any case. I'm to meet my nephew at an art gallery.”
”Willem de Hartog's gallery?”
”Yes. Of course you know him! I remember now that your father is an artist and it was your sister who had painted that fine portrait of van Deventer.”
”That's right. I last saw my bracelet when I was leaving Willem's house.”
”Perhaps we'll be lucky in finding it near there, then.”
He searched as carefully as she did, but they reached the double flight of steps leading to Willem's entrance without result. They decided there was just a chance she might have dropped the bracelet inside the hallway and when the door opened she preceded him into the house. The maidservant who admitted them knew nothing of anything being found, but Heer Cents said they would ask her master. He was pleased to renew his acquaintance with Sybylla, having enjoyed the sight of her pretty face and lively company at van Deventer's table at what otherwise would have been a long evening for him, for he neither gambled nor danced. Then the evening had become a tragic one for everybody through Amalia van Deventer's death. Had he himself not been a confirmed bachelor he might well have made a point of seeing Sybylla again.
The door to the gallery stood open and the first thing Sybylla saw as she went in was her bracelet lying on a side table. ”It's been found!” she exclaimed, running to s.n.a.t.c.h it up and cup it in her hand.
Willem was nodding at her. ”So it is yours? I thought it must be. If you hadn't come back I would have had it sent to your house.”
”Did you find it?”
”No, I did,” somebody else said.
She turned and saw the man she had been searching for as diligently as she had been looking for her bracelet. Tall and fair-haired with lean-faced, handsome looks, his whole appearance conveyed an impression of wealth from his white-plumed hat, its wide brim curled like a huge saucer, to his diamond-buckled shoes and the large ruby on his finger.
”Allow me to present my nephew to you, Juffrouw Visser,” Heer Cents was saying. ”He is my sister's son, Adriaen van Jansz.”
Those of the Visser household who knew Sybylla well would have seen that already she was aglow with the extra charm she could summon up at will. The name of van Jansz was a highly respected one in Amsterdam, the family being bankers and powerful merchants, which made her doubly dazzled by having a young man of such rich background here in the same room with her. She curtsied to him and as he raised her up by the hand, making the usual conventional pleasantry of being honored to meet her, she gave him the full benefit of her round blue eyes as.h.i.+ne with suppressed tears of grat.i.tude.
”How wonderful that you should have found my treasured bracelet! It has the deepest sentimental attachment for me, having been sent all the way from Florence by my aunt, for whom I've had the greatest affection since my childhood days.”
”I recognized it as Florentine work.”
”Where did you happen upon it?”
”On the bottom step of the flight outside. I think you'll find the clasp is loose.” He bent his head close to hers as they examined the bracelet.
”Yes, it is,” she agreed, thinking he must have been barbered just before leaving home, for his skin smelt fresh and clean with the faintest hint of verbena. It was hard to restrain her eyes from sliding in his direction instead of focusing them on the bracelet, but she had learned a great deal about enticing men since Jacob had been infatuated with her, and to appear too eager was always a mistake. ”I shall go straight from here to a jeweler and have it repaired.”
”Allow me to drive you there. My coach is waiting.”
She exclaimed prettily, ”That is most kind.”
”Will you pardon me while I have a final word with Heer de Hartog about some works of art I was about to decide upon at the moment when you arrived.”
”Yes, of course.”
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