Part 33 (2/2)
”There! I knew you'd adore him! Every woman does, but he's mine! Mine! I'm so happy, aren't I, Father?” She darted to Hendrick and hugged his arm.
”Yes, and I'm happy for you, little one.” He patted her head as if she were seven instead of seventeen. ”Go to bed now. It's late and I want a few words with Francesca, although she must be tired too.”
On their own in the family parlor, Francesca asked him first about his hands. He flexed his fingers to show her all was well. ”They did trouble me again in the winter, but were not nearly as painful as before.”
He was eager to know about her work and Vermeer's, questioning her keenly and forgetting the time. When she asked him about the landscape in the studio he explained that he had left it while working on a large commissioned painting of the Civil Guard, which had been set up in a corner of the Zuider Church. ”It will not interfere much with my studio time, because I've taken on a young artist, Hans Roemer, to do almost everything except the faces and certain details. He's just out of his apprentices.h.i.+p and is of the school of Haarlem, but he's come to Amsterdam to make his fortune!” He chuckled at such a wild dream for a painter.
”Did you decide on him because you are both of the same Guild?”
”I daresay that had something to do with it and I liked the samples of his work that he showed me.”
”I'll take a look at the painting tomorrow.”
Hendrick cleared his throat. ”Pieter brought me that commission.”
She could not keep back the rush of hope in her voice. ”Have you and he mended your differences over what he did for Aletta?”
”We have.”
”I'm so glad. Does this mean that you would welcome Aletta home again?”
”No! That's a separate matter.”
She let the subject rest. At least one step forward had been made through his reconciliation with Pieter. She was sure that with time Hendrick would soften toward her sister. ”Pieter didn't mention to me in his last letter that he had met you again. To be blunt, Father, you are a man of such uncertain temper that I presume he didn't want me to be disappointed if trouble had flared up again before he could discuss it with me.”
He was looking at her under his brows. ”So you have been corresponding?”
”We've seen each other too.”
”That was forbidden.”
”Would anything have stopped you from seeing Mama when you first fell in love with her?”
”That was a different case altogether. n.o.body stood between us.”
”Vrouw Wolff did her best to carry out your extraordinary instructions. You mustn't blame her. I understand that you were melancholic when I left home and your concern for my well-being was out of all proportion, but those arrangements you made on my behalf were quite unnecessary. Pieter hasn't been a barrier to my painting.” Her words throbbed. ”He has inspired me. I can date the upturn in my work from the moment I began to fall in love with him. It was on the feast of St. Nicholaes. Surely you saw the improvement in my technique when I painted that hyacinth?”
He had been clenching and unclenching his hands on his knees and now he slammed his fists on the arms of his chair, making her jump. ”Enough! No more talk of Pieter! At least not yet! Let's see Sybylla married first.”
She smiled. ”Don't get upset. There's no question of Pieter and me wis.h.i.+ng to marry yet. I have to finish my apprentices.h.i.+p first in any case. I've brought home one of my paintings and I'll show it to you tomorrow.”
”Good. Now you must get some sleep after your long day.”
”There's one more question I'd like to ask before I go to bed. How are you managing to give Sybylla a suitable dowry for this forthcoming marriage to a van Jansz?”
”Adriaen's father was most considerate and understanding. We had the usual meeting and I said straightforwardly that I could not offer anything but the smallest dowry, which would be, as you know, that little sum of money that your mother left for each of you. He graciously accepted it as a token dowry and everything was settled.”
”What a relief that Heer and Vrouw van Jansz were prepared to put their son's happiness before money.”
SOME DISTANCE AWAY, in a great house on Heerengracht, that same couple were discussing their son's forthcoming betrothal. Heer van Jansz, tired and wanting to get to bed after entertaining his future daughter-in-law and her father to dinner, came close to exasperation that his wife should be in tears again.
”Why did he have to choose her?” she wailed, echoing a parental cry that had sounded down the centuries.
”Well, he has and that's that.”
”But Adriaen could have had the choice of many fine young women within our own circle.”
”Listen to me, my dear. We have gone over this again and again. n.o.body hated the scandal over his long-standing affair more than you. Did you want him to stay a hamstrung lover to that married b.i.t.c.h forever?”
”No!” She was shocked at his blunt words. ”But why a craftsman's daughter? Whatever can he see in her?”
Heer van Jansz knew exactly what his son could see in Sybylla, but it was not the kind of explanation he could give his wife. ”There's no questioning a young man's fancy. Sybylla is the only one who has been able to entice him out of an unsavory a.s.sociation we've both long condemned, which is why I waived a dowry. Be thankful that one day you'll be getting grandchildren, hopefully a grandson to carry on the van Jansz name and business, which you would never have done otherwise. Now I'm going to bed.”
As he left his wife to go to his own bedchamber, he reflected that in all honesty Sybylla was not the wife he would have chosen for his son, but the old adage of any port in a storm held in this case. What was most important in his eyes was not the happiness of the young couple, but that the dreadful disgrace of Adriaen's blatant affair would be buried at last. At least Sybylla could be counted on to ensure that scandal would never arise again about the esteemed name of van Jansz. To the father, if not to the son, she had all unwittingly revealed herself to be too shallow and greedy ever to allow anything that was rightfully hers to go to anyone else, whether it was Adriaen himself or the riches and luxuries that made her beautiful eyes glint like a cat sighting cream.
Chapter 18.
WHEN GRIET LEFT THE VISSER HOUSE IN THE MORNING TO GO home she had several wedding gifts from the family in her basket as well as from Maria and neighbors who knew her well. She also had a verbal message to deliver at the van Deventer house, which Hendrick had given her at the last minute. She was too excited to wonder anything about it and delivered it cheerfully to the manservant who opened the door to her.
”Please tell your master that Juffrouw Visser is at home.”
Her duty done, she skipped back down the flight of steps and continued lightheartedly on her way.
In his studio Hendrick was nodding firm approval of Francesca's painting. It was small, less than a foot square, and was what was known as a ”tronie,” being a painting of a face executed as an exercise or for the artist's own whim, the ident.i.ty of the sitter unimportant. In the case of Francesca's picture, it would be sold under the t.i.tle Head of a Girl in a Pearl Necklace.
”It's quite good.” Inwardly Hendrick was astounded by the immense quality of the painting, but although he was extravagant in all ways, including praise for his own work, he did not believe in turning any young artist's head with lavish phrases. Not that Francesca had ever been inclined to conceit, but that was beside the point. Although he had had to let Ludolf know she was at home, he was more at ease with her than he would have been if he had not had a rich son-in-law in the offing. The certainty had grown every day that his troubles would be over once the van Jansz wedding band was on Sybylla's finger. He would be able to snap his fingers at Ludolf and give his blessing to Pieter and Francesca. Luck had always rallied to him.
”The eldest Vermeer daughter posed for me,” Francesca told him.
He had been leaning forward to study the precise brushwork and now he stepped back again to view the painting from a little distance. His daughter's work showed no trace of his bold technique with its echoes of Frans Hals's tutors.h.i.+p, but had evolved into an almost ethereal style as delicately as music from an Aeolian harp and yet with an underlying strength that compelled the eye. The sitter was looking over her left shoulder with light playing on the creamy skin of her face and neck, her dark eyes glowing as luminously as her pearls, embodying the power of life and beauty. All was held within a single second as if the whole painting had been begun and finished in that time, for in the next the eyelids would blink, a breath would be drawn and the moment lost forever.
”Your master has taught you well,” he admitted, knowing that he could never have brought out her talent as Vermeer had done.
”I'll always be thankful for my apprentices.h.i.+p with him,” she said, unaware that she had touched a raw nerve in her father's conscience.
”Well, yes, it was all for the best. Weren't you going over to the Zuider Church this morning?”
”Yes, I'll be off now. I've asked Sybylla to come with me. She has told me that she was out both times that your a.s.sistant, Hans Roemer, was here and she hasn't seen your work there yet.”
”She's had no time during weekdays and on Sunday she wors.h.i.+ps now with the van Jansz family at the Westerkerk.”
”Has she ever said once to you that she is in love with Adriaen?”
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