got heavier and heavier, and at length veiled town and river in a grey
mist. The sexton who, with two companions to help him, had by five
o'clock dug a grave by the churchyard wall, and lowered a rudely-made
coffin into it, was quicker than ever over his work, and the coffin
rested slantingly in the shallow pit. Then, since the clergyman who was
to have blessed it, omitted his duty in consequence of the terrible
weather, the man of the spade himself said a Paternoster for the poor
soul, and hastily shovelled in the coarse clods, leaving the rest to be
finished by his companions. He was about to hasten home and catch a
short morning-nap in his warm room, when he noticed a female figure
kneeling by a head-stone not far from the new grave, her head, covered
by a black veil, resting against the stone. That stone had long been
deserted, the family of the one who slept there having removed to
another country. What could the lady be doing there? As, however, she
remained quite still, and spite of the rain seemed absorbed in her
devotions, he did not venture to disturb her. For an instant it flashed
across him that it might be the foreign hussy who had paid for the
grave of the murdered man, but he heard afterwards that she had slept
till a late hour, and had, indeed, only awaked when the beadle came to
march her out of the town.
A few days later there reached him from an unknown source, a
considerable sum of money, which purported to be payment for a
forgotten burial. He for his part gave himself no thought about the
matter, and pocketed the unexpected windfall as though it had dropped
from the sky.
* * * * *
What follows is soon told. In the next spring the marriage of Kurt
Brucker and Elizabeth Amthor was, according to custom, celebrated at
the home of the bride, and the Augsburg relations came in great state
to do all honour to the bride's mother, and the family of the Amthors.
Nothing which could be looked for on such an occasion was left undone,
and Lisabethli had no cause to complain of her dower, her outfit, or
the wedding banquet. One thing only was lacking--the smile of joy on
the face of the bride's mother. She was kind and courteous to all, to
strangers and relatives alike, and bowed assent when the guests
remarked to her how completely made for each other the young couple
were, and that both houses might well be congratulated on so fitting
and honourable an alliance. But amidst all the loud cheer of the bridal
banquet, she sat pale and silent as a ghost, and though the rest of the
family of the bridegroom who had not known her before, gradually grew
reconciled to this, and whispered to each other that it was the sorrow
for her absent son which pressed so hardly upon her on this joyous
day--yet Kurt had not been wont to see his mother-in-law thus, and it
struck him as strange that she never once gave him her hand, or
pressed him in her arms as she had done the stranger-guest when, but
half-recovered, he had ventured to woo her child. It was only when the
youthful pair set out to their new home, that the mother kissed her
daughter with such a violent burst of tears, it seemed as though her
heart would break and melt away, and then laid her damp hand on her
son-in-law's brow, murmuring words that no one could understand. Then
she turned hurriedly away, and even before they left the house, locked
herself up in the solitude of her own room.
There she spent the few years that she had to live, avoiding all
society, reading religious books, and only opening her door to the poor
and the sorrowful. When, in a year's time, letters came from Augsburg,
pressingly inviting her to the christening of a grandson, she excused
herself on account of her age and infirmities which unfitted her to
travel. Yet she was often seen to walk with vigorous step in solitary
roads outside the town--old Valentin a few paces behind her. But she
never addressed him and seemed, indeed, almost to have lost the habit
of speech. It was only on her death-bed, when she felt her end drawing
near, that she sent for the parish priest, who spent some hours with
her. What she then imparted was told by him to one of her daughter's
children who travelled to Berne to see his grandmother's grave. That
she had ordered to be dug by the churchyard wall, close to the
long-ago-levelled mound under which her lost son had found his last
resting-place.
END OF THE LOST SON.
THE FAIR KATE.
THE FAIR KATE.
"It is incontestably true," said the old landscape-painter B----,
slowly stroking down his grey or rather mouse-coloured beard, "women
will be women, that is, sex dominates in the best as in the worst; and
though they are often obstinate enough in taking things into their
head, yet after all it is but seldom a head with any special or
original character, is only a feminine head. A genuine individuality
that can be measured by itself alone is far more rare among them than
among us men, and positively I do not know if the fact gives us
anything to boast of. Very often our peculiarity is only peculiar
folly--a departure from nature, whether through culture or mutilation;
while women, for whose training or spoiling less is done from without,
seldom become unnatural either in good or evil, seldom exceed the
average. But when they do so I have always found something to marvel
at.
"For instance one case remains indelibly fixed on my memory, when I
actually witnessed a thing unheard of and unparalleled, a lovely girl
who had an actual hatred of her own beauty, not merely a conceited,
coquettish, pretended indifference to it, or even an over-strained,
saintly, nun-like renunciation of it, but what one might call an
honourable enmity against it, which had, indeed, its good grounds.
"I became acquainted with the story in question in the following way.
"At that time--it's now more than twenty years ago--I was very intimate
with a long-forgotten Dutch painter, Jan van Kuylen or Kuyden--you will
not find the name in any catalogue of known artists.
"In the course of the usual journey to Rome, he had remained hanging
about Munich, the real reason being that Raphael and Michael Angelo
were secretly oppressive to him, crushed his own small personality, and
disgusted him with the neat Dutch style by which he made a good deal of
money. He was a curious fellow, the oddest mixture of humour and
phlegm, ideality and cynicism, sentimental tendencies and caustic
irony. And so, too, in his studio you found the oddest medley; there
were exquisite specimens of Venetian glass for which he had a great
love, costly instruments inlaid with silver and mother of pearl, for he
played the guitar and lute well; then again on some heavily embroidered
cloth you would see a tin-plate with bits of cheese-rind, or a quart
of beer in an ugly mug, and the room would be filled with thick,
strong-smelling, cheap tobacco which he had sent to him from Holland,
and smoked in a small black clay pipe the whole day through.
"In his pictures, however, everything was so neat, clean, and accurate
that at the first glance there was not much to distinguish them from
those of the old masters--Netscher, Mieris, and Gerard Dow. But when
you looked closer you saw they betrayed a most eccentric vein, various
displays of a humour, which, however, chiefly delighted to disport
itself in caricature or parody. This was not the fashion then as now,
and therefore in Munich, where the pathetic or the simply naive was
still in the ascendant, Jan van Kuylen's too often profane performances
did not go down well. The first picture that he exhibited there was one
of Paradise, where Adam, a gaunt, lean, yellow-visaged fellow, was
digging the ground in the sweat of his brow, while Eve darned an old
jacket, and glanced up in evident ill-humour at the forbidden fruit,
while the first person of the Trinity looked smilingly over the hedge.
The picture was at once removed, for naturally the clergy took umbrage
at it. And indeed Jan did not fare much better with the second, which
also showed the cloven foot. He called it the Temptation of St.
Anthony. It is true that this new version widely departed from the
simple honest absence of all propriety with which the worthy Teniers
has illustrated the legend. A young peasant woman--evidently returning
from a wedding or christening feast, as she was carrying a basket
filled with meat, cakes, and a bottle of wine--had let herself be
induced by the cool of the evening hour, and probably her own heavy
head, to take a nap in the shade of the wood. St. Anthony, a very
sturdy youth, with his cowl thrown back, had evidently been coming
unsuspectingly along, and at the sudden sight stood rooted to the spot,
looking now at the young woman, now at the basket of good things, and
manifestly waging a violent warfare with his conscience, during which
he scratched his head in absurd perplexity. The expression of his face
was so irresistibly droll, that on this occasion even the clergy could
not avoid winking at it with a smile.
"But I have not yet mentioned the strangest part of it all: this Saint
in two minds, and the Adam in the picture of Paradise, were both exact
portraits of the painter himself. And this added immensely to the
drollery of the thing. For in point of fact my friend's appearance was
a perfect study for a humorist. He might have been painted entirely in
different shades of yellow, his complexion of the tender tone of a
fresh Edam cheese, his hair and beard like overgrown dusty stubble, his
grey eyes almost hidden by thick pale eyelashes. And to make the
matter more complete he always dressed himself from top to toe in
sand-coloured cloth for winter, in nankeen for summer, and was fond of
bringing forward and ridiculing his own personal peculiarities by the
most far-fetched comparisons. So, too, in his pictures, where he
regularly and as prominently as possible introduced himself moderately
caricatured, but always in positions that were half-comic and half-sad,
half-expressive of self-contempt, and half of resignation. It seemed as
if he wished to show that he did not take in ill-part, but rather was
the first to laugh over, the practical joke played him by the step-dame
Nature.
"Well, it was Whit Monday, my wife had a party of her friends to
coffee, and the buzz and hum of female voices--which I could hear
through double doors--drove me out. As it was a beautiful afternoon,
with everything in its early freshness, and plenty for me to study on
the banks of the Isar, I determined to invite Van Kuylen to take a
walk. He was living at that time in Theresa-meadows, in a small house
with a room to the north, that he had fitted up for a studio. You
entered it by a little garden, in which of course the inevitable tulips
were not now wanting, but which equally abounded with lilacs and
jessamine. Next you turned into a small court where a fountain was
playing, which the eccentric artist had adorned with a misshapen
Triton, the work of his own hands, for he dabbled in modelling. Then
you came to the studio door, which was seldom open, for Jan painted
away with unwearied diligence from morning to night, and neither sought
amusement nor society.
"I was, therefore, surprised on the present occasion, to find the door
open, and for a moment thought he must have gone out, and that his maid
might be busy arranging the room, when I heard his voice saying to some
one, 'If you are weary, we will leave off for to-day, and besides it is
a high festival. Let us hope your father confessor will not be angry at
our being engaged with such worldly subjects, instead of keeping it
holy!'
"No answer was returned, or at all events none that I heard. I was
amazed. To have a model sitting with an open door was no more usual or
befitting at that time than it is now. And that the strong smell of the
Dutch tobacco should not come through that door, bordered on the
miraculous.
"When, however, I drew a step nearer, I soon saw why my good Jan had
given up smoking, and though I was only a landscape painter, I did not
at all wonder at him. For such a model was worth while losing one's
head for, to say nothing of one's pipe.
"The colours on the face of the young girl who sat there in the best
light, as motionless as a picture, with a red damask curtain behind
her, were really so brilliant, that they exceeded all probability, and
made me perfectly stupid with amazement. Such a white satin-skin, just
tinged with faintest rose-colour, and here and there with blue, such
vividly red lips, such velvety brown eyes and silky hair of the same
colour growing rather low on a superbly arched brow, I have never
before nor since seen, except, indeed in pictures, where they make
little impression because they are exaggerated. Nature can certainly
venture upon much that Art can never safely aspire to. When I had
somewhat got over the first shock of this sensational style of
nature-painting, I saw that in the drawing, too, the very best possible
had been done; done with a grandeur and solidity which were almost
prodigal, for it is not wise to expend every resource, colour and form,
both in perfection, on any one figure. Even a sculptor must have
confessed that only in the best antiques had he seen anything of the
kind. Above all I was amazed at the contour of the cheeks, the noble,
massively-rounded chin, the half-opened lips that seemed to breathe out
a very overflow of life, and the perfect shape of the straight,
scornful little nose, which was just a trifle too broad, perhaps,
for modern taste. It was only the eyes that afforded any room for
fault-finding, if after seeing those calm and melancholy stars beaming
on one, one had the heart for it. At least I found out later that the
line of the eyelids might have been more curved, and they themselves a
degree broader.
"For the first ten minutes I stood there actually spell-bound, did not
even say 'Good-day,' and was--as people often stupidly call it--all
eyes. And indeed no one spoke. Van Kuylen, his extinct pipe in his
mouth, had merely given me a side nod, and continued painting hard. The
motionless beauty queened it before her red curtain on an old satin
ottoman with gilt lions' heads, her eyes fixed upon the great
half-darkened window, her hands--which were very slender and white,
but not small--carelessly folded on her lap. She wore a common
dark-coloured cotton gown, with an old tulle frill crammed in at her
throat, but had neither ear-rings, rings, nor ornaments of any kind.
"Beside her on a low stool, sat a little girl of about seven, slowly
and reluctantly knitting away at a coarse blue stocking.
"At length I found it necessary to make some remark.
"'I am disturbing you, Mynheer,' said I, though for a quarter of an
hour past I had seen that he did not permit himself to be disturbed by
me. We painters used to call him Mynheer in jest.
"'Send me away at once,' I went on, 'if I am in any way inconvenient
either to you or the young lady. Though indeed when one has hit upon
such a discovery, it is but a man's Christian duty to share it with his
neighbours.'
"Van Kuylen muttered a Dutch word or two between his teeth; the girl
looked gloomy as though I had said something to offend her; the child
with the stocking yawned heartily, and dropped a dozen stitches.
"'My good friend,' I at length resumed in Dutch, in which he had taught
me to jabber a little, 'tell me honestly whether you wish me at the
Devil, or whether I may remain a little longer to stare at this really
quite unreasonably exquisite face that your lucky star has led you
to--Heaven knows how--and which, to speak plainly, is infinitely too
good for you. Such a subject--begging your pardon--is not appropriate
for your foot-square canvas, and your finickin genre-brush. Life-size,
indeed, and faithfully and humbly copied--as it pleased God to make
her--in the manner of the old Venetians, that would be a different
thing. But I know you too well, with your worthy visage; you would want
to be peeping down upon her from some window-corner or other, or giving
scope to some of your antic humour, and that would be an insult to such
a paragon of Grecian perfection, with whose face that wretched cotton
gown is no more in keeping than a modern crinoline with the Juno
Ludovisi.'
"I had no scruple in thus crudely speaking my mind to him; he was
rather fond of pungent personal remarks, and did not remain long in my
debt.
"He rose to get something that he wanted for his work, and answered
without removing his empty pipe from his lips: 'I can well imagine your
mouth watering after such an exceptional morsel. You would like,
perhaps, to paint her as another pigeon-breasted Diana emerging from a
pool under a German oak-tree, and setting horns on the brow of an
Acteon who has stolen his legs from the Apollo Belvedere? The girl
seems to you good enough for that, does she not? But that's not to be
done. You will never get her to consent to any mythological
ambiguities. Do you suppose I have ever seen an inch more of her than
what she is gracious enough to shew us both at this present moment? And
even for this I have had to run after her long, and almost despaired of
her ever sitting to me at all. But hunger is the best of go-betweens.
And so I have had to give in to all her severe conditions. The door is
always to stand open, the little school-girl is always to sit there,
and if I ever venture to visit her at her own abode, there is to be an
end of us both! Of course I agreed to everything she chose; I was so
besotted by her face, I could have committed one of the seven deadly
sins just to see her once in this light, sitting on that seat, and so
to be able to study her to my heart's content. As to what I am to make
of it afterwards that is immaterial. But if I secretly hoped gradually
to melt the ice between us--at all events to a kind of brotherly
friendship and regard--why, I was much mistaken. It is no great wonder
after all. I am not to her taste, and I think none the worse of her for
that. But there have been others who accidentally turned in--this is
the third sitting--who were thoroughly discomfited, very showy
audacious gentry--handsome Fritz, and Schluchtenmueller, and our Don
Ramiro, with his languishing tenor voice. They were all tinder at once,
but after a little burning and glowing had to retire, extinguished as
if by a gush of cold water. Is it not so, Miss,' said he suddenly in
German to the silent beauty, 'it is perfectly useless to pay you
compliments? This gentleman--who is only a landscape-painter it is
true, but still a connoisseur in women--would willingly express his
wonder and admiration. But I have told him that you would rather not
hear anything of the sort.'
"'You are right,' she replied with the utmost indifference. 'It is the
fact, I know, and I cannot alter it. But God knows if I had had
anything to do with it, I should never have chosen the face He has
given me.'
"Her manner of saying this perfectly amazed me. It had not a touch of
that mock modesty, which says the very reverse of what it thinks, in
hopes of being contradicted. No, it expressed a weary, but unalterable
contempt for the gift of beauty; it was the tone of one who has to drag
a sack of gold through a desert, and sighs from the very core of his
heart, 'I would give it all for one morsel of bread.'
"Then, too, her way of expressing herself, showed more culture than you
usually find amongst girls who hire themselves out to be painted. It
was easy to see that the fair creature had some strange story connected
with her.
"'Nay, nay,' said I, 'if you had chosen your own face you would not
have shown bad taste in the matter. And though, indeed, beauty is
transient, while ugliness endures, and there may be inconveniences, or
even dangers in the impressions it makes on those who see you, still
you would hardly convince me, young lady, that you are seriously
annoyed at having such a face. You would be quite unique if it were
so.'
"'You may think what you like,' she replied negligently, and her lovely
full upper lip assumed a scornful expression. 'I know perfectly well
what men are. If a poor thing is vain of her little bit of pink and
white, _that_ does not suit them, and if she is not vain at all, but
rather curses the beauty which has cost her so dear, why that will not
please them either! But after all I have nothing to do with setting
other people right, it is enough that I know what I know.'
"After this unflattering declaration came a long pause. Mynheer van
Kuylen sat at his easel, and attempted by the tenderest glazing to
convey the smoothness of that skin, and the lustre of those moist eyes;
the child had laid down her stocking, and was turning the pages of a
picture-book, and by way of putting a good face on my embarrassment I
lit a cigar.
"'You have no objection, Miss?' I enquired in my most ingratiating
tones.
"She slightly nodded, and in so doing gave a sigh, and her delicate
nostrils quivered.
"'May one venture to ask your name, Fraeulein?' I resumed after a while.
"'My name is Katharine,' she replied in the same curt, out-spoken way.
'But all who know me call me Kate. As to my parent's name that would
not interest you.'
"'Miss Kate,' I said, 'I notice from your manner of speech that you do
not belong to Munich."
"'No.'
"'Your accent has something Rhinelandish about it.'
"'Very possibly.'
"'Have you any reasons for objecting to speak of your home?'
"'Why do you ask?'
"'I should like one of these days to go and see whether there are many
faces there like yours.'
"'Only one,' she replied in the most matter-of-fact tone. 'But that is
painted on glass in St. Catharine's Church.'
"'Then you sat for it?'
"'No,' returned she; 'it was just the other way.'
"I looked at Van Kuylen to see whether he could make anything of this
strange speech, but he seemed so taken up with his work as not even to
hear our conversation.
"'You must not be offended with me, Miss Kate,' said I after an
interval, 'if I put a few more questions to you. Your answers are so
many riddles. I am not prompted believe me by mere curiosity, but by
sincere interest in knowing what circumstances can have led you to
leave your home, and after so good an education, and with so beautiful
a face, to adopt here--'
"'You mean that I seem to have been brought up for something better
than to make money of my looks. That may be. But this is what things
have come to, and since it is my face that has brought me into trouble,
it must help me out of it--at least so far as it can do creditably.'
"A cloud passed over her eyes; she looked before her even more
steadfastly than her wont, with an expression between anger and sorrow
that rendered her more enchanting than ever. We were silent. Suddenly
she resumed--
"'I really do not know why I should make any mystery about my story.
There is no disgrace in it, and you two gentlemen would only imagine
something far worse. Besides you both look thoroughly good and
trustworthy,' (Van Kuylen gave a short cough) 'and if you were ever to
hear any slander about me I could appeal to you. Babette, dear,'
turning to the little girl, 'go into the garden and make yourself a
very smart wreath of lilac and jasmine--do not gather any tulips. It is
only,' she went on in a low voice as soon as the child had left,
'because there is no need the people I lodge with should know
everything, and that little creature--young as she is--has already very
long ears, and repeats whatever she picks up. Not, indeed, that I need
to be ashamed of my past, but that they would look upon me as crazy if
they knew all its ins and outs, whereas as things stand now, they are
sorry for me, believing that I have only had some common unfortunate
love-affair, and therefore consider myself unworthy that the sun should
shine upon me.'
"She was once more silent, and seemed to have forgotten all about her
intended narration. There was a Sabbath stillness all around; we only
caught through the open door the sound of little Babette's heavy shoes
on the gravel walks, and the twittering of birds in the meadows. Van
Kuylen had risen and gone to a carved cupboard, in which he had a habit
of keeping all sorts of odds and ends; he now brought out of it a
wicker-covered flask of curious shape, filled three small glasses from
it, and presented them on an old china-tray, first to the young girl,
then to me. After we had both declined, he tossed them all three off in
succession, and then sat down before his easel, not painting, but
resting his head on his hand.
"'What surprises me,' said I, breaking silence at length, 'is that I
have never met you before, Miss Kate. Yet I am a pretty constant
lounger in our streets, and not unobservant; indeed, my dear wife
reproves me for looking over-boldly under the bonnets of pretty girls.
You must live like a mole in some underground dwelling, or you never
could have escaped me.'