Barbarossa and Other Tales Part 14

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 a.s.sent 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, s.e.x 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 gla.s.s 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 fas.h.i.+on then as now, and therefore in Munich, where the pathetic or the simply nave 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 ill.u.s.trated 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 st.u.r.dy 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 n.o.ble, ma.s.sively-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 coa.r.s.e 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. .h.i.t 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 st.i.tches.

"'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 G.o.d 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 friends.h.i.+p 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 Schluchtenmuller, and our Don Ramiro, with his languis.h.i.+ng 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 G.o.d 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 a.s.sumed 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 l.u.s.tre 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 embarra.s.sment 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, Fraulein?' 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.'