"Dear me!" Geetruyd shrugged indifferently, and began to wander along the railings, peering through as if she might glean something of interest for herself. Both sisters were glad to have her out of earshot. Francesca put an arm around Aletta's shoulders.

"Are you sure you want to stay here?"

"I do!" Aletta affirmed vehemently. "Don't worry about me. It's good to see you."

"I came to tell you that at last I'm taking a trip home. It's not just because I've received the date of Griet's marriage, but there's something else. Sybylla has written to tell us that she has finally met the man of her choice and is to become betrothed." Francesca took the letter from her purse. "Read what she says for yourself."

Aletta read it, sighed and returned it to her sister. "All she can say is how rich he is and how handsome and what a fine coach he has and the rest of such nonsense. As if any of that mattered! She never once says that she loves him."

"I noticed that too."

"So you're going home to see our future brother-in-law for yourself."

"I want to be sure that she's not making a mistake."

"Knowing Sybylla when her mind is made up, you wouldn't be able to do anything even if she were set on marrying Ludolf van Deventer."

"Heaven forbid!"

Francesca looked so aghast that Aletta laughed. "At least this Adriaen van Jansz must be better than he."

Francesca smiled agreement. "Sybylla wants both you and me to be at her betrothal party."

"I read that. Our sister is still a child. She is just as Father used to be before he developed that unforgiving streak. Sybylla always thinks that trouble can be easily forgotten if one pretends it never happened in the first place, no matter that a serious aftermath still remains. She doesn't give the slightest indication that Father has softened toward me in any way and it wouldn't have made the slightest difference if she had. It's my guess that this young man of hers has a united family and she wants to present us as being the same, no matter how Father and I feel toward each other."

"We were close once."

"That ended with Mama's death. Nothing was ever the same again. You'll have to go home on your own. When shall you leave?"

"Next week."

They had a few more minutes together before Geetruyd returned to them, impatient to be on the way home again. Aletta went back inside the gates, waved and then walked slowly back to the house. It was no wonder that she looked tired. She had become Constantijn's antidote to boredom and had to bear, through his goadings and taunts, all his pent-up frustrations. He never smiled unless cynically, never laughed unless savagely, and was at his worst during periods of deepest melancholia. Curiously he never protested again about her limiting his drinking and would sometimes not take or finish a second gla.s.s of wine, but he took his revenge by getting wildly drunk periodically from a source that she could not trace. The key to the cellar was in her possession, and since both Sara and Josephus had declared on oath that he did not get his supplies from them, she could only conclude that he had a stock hidden away behind a secret panel in his apartment, for he never went out of it. He gained immense enjoyment from seeing her search for it as she tapped the paneling and tried in vain to shift sections of skirting or carving.

"Why not take up the floorboards?" he would gibe. "Or look on top of the bed canopy?"

On one occasion, having found him insensible with empty Holland gin and grape brandy bottles beside the couch, she had fetched a short ladder and climbed up to look into the well of the carved canopy, to find nothing there. She knew he was considerably active, for although she had never seen him move from one place to another, he did much for himself and had a rope tied to his bed by which he was able to haul himself into it. What he would not do was to go outside, although he would have a chair on the balcony on fine days.

When she entered the kitchen his bell was jangling, as it did countless times a day. She wondered what he would want now as she went up the stairs. He took malicious pleasure in calling her upstairs to tell her to fetch him a book from the library downstairs or some such errand and then, when she had brought whatever he had requested, he would send her back again to get a second book, or a duplicated item. She had replaced Josephus as his partner at chess and cards, because she was able to beat him sometimes, and it was all part of the constant battle between them. Her victory would come on the day when she saw him take up the threads of a reasonable life again, going about, entertaining and receiving friends. Perhaps then her own shattered life might take on some meaning again. Opening the door, she went in to him.

GEETRUYD AND CLARA, as well as the Vermeer children, came to see Francesca leave on the stage wagon for Amsterdam. She waved until she could see them no more. Then she settled for the journey. She was going home! To see family and friends! To Pieter and to liberty! She felt intoxicated with excitement.

Jan had allowed her to take home her latest painting to show her father, which was a kindly concession on his part, for he could have sold it the day after it was finished. All her work found ready buyers and her flower painting, which she had completed with the first of Vrouw Thin's tulips, had fetched quite a good price. She was glad about that, for she knew that Jan, with so many children to support, was more often in debt than out of it. He had finally finished and sold his exquisite painting of Catharina seated with pen and paper at a table, a brooch sparkling on her greenish-yellow bodice, her favorite pearl earbobs in her lobes and a pretty lace-trimmed cap covering her hair. Lady Writing a Letter with Her Maid had been the clear choice for the t.i.tle, for Elizabeth stood behind her with arms folded, obviously waiting to deliver the letter when it was finished. Currently he was halfway through a painting of a local woman standing at the virginal in the drawing room, her hands on the keys.

"I'm going to change the picture on the drawing-room wall for this work," Jan had said to Francesca beforehand. She knew how careful he was always to have the right background, for every detail added up to the whole message of the finished painting.

She had helped him lift down a large painting by Theodor van Baburen, ent.i.tled The Procuress, which would not have been at all suitable. Together they had replaced it with another from the opposite wall, which had appeared in two or three of his earlier paintings. It showed Cupid holding up a card, signifying that love should be confined to one person. Since the local woman was known to be happily and faithfully married, it was an appropriate picture to be shown hanging on the wall behind her in Jan's painting.

He had already planned a companion painting-not that they would be sold as a pair. Since one portrayed pure love, he thought it would be interesting to paint profane love in the same subtle fashion.

"My model playing the virginal in the companion painting will be as grandly gowned," he had said to Francesca as well as to Catharina, who was in the studio at the time. "I see her in dark blue silk, the skirt of deep yellow."

Catharina gave Francesca a little wink. They both knew she had such a gown in her closet and that Jan would want to borrow it for his model. Since the model would probably be his daughter Maria, who now sat for him at times, it would present no problem.

"On the wall behind the model," Jan had continued, "I'll hang van Baburen's Procuress and in contrast to the clear daylight flooding the first painting, I'll have subdued light and much shadow." On the surface it would be just another painting, wonderfully executed, of a lovely female at her music, but with a different tale to tell.

In the stage wagon Francesca looked out contentedly at the pa.s.sing countryside with the neat farmhouses and the meadows where sheep and cows and horses kept one another company. No hedges were needed when narrow channels, gleaming with water, separated one field from another. Now and again the road pa.s.sed close enough to a windmill to enable her to hear the unique "whomp" of the great sails as they turned majestically, grinding flour or keeping the land drained. She felt her heart expand with love for Holland, even as it did at the thought of Pieter when the tulip fields blazed gloriously into sight. There were many areas where the heads had already been snapped off their stalks and ca.n.a.l barges were constantly to be seen carrying away the multicolored blooms, bright as jewels in the sun, for disposal. Yet another sight to see was the doorways and windows, wagons and carts and even the barges themselves adorned with garlands of tulip heads wherever children or patient adults had found time to string them together.

Francesca realized only too well that this was a frenziedly busy season of the year for Pieter and far from the best time for her to expect visits from him in Amsterdam. Then her heart leapt as a solution came to her. She would not let him know that she was home, but she would spend a day with him on her way back to Delft, having first ascertained from his housekeeper, Vrouw de Hout, that he was at Haarlem Huis. It would not matter how occupied with work he might happen to be, because she would be happy to be near him and even to help in any way possible. She had promised him once that she would visit Haarlem Huis at tulip time and here was a way of fulfilling the promise.

Since she was not expected at home there was n.o.body to meet her when she arrived in Dam Square. The noisy, seafaring atmosphere of Amsterdam was a blare of welcome in itself and made her realize how much she had missed the place of her birth. She had brought only one piece of hand baggage with her, for she knew she had all else she would need at home, and with it in one hand and her linen-wrapped painting under the other arm, she hurried homeward. Finally she ran the last yards and darted down the side pa.s.sage to the courtyard. She sent the back door crashing open, skidded on the blue tiles of the corridor and burst into the kitchen. Only Griet was there and she almost dropped a copper pan in wide-eyed astonishment.

"Juffrouw Francesca!" she shrieked. "You've come home for my wedding!"

"I wouldn't have missed it for anything!"

Laughing, they embraced one another like sisters. Griet was overjoyed to be the first to give family news. Everyone was well in the house, Hendrick and Sybylla were dining that night with Adriaen and his parents and Maria was asleep in the family parlor. As for Griet herself, she would be going home in the morning to prepare for her marriage the following day. Then she would have three days on her own with her new husband before returning to her employment.

"Sijmon will be allowed to stay here with me until he sails again," she concluded. Then, in case Francesca might suppose it would mean yet another mouth to feed, she added, "He's a ship's carpenter and is going to repair a leak in the roof and make new furniture for eating outside in the courtyard and will complete many more tasks that I have lined up for him."

"I know you could never have chosen an idler for a husband! I'm sure I speak for the whole family when I say that I hope he'll be here for a long time with you before he goes back to sea."

Griet was not optimistic about their having very long together, but stated cheerfully that they would make the most of whatever time they were granted. Then Francesca went to wake Maria, but at her footsteps the old woman opened her eyes and knew immediately who was there.

"You're home, child!" she cried out joyfully.

Griet set another place at the kitchen table, where she and Maria always had a simple supper when the two demanding members of the family were out.

Francesca did not mind having a few quiet hours on her first night at home. After supper Maria went early to bed and Griet's betrothed, a ruddy-faced, tow-haired young man with a ring in his ear, came to spend an hour with her in the kitchen. Francesca renewed her contact with her home and took note of any changes that had been made. There were new cream curtains in the dining hall and the Delft pot in which Pieter had brought the hyacinth had been added to a display of Delftware behind gla.s.s in the drawing room. In the reception hall she lifted the lid of the virginal, the inside of which was decorated with a Dutch scene of windmills and dancing children, which had so enchanted her as a small child when Anna had first shown them to her. It had always seemed to her that the little figures were dancing to the sound of the tinkling music. She closed the lid again after playing a few bars of a remembered piece.

In her bedchamber she found waiting for her the gold bracelet that Aunt Janetje had sent for the last feast of St. Nicholaes and she put it on, admiring the delicate Florentine craftsmanship and treasuring it equally for its donor's sake. Then she unpacked the two gowns she had brought with her, one for Griet's wedding and the other for Sybylla's betrothal party. When she had removed her painting from its wrappings she took it down to the studio, where she gazed once again on the portrait of Anna before going to look at Hendrick's latest work on the easel. It was covered with a cloth, which she flicked back to reveal a half-finished landscape with some magnificent trees. It was doubtful if he had found them growing together like that. He had probably sketched them individually at different places, a common practice among landscape artists, who would leave out a wall if it blocked a view and cut out a building or anything else that did not enhance their composition. It was highly likely the sky would not be the one seen over the scenery chosen. Once when out walking with Hendrick, she had admired a particularly beautiful sky that was a clear blue with the right amount of cloud to capture an artist's eye. He had snapped his fingers contemptuously at it. "My skies are much better," he had said conceitedly. But it had always been his boast that on canvas he could improve on nature. What did surprise her was that the paint was hard and dry. Several days must have pa.s.sed since he last put a brush to it.

Hendrick and Sybylla arrived home in a van Jansz coach, escorted by Adriaen, shortly before eleven o'clock. Francesca went into the reception hall to meet them and saw instantly that in looks and appearance Adriaen was everything her sister had ever wished for. Hendrick gave a shout of pleasure at the sight of her and Sybylla a delighted cry. Warm family greetings were exchanged and then her future brother-in-law was presented to her. He bowed in the flowery French way, watched by an entranced Sybylla.

"I'm honored to meet you at last, Francesca," he said. "Sybylla is very proud of you as an artist and as her sister. Is Aletta here too?"

"No. That was not possible. I came home alone."

Sybylla pouted, but not enough to spoil the line of her mouth. "How disappointing. I so wanted her to be here for the party." She looked up sadly at Adriaen, who made suitable consoling remarks. Had they been alone she would have conjured up tears and he would have kissed them away. She knew how to choose her moments.

Francesca was well able to tell that Sybylla, in spite of the show she had made, had held little real hope that their sister would come. As for Hendrick, his clamped-up expression showed he was glad that Aletta had stayed away. It was time to pa.s.s on to Sybylla the message that had been given at the gates of the de Veere house. "Aletta sends you her love and best wishes."

Not long afterward good nights were said and Adriaen left. No sooner had he gone than Sybylla, elated and radiant, flung out her hands to Francesca.

"Well? What do you think? Isn't he the handsomest man you've ever seen?"

Francesca smiled. "I believe he is."

"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 apprenticeship 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 wishing to marry yet. I have to finish my apprenticeship 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 tutorship, 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 apprenticeship 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 worships now with the van Jansz family at the Westerkerk."

"Has she ever said once to you that she is in love with Adriaen?"