The Golden Tulip (44 page)

H
ENDRICK WAS NOT
aware that he was making Aletta a scapegoat for all his troubles. Having made his way home without speaking to her, it remained that way. She might have been invisible for all the notice he took of her. She in her turn had become exceedingly quiet, having lost the more open attitude that had resulted from her going out to sketch and meeting people of many walks of life. That had been a time when she felt she was her own person, making her own decisions and deciding the pattern of her life for herself, no longer overshadowed by Francesca’s beauty and Sybylla’s exuberance. Now all that had gone. She withdrew into herself, going silently about full-time domestic duties in the house that relieved both Maria and Griet of a number of chores.

Yet she was changed. Her temper, which she had only ever shown before under extreme provocation, now flared more easily, exploding like a firework before she retreated again into her shell of quietness. No one was spared either in the household or out of it.

“You poor child,” Maria said well-meaningly to her one day. “With your father scarcely speaking to you there’s no life for you in this house at the moment.”

Aletta, stripping a bed at the time for laundry, hurled her bundled-up sheet halfway across the room, her cheeks flaring and her eyes flashing. “I’m not a child. I’m a woman with a mind and a will of her own. If Father had any compassion in him he would never have deprived me of the lifeblood of painting that is as vital to me as it is to him!”

It added to her personal torment that she who was to have spoken to Hendrick on Francesca’s behalf had failed her sister. He might have listened to her eventually if all the trouble had not occurred. That same evening in her misery she confided Francesca’s plight to Sybylla, who was not particularly sympathetic.

“I’m not surprised Father wanted her chaperoned when she’s away from home. It would have been the same for any one of us. Remember, she’s probably homesick and that would make everything appear much worse to her than it is.”

“But will you appeal to him on her behalf?”

Sybylla sighed. “Very well. I’ll go to him now.”

She went to the family parlor, where Hendrick was sitting, but returned almost immediately.

“What happened?” Aletta asked anxiously.

“I asked him if I could speak about Francesca’s accommodation in Delft and he said, ‘No.’”

“Didn’t he say anything else?”

“Yes. He told me not to speak about you to him either.” Then Sybylla made a sensible suggestion. “Why don’t you go and stay for a week or two with Francesca in Delft? You must have enough money from the paintings you sold. Maria, Griet and I can manage well enough here.”

Aletta’s face cleared. “Oh yes! I’ll go tomorrow.”

If her father wanted to see her again after she bade him farewell in the morning he would have to send for her.

Chapter 14

W
HEN
A
LETTA WENT TO THE STUDIO AND TOLD
H
ENDRICK
she intended to go to Delft he did not glance in her direction, but continued to lace a canvas onto a stretcher. Then, when she turned to leave, he slammed the stretcher down on the table and swung around to roar at her.

“Go! Stay away forever, for all your absence matters to me!”

She halted and stood her ground. “Am I never to be forgiven?” she replied as fiercely.

“Never in my lifetime! Get out of my studio.”

She was ashen-faced, but not cowed, her lace-capped head held high. “You need never see me again. I’ll make a living for myself away from Amsterdam.”

“It will not be at painting,” he retaliated cruelly.

The taunt struck at her so deeply that she flew from the room.

Next morning at breakfast he was the only one who did not speak to her and he shut himself away in his studio while farewells were being said. When he heard her leave the house with Sybylla he went on preparing the canvas he had been stretching the day before, and did not look toward the window in case she should stand on tiptoe outside to take a last glance at him through the glass.

Aletta sat silent in the stage wagon and did not chat to her fellow passengers. It was as if she had been drained of all emotion. She felt numb, cut off from the rest of the world. The many weeks of conscience-stricken misery and the harshness of her father’s attitude since his return home had finally taken their toll. She had brought two lots of hand baggage with her, and when she had found employment in Delft, Sybylla would send on a chest with the rest of her belongings. Sybylla, who so often did not think before she spoke, had unwittingly exacerbated Hendrick’s taunt of the previous day by suggesting that Aletta could give drawing and painting lessons to bring in an income.

“That’s the last thing I’ll ever do!” Aletta had hissed. “I’ll use a scrubbing brush and a bucket, but never a dog’s-hair brush or a palette again.”

It was not only a thoroughly uncomfortable journey in the stage wagon, but noisy as well, for the weather was rough and wild. Rain drummed on the waxed cloth overhead while the force of the wind caused it to whip and billow as if at any moment it would be ripped away from the iron hoops. Every now and again the wheels would slither in the soft surface mud, the ground below still hard from a long, dry spell. Halts at hostelries meant heads down against the driving rain and some passengers chose not to alight, wanting to avoid sitting in damp clothes for the rest of the way.

It was toward the end of the journey when Aletta heard comments being made by those familiar with the area about the speed of a coach approaching from behind along the road. It was obvious to them that the coachman was intent on overtaking the stage wagon before reaching the bridge that lay ahead, for whoever crossed it first would have command of the route for the rest of the narrow road into Delft. Naturally the coachman did not want to follow the stage wagon’s slower pace, it having been impossible to put up its little sails with a high head wind blowing toward them.

From where she sat Aletta was unable to see that the coach was gaining ground speedily, but she was kept informed by the talk around her and she recognized the actual moment when the devil, who lurked in every driver of a stage wagon, came to the fore. There was a crack of the whip and a surge of speed that made her cling to the seat. Some of the women passengers began to murmur in alarm, their husbands and the most staid among the menfolk shaking their heads at this folly on a slippery road, a few calling to the driver for caution. They in their turn were shouted down by three boisterous younger men, who cheered as the stage wagon lengthened the distance between it and the coach that was following. But it was only a temporary gain, for the coach horses had a far lighter load and, under a cracking whip, they began to advance steadily, the wheels sending up fountains of muddy water from the road. Soon the coach was drawing level.

It was at the approach to the bridge that the accident happened. There was an enormous, bone-shaking crash as both equipages slithered and struck against each other. All the passengers in the stage wagon were thrown from their seats and women screamed as the whole vehicle skidded violently, dragging at the frantic horses. The ordeal was not to end there and renewed screaming resounded as the stage wagon began to slide backward from the road and down a bank until it came to a thudding standstill at a precipitous angle with its back wheels lodged in a strip of grass above a canal.

It seemed to Aletta that every woman was weeping or crying out except herself. She was shaken, but she had suffered no harm, except for some buffeting that would result in bruises and a gash on her ankle where somebody had scraped a clog when attempting to get up from where he had fallen. Suddenly afraid she might have disarrayed her cap, she clutched her hands to it, but found it still firmly in place. People were alighting and she took her turn moving over to where helping hands half lifted her down. Two elderly women were deeply shocked and distressed, but they had family with them in attendance. Aletta held up her hems as she stepped across the soggy grass to climb up the bank to the road. Then she saw with horror what had happened to the coach. In the collision it must have swung out to smash down on its side against a wall, causing part of it to cave in. Men from the stage wagon were pulling on the wedged door lying uppermost in an attempt to get through to the one passenger within. The coachman had been flung from the box and had struck the framework of the bridge. Someone had already covered his dead face with a kerchief. Others were calming the terrified horses, the snorting and whinnying of the unharnessed animals mingling with shouting from men and the sobbing of women.

The door finally gave, one helper having been handed an axe to demolish it, and another man lowered himself into the coach. His distressed voice sounded clearly.

“Merciful God! This man’s legs are trapped. Give me that axe to free him and I’ll need help here!”

Two men went into the coach immediately to give assistance, there being no room for more. The whole equipage shook as they struggled to extricate the victim. People had come on the scene from a nearby farmhouse. A youth among them was sent back by the farmer to bring a horse and cart to transport the injured man to Delft and the nearest doctor. Eventually he was lifted out, wrapped in shawls and a blanket, and supported by many willing hands he was carried toward the waiting cart. His head lolled, for he had been senseless from the moment of impact, his black hair blood-soaked.

Aletta, standing near the cart, recognized him immediately as he was borne past her, although momentarily she could not remember where she had seen before that wide brow and haughty, prominent nose, the strongly shaped jaw and the well-cut lips, which were colorless now in his present pitiable state. Then it came to her. He was the young man who had leapt so effortlessly onto the bench beside her in the Exchange anteroom the first time she had gone to meet Pieter. His name came back to her. Constantijn. She was overwhelmed by compassion for him and hoped his injuries would not prove to be too fearsome. Macabrely the dead coachman was placed alongside him in the cart.

People had been collecting their baggage from where it had been thrown in the collision and Aletta found hers. The farmer’s wife, with the assistance of her sons, took charge of all the horses. Shouts had gone up for the driver of the stage wagon, vengeance in the voices, but he was nowhere to be seen. It was believed he had taken to his heels until the young man on the cart, already driving across the bridge, pointed to the water. Then he had to wait while the drowned body was pulled out of the canal and laid beside the coachman.

By now it was getting dark. Aletta was taken into Delft, together with the other women passengers and the baggage, by the farmer in his hay wagon, the men walking at the side, the ride ending by the Old Church. When Aletta asked to be directed to Vrouw Wolff’s house in Kromstraat, a married couple who had traveled with her took her to the door.

Francesca, coming downstairs for dinner, gave an exclamation of joy at seeing her sister with Geetruyd in the reception hall. “Am I dreaming? Aletta, are you really here?”

They flew to meet each other and hugged and kissed and hugged again. “I’ve come to stay here for a while,” Aletta explained. “Vrouw Wolff has agreed that I should share your room to save expense and we have settled the terms of my board.”

“That’s wonderful!”

Upstairs, washing her face and hands after her journey, Aletta told Francesca about the accident and the coincidence of recognizing the victim from a brief encounter in Amsterdam. A tremor in her voice betrayed delayed shock over the incident. “It’s why I was so late getting here.”

“Were you hurt at all?” Francesca inquired anxiously.

“Nothing of any importance.” Aletta paused in drying her hands. “But I’m haunted by what happened to that young man. And to think there should be two fatal casualties is so terrible.” She shuddered, shaking her head.

Francesca put a comforting arm about her shoulders. “Let us be thankful there were not many more, which could easily have happened.”

At dinner Aletta had little appetite. Geetruyd, hearing about the accident, wondered who the victim might be, for she knew many well-to-do families in the town through her charity work. “I daresay I shall soon hear more about it at my meetings and elsewhere as news of the accident spreads.”

“I’ll send word to Father straight away,” Francesca said, “and then he’ll know quickly that no harm has befallen Aletta.”

Later, when the two sisters were on their own, sitting side by side against their propped pillows in bed, Aletta told Francesca about their father’s imprisonment, not sparing her own part in it and accepting all the blame. Francesca was shocked to hear how much had been kept from her over such a lengthy period.

“You should have let me know. I would have come home!”

“That’s what we didn’t want. You couldn’t have done any good. He wasn’t allowed any visitors until the day before the trial and then only Willem and a lawyer. We didn’t want your work to suffer.”

“But yours did. I had no notion as to why you were forever out sketching in the city, or your ultimate purpose. Now I know why you wouldn’t show me any of your finished paintings. By the very subject matter I would have guessed that all wasn’t as it should be.”

“I hope none of my work was as bad as Father declared it to be,” Aletta said painfully, “but then I’ll never be sure. I was so upset and guilt-ridden when he was arrested that I think if I had taken up a brush to paint again it would have scorched my hand. All I did was to anguish over his being shut away through my actions while I clung to the hope he would forgive me whenever the nightmare was over.”

“You say he was released in mid-September and now we are into November and yet he still has not softened toward you? What has come over him? He never was one to harbor a grudge for long. Perhaps this break of yours away from home will give him time to reconsider.”

“I wish I could believe it,” Aletta said tonelessly.

“He has been harsh toward both of us. How is he with Sybylla?”

“She can still make him laugh and she has always played up to being the baby of the family. Yet he wouldn’t even listen to her when she tried to speak to him on your behalf.”

“I only thought of Sybylla as a last resort. You’re the one with the tact. When Sybylla wants something she so often blunders over it.” Francesca mused, resting an arm behind her head. “I realize now that Father must have been awaiting trial when Pieter was here in late August.”

“He told me he was going to see you when he called at the house one day to ask if we’d heard the date of the trial. He also said that you’re able to correspond with each other through a friend of his who lives in Haarlem and makes business trips to Delft.”

“That’s right. Gerard Meverden is his name and he brings Pieter’s letters to Mechelin Huis and I always have one ready myself for him whenever he comes.” She tapped her sister’s arm. “You haven’t explained why Pieter gave me no word of what had happened to Father.”

“I asked him not to tell you. That’s why Sybylla and I didn’t send letters with him. We were afraid you might read between the lines and sense something was not right at home.”

Francesca gave Aletta a sideways glance. “Isn’t it time now that you also told me what role Pieter played in letting your paintings be sold on his stall?”

“You mustn’t blame him in any way!” Aletta sat up from the pillows. “He wanted me to tell you from the start, but I begged him not to insist on that condition. I knew you would have argued against what I wanted to do and I was determined not to have any interference with my plan.” Abruptly she covered her face with her hands. “But he was right and I was wrong! If you had known and stopped me in time I wouldn’t be facing a life in ruins!”

“Aletta,” Francesca said softly, taking her sister’s wrists and gently pulling her hands away from her tragic face, “you’re still only seventeen. Nothing is over yet. You’ve had a setback, but that’s just a passing thing. Maybe you have developed bad habits in your recent work through painting too swiftly, but that can be undone.”