The Golden Tulip (28 page)

“What time is Francesca expected home?” Pieter wanted to know.

Hendrick blinked at the clock. “About six o’clock. She finishes painting around five, but always visits Vrouw van Deventer for a little while before she leaves.”

“Then I’ll go before she comes. Now let us get down to facts and figures.” Pieter took his workbook and a pencil from his pocket. “I’ll arrange for the money to be lodged at the bank and for it to be drawn by a second party—I suggest my lawyer—whenever payments become due.”

Hendrick stuck out his chin belligerently. “Don’t you trust me? Do you think I would endanger my daughter’s future again?”

There was an obvious answer to that, but Pieter did not make it. “Suppose you are not able, in your unfortunate circumstances, to keep your creditors at bay. I should not want them claiming what is due to Francesca.”

“That’s sensible, I suppose,” Hendrick was forced to agree.

During the next quarter of an hour he and Pieter settled the figures. Then Pieter accepted a drink and left soon afterward. When he had gone Hendrick realized he had not asked him all the questions that a man should put to a prospective son-in-law, but at least he knew the young man had a good business and had funds enough to meet a totally unexpected outlay.

Francesca and Sybylla arrived home in the coach together shortly after Aletta. They all three thought their father seemed a little brighter than he had that morning. When Francesca was on her own with him later in the evening while changing the linen bindings on his hands, she asked him about the visit he had promised to make.

“What did the doctor say?”

For a moment his mind seemed a vacuum. A good supper had dulled the effect of the grape brandy, but her reference to the doctor puzzled him until he remembered that aeons ago that morning she had asked him to seek medical advice. “He said it’s nothing serious if I take care,” he lied glibly. Then his inventive powers carried him along. “Such as wearing mittens in the winter when I paint.”

“You do that anyway when the weather is exceptionally cold. What treatment did he suggest?”

He was nonplussed as to how to answer her. Then he recalled that when a child he had seen his mother caring for his grandmother’s knobbly old fingers. “Soak my knuckles in warm oil to loosen the sinews.”

She nodded, still bandaging. “I’ve heard of that and it’s easy enough to do. We’ll start the treatment when these cuts are healed.”

He thought irritably of the inconvenience it was going to cause him, wasting time with his fingers dabbling in bowls. “Once a week was often enough, the doctor said.”

She frowned, puzzled. “That can’t be enough. You must have mis-heard him.”

“I’m not deaf,” he retorted sharply, proud of his keen hearing. “He said I could hold my hands in hot water for a little while each time I wash them.” Then, seeing she was about to question him further, he curtailed whatever she was about to say with something he knew would silence her. “Pieter van Doorne called on me today to ask my permission to court you.”

Her fingers paused for a second in the tying of the knot in the binding, but that was the only sign that this information had had any impact on her. “What did you say?” she asked evenly.

“I gave him the usual answer, but he wouldn’t accept it.”

“So?”

“He seemed convinced you wouldn’t be averse to his courtship. There was no question of his wishing to rush you into marriage. It’s important to him that you should finish your apprenticeship.”

“Three years is a long time and I may have all sorts of plans at the end of it. You know that I want to go to Italy at some point in my life. The Renaissance was the very fount of great art and I must see some of those masterly works for myself and be free to paint there.”

“Pieter is not tying you down to anything. All he asks is that he may see you sometimes during your apprenticeship.”

She did not speak again until she had finished rolling up the surplus linen and putting it neatly with her scissors into the little basket on her lap. Then she gave a slow nod. “I’d like to see him there, but not in courtship. If that is understood there is no problem.”

“Shall I tell him or will you?”

“I will. I also have something to pass on to you.” She paused. “I had an odd sort of conversation with Ludolf today. Through becoming your patron he feels patriarchal toward us as a family.”

“I’ve never heard of that happening before.”

“Neither have I, but his goodwill is toward you, Father.”

“Very kind of him. He’s a most considerate man.” A vagueness had clouded Hendrick’s eyes even as his thoughts shied away violently, almost with a sense of horror, from looking for a loan in that quarter. It would be a final, rock-bottom humiliation that he could not face. He had presented himself as a man of comparative means, a successful artist well used to the kind of price for his work that the portrait of Francesca had fetched. Ludolf, on the basis of what he had paid the first time, had bought those surplus pictures from the studio at figures that were higher than those a more renowned artist might have looked for. Hendrick knew that if he approached his patron humbly, confessing to the abject folly that had carried him away, he would not only destroy his position in Ludolf’s eyes but would similarly degrade the value of his work on both the artistic and monetary sides. His patron might never buy from him again.

The following evening, on his way home with slow dejected footsteps, Hendrick stopped on a bridge over the Amstel River and looked down into the glinting water. Suicide was strongly in his mind and he leaned his arms on the parapet in blackest misery. Nobody except for Pieter had offered him as much as a stiver throughout the whole day. He wished he could send to Janetje for a loan, but that brief acquaintanceship with her husband had told him that Giovanni was not a man to relent on a promise extracted and she would be allowed no voice in the matter. Similarly he could not approach Heer Korver, knowing his neighbor’s strict views on gambling. Hendrick clenched his hands on the parapet in deepest despair. How good it would be to feel the river close over his head and take his troubles from him. He remembered the time when he had fallen drunk into a canal in the dead of night and survived with a purse of gold as a bonus. That couldn’t happen again even though his need for himself and his daughters was greater now than—His daughters! A horrifying realization flashed through his mind. Dear God, if he killed himself the debts would devolve upon them! That was intolerable! With a shudder he moved away from the parapet.

“Salted herrings! The best in Amsterdam!” A peddler with a barrel of the small silvery fillets was plying his trade just beyond the bridge. Hendrick opened his purse strings and bought six fillets. Holding each up by the tail end, he tilted back his head and dropped the cheap street delicacy into his mouth. Spiced and salty, they inflamed his thirst and his step was lighter as he turned into the nearest tavern to start quenching it until he was as oblivious to his misfortunes as if he had drowned himself in the Amstel.

Francesca had expected Pieter to come again to her home to hear what decision she had made, but he did not appear. Neither did he come to Ludolf’s house, although he was not yet expected there. When he did present his plans they would not only show the new layout of the garden; there would also be drawings of important areas, and all flowers and bushes and any additional trees would be listed.

Ludolf was also awaiting a visitor. Every day he expected to see Hendrick standing before him with hat in hand. He had heard from his informant that the artist was in a permanent state of semiintoxication while making the rounds of everybody from whom he had the remotest chance of raising a loan. One day he had gone to Rotterdam, where he had some connections, but that had obviously been without result, because the next day he was again on the same mission in Amsterdam. Ludolf judged that it had reached a point where Hendrick’s only option was either to approach one of the many notorious moneylenders, whose rates of interest topped any others in the city, or to come to the one man he least wanted to ask. There was no certainty of knowing which way the scales would dip, but it was hard to believe the artist, pompous and conceited though he was, would not realize eventually that in the choice of two evils he should turn first to his patron, whatever the consequences.

Hendrick’s hands might have healed more quickly if he had not knocked them afresh when reeling against doorways and once slithering down a flight of steps on a wharf. This spate of drinking distressed all three of his daughters and they decided among themselves it was due to his frustration in not being able to paint all the time the cuts remained open. One morning when Francesca repeated her invitation that he should spend the day at Ludolf’s house he agreed to go with her, but on a harsh and tragic note with something like the glint of tears in his red-rimmed eyes. Sybylla promptly burst into tears, moved by his distress that she could not comprehend, and buried her face against his chest.

“Don’t cry, little one,” he said, raising his hand automatically to stroke her hair consolingly. “I’m only still a little drunk from last night.”

Francesca also spoke to her. “Why not fetch Father’s favorite brushes and his palette. He may feel able to put a few correcting touches to my painting of Ludolf at this morning’s sitting.”

Sybylla seized on this chance to do something that would lift her father’s curious melancholia. As soon as she came back with what she had been sent to fetch, she went ahead on her own in the coach while Hendrick and Francesca walked to the van Deventer home.

“I need fresh air,” he had explained.

She enjoyed the walk too, her arm threaded through his. If it had not been for Sybylla’s enjoyment of the ride she would have walked every morning. It was only in the evenings, when she was tired from working all day, that she was glad of the coach waiting for them, even more so when it happened to be pouring with rain.

When Ludolf entered the studio and saw Hendrick discussing Francesca’s painting with her, he knew that the artist had finally succumbed to the only real outlet open to him from his financial difficulties. The intense strain of the past days showed in that haggard face and the artist’s whole frame seemed to have shrunk. Alcohol and despair had certainly taken their toll.

“I’m extremely glad to see you, Hendrick!” They had been on Christian-name terms since the first evening of cards. “You will stay to eat with us, of course. What do you think of your daughter’s work, then? I’ve yet to see it.”

“She has done well,” Hendrick replied. “Why not look at it now? It’s in the final stage when I would permit the sitter to view.”

“Oh no!” Ludolf laughed with every show of good nature, raising a hand against the invitation as he sat down in the chair. “I’m waiting until Francesca tells me it is completely finished.”

Hendrick did add a few touches to the painting, just able to hold his brush with the aid of the support of the maulstick. It stimulated the yearning in him to get back to work on his tax-collector painting, but like a weight on his brain was the moment when he must throw himself on his patron’s mercy. He decided to approach him after they had eaten.

The moment came when they rose from the table. As Francesca returned to the studio and Sybylla went from the room with her, Hendrick cleared his throat. “I wonder if I might have a word in private with you.”

“Not now, I fear, my good fellow.” Ludolf glanced at the clock and then drew his pocket watch out of its embroidered cover to check the time. “I have to be at my warehouse in twenty minutes.”

“It is a matter of utmost urgency.”

Ludolf showed surprise. “Do you intend to prepare me for not liking Francesca’s portrait of me?”

“No. Nothing like that.”

Ludolf looked pointedly at the clock again. “I really must be going. I’m busy tomorrow, but the day after the banquet at midmorning—”

“That’s almost three days!” He dared not risk meeting either Otto or Claudius at the banquet with the promissory notes still unpaid. Neither could he risk offending Ludolf by staying away. “I can’t wait that long!”

For the first time Ludolf appeared to take note of Hendrick’s desperate expression. “Hmm. I can see you are troubled. Ride with me in the coach and we can talk on the way.”

In the coach Hendrick thought that if the situation had been contrived to be as awkward as possible for him it could not have surpassed these circumstances. How did one begin to ask a man short of time for a huge loan with all the distractions of a busy street passing by? To add to everything else, Ludolf had a sheaf of important-looking papers in his hand, at which he kept glancing and which were obviously uppermost in his mind.

“Ludolf,” he began, and then hesitated.

From the opposite seat, Ludolf looked across at him. “Well? Speak up, my friend. What is it?”

The amiable courtesy could not veil a slight impatience. Somehow Hendrick found his voice. “First of all I should like to thank you for not having mentioned my ill fortune while we dined today, or during your sittings with Francesca.” He had thought that a good way to start, but now he was not sure of anything anymore.

“I know the prim attitude most women hold toward gambling losses,” Ludolf replied with a shrug. “It’s best to keep them in ignorance of occasional bouts of ill luck.” He chatted on flowingly about how he tried to keep from his sick wife whatever he thought might distress her. Frantically Hendrick awaited his chance to speak again. Had he not known his patron for the kindly man he was, it would have been possible to believe the delay in letting him speak was deliberate. Perhaps it was! Anyone as rich as Ludolf would have become adept over the years in thwarting appeals for money. Then, even as Hendrick felt it was impossible to go on with what he had intended to say, Ludolf gestured encouragingly.

“I’m talking too much. Pray pardon me. As I daresay you’ve noticed,” he added with a touch of humor, “the only time I’m silent is when I’m concentrating on play at the tables. We really must have another evening of cards again soon—not just on the evening of the banquet, when the players in the card room will be an assorted bunch, but us four keen players on our own again. That should give you the opportunity to recoup your losses.”