It was a hot September day and the sky over Amsterdam was a clear Delft blue when Hendrick was taken from the cellar and conveyed to court for his trial. He sat in the cart with his face hidden in his arms, wanting no one to recognize him. The previous morning Willem had gained permission to see him and to bring a lawyer and, equally welcome, a razor and a change of clothes, or else a beard and unkempt hair would have disguised him.

Mercifully the trial was over quickly. The lawyer presented a strong defense of provocation caused to a master upon seeing unauthorized signed work by a pupil from his own studio. Willem also spoke on Hendrick's behalf. Lastly Aletta took the witness stand and admitted that she had done work for sale without her father's knowledge. The judge publicly condemned her as a wayward daughter, which caused her intense shame. The punishment imposed on Hendrick was restricted to a heavy fine, which Willem paid on his behalf. Hendrick was careful not to show his jubilation at how lightly he had got away. Once again good fortune had nudged a path through tribulation for him. But as he left the courtroom a free man again, the sobering realization came to him that his debts, now increased by a further six hundred florins, held him in thrall as securely as the prison bars he had left behind him. He would not be truly liberated until Francesca was married to Ludolf.

As he went down the steps into the street, Willem and Sybylla with him, he saw Aletta standing there, but he ignored her. Without a glance in her direction he took a seat in Willem's coach, which was waiting. His pride had suffered another almost insupportable blow and he could not forgive her. Had she used her own name and not gone about her clandestine painting under the name of her mother, he might have found it in his heart to forgive her, but to his mind she had insulted Anna's memory. When he saw Sybylla hesitate as if she would go to Aletta he beckoned her fiercely.

"Get in the coach!"

She obeyed reluctantly. Her eyes, full of sympathy, were on her sister. Willem, wanting to bring Hendrick and Aletta together again, spoke to him persuasively.

"Surely you would like both your daughters to ride home with you on this day?"

"No!" Hendrick sat forward with a grimace that was almost a snarl. "Aletta shall never paint again under my roof! Or be welcome there! That is to be the punishment of a daughter who has offended against her father!"

Willem sighed and took the seat beside him. As the coach moved forward Willem saw that Aletta stood with her head bowed in distress. It was to be hoped that before long Hendrick's basic good nature would surface and there would be a reconciliation between them. Willem, having heard both sides of the story, thought that Aletta had erred, although he understood and sympathized with her reasons.

As was to be expected, Hendrick was hungry for news as to what had been happening in Amsterdam and elsewhere, for little information about anything had reached the damp confines of the gatehouse tower. Then, as the talk in the coach turned to the trial, Willem spoke of Ludolf.

"Had he not been away from Amsterdam on his business travels, I would have asked him to speak as well on your behalf. I wrote to tell him of your predicament, asking his clerk to see that the letter reached him. With the interest he has in your work and your well-being, I'm sure that upon his return he would have moved heaven and earth to get your release if the worse had come to the worst."

Hendrick gave a snort. "I'm sure you're right. Naturally he wouldn't want me to be incarcerated. It would undercut his plans."

"What do you mean?"

Hendrick realized he had let slip too much and covered it quickly. "Only that he wants to fill his walls with my paintings without too much delay. Has word of my tribulation been kept from Francesca?"

"It has. You asked me that yesterday."

"Did I? To have freedom again has set my head in a whirl."

Sybylla leaned toward him from the opposite seat. "All will be well when you're home again, Father. Please try to forgive Aletta for being the cause of so much trouble."

Again his face contorted fearsomely, causing her to draw back in her seat, and he made a threatening gesture. "Don't mention your sister's name to me! Forgiveness was drained out of me in prison. I don't know yet if it will ever return."

When Hendrick's home was reached Willem remained in the coach, letting him go in on his own with Sybylla. Maria and Griet must have been watching out, desperately anxious to know the result of the trial, for the entrance door opened wide before they reached it.

Maria wept with relief and happiness to see Hendrick home again and he suffered her kiss, p.r.i.c.kly with whiskers, on his cheek. Then he went straight to his studio. The familiar aroma of chalk, oil, paint and ink had a reviving effect, almost as if his blood had been dormant and was now coursing through his veins again. His self-portrait was exactly as he had left it and he eyed it critically, able to see already where more work was needed. Then he looked in the mirror that was still in its position at the side of the easel and was shocked by the change in his appearance. His face had become thin, his jowls hanging in dewlaps and his eyes were sunken. As for his hair, that had become quite white, almost no trace left of its coppery color. He had been aware of his loss of bodily weight, but he had not realized that incarceration had also stamped old age into his features.

He shuddered and took the half-finished portrait from the easel to place it in the storeroom out of sight. There was no point in finishing it now. Later he would paint over it and do another likeness of himself once his self-esteem had returned and the memory of prison had faded. In the storeroom Aletta's easel was propped against the wall, her palette and brushes on a shelf above. Whether this had been done through orders he had sent through Willem or whether it had been prompted by Aletta's conscience after his arrest he did not know. He tilted the palette and touched a sc.r.a.p of paint left on the surface. It was hard and dry.

With the memory of her careless work vivid in his mind, he no longer had any faith in Aletta's future as an artist, all thoughts of an apprenticeship for her dismissed from his mind. She should concentrate now on marriage. He would give her free choice, even though he was denying it to Francesca. There was nothing that could make him change his mind about seeing Francesca wed to Ludolf. Not even for his beloved firstborn could he ever face prison again.

HENDRICK 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 att.i.tude 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 ch.o.r.es.

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 sh.e.l.l 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 compa.s.sion 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.

WHEN ALETTA WENT TO THE STUDIO AND TOLD HENDRICK 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 gla.s.s.

Aletta sat silent in the stage wagon and did not chat to her fellow pa.s.sengers. 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 att.i.tude 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 pa.s.sengers 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 pa.s.sengers 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 pa.s.sengers 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 gra.s.s above a ca.n.a.l.

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 sc.r.a.ped 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 gra.s.s 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 pa.s.senger 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 G.o.d! 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 a.s.sistance, 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 compa.s.sion 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 a.s.sistance 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 ca.n.a.l and laid beside the coachman.

By now it was getting dark. Aletta was taken into Delft, together with the other women pa.s.sengers 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 appet.i.te. 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 pa.s.sing thing. Maybe you have developed bad habits in your recent work through painting too swiftly, but that can be undone."

Aletta shook her head. "I haven't told you yet the worst that has befallen me. Before Father was even home again he sent a message by Willem that whatever the result of the next day's trial, I was never to paint under his roof again. His one thought has been to be rid of me. I fear it's because every time he looks at me he is reminded that I was the cause of his being chained up like a dog in that gatehouse."

"My poor, dear sister!"

"That's why I'm never going home again, and I told Sybylla and Maria that before I left." Aletta's jaw jutted resolutely. "I asked Vrouw Wolff if I could stay here until I get employment that will provide me with a bed as well."

"But your painting!"

Aletta looked stonily ahead of her. "That was a dream that has been shattered. At the moment it doesn't seem to matter much. I can't feel anything anymore. I haven't for weeks, except to become angry with everybody at the least provocation. When the moment of the accident occurred I knew no fear. I didn't care if I lived or died."

"Yet afterward you sorrowed for the injured and the dead."

"That must have been some last flickering part of me not yet snuffed out."

"Come to the studio with me tomorrow. I'll be on my own, because Jan is away again. Just sit and absorb the atmosphere. After all you have been through you need to rest and go through a period of healing. Just to look at Jan's beautiful and tranquil paintings will be a step toward restoring your spirits."

Aletta's voice was hard. "I'll never set foot in a studio again!"

Francesca would never have believed it possible for Aletta to be so changed. All gentleness seemed to have been crushed out of her and she was like tempered steel. "At least come to the Mechelin Huis with me and meet Catharina. She is just the one to ask about finding employment for you. I'm sure Geetruyd would find you work scrubbing the floors of her almshouses and inst.i.tutions, or cooking in the kitchens, but-"

"I don't suffer from Father's excessive pride," Aletta broke in sharply. "I'll do any ch.o.r.e."

"I know you would and so would I if the need arose, but you have such talents that could be put to good use. You sew and embroider, dress hair like a professional, even though you never do more than brush your own and twist it up under your various caps, and you can play the virginal with your soul in the music as Sybylla does with her viol. You would be able to teach all those skills and perhaps eventually have a little school of your own."

For the first time since their meeting Aletta smiled, slight though the smile was. "You've always had the right words of cheer and comfort for me."