Volume 27 — THE FAIR KATE. (continued 2)
L. C. S. translation
"At this moment the girl tore away from me like lightning, rushed to the door, and before I could try to hold her back, had burst in, and now stood--the most exquisite little fury that ever defended her good name--between the two men.
"I followed her instantly, and was just opening my mouth to interpose, when I heard the stranger give a hollow groan, and saw him reel back a step or two. I looked at him more closely. He was really a fine-looking man, remarkably well-dressed in black, with a resolute somewhat sunburnt face, in which I at once detected a few slight marks of small-pox.
"'Excuse me,' I stammered out in much embarrassment; 'I have the honour, Mr. Hans Lutz--'
"But Kate did not let me finish my speech; one quick glance at the picture, which stood on an easel in the middle of the studio, had sent all the blood back to her face. 'That is scandalous,' said she, going straight up to Van Kuylen, who with his straw-coloured face and nankeen attire cut a most unfortunate figure on this occasion. 'That, then, is your gratitude to me for making an exception in your case, and consenting to sit for my portrait to you; and because I would consent to nothing else, you would degrade me in this way before the whole world, and represent me as a bad bold girl who lets herself be seen for money, and has no objection to her shame being openly exhibited! Declare now once for all before these two witnesses, whether you have ever seen me as I am painted there, whether I was ever alone with you, whether I did not show you the door when you came to me at my lodgings and begged and entreated me to be your wife.'
"Her eyes flashed, and now that she was silent, her nostrils quivered, and I noticed that she pressed her clenched fist closely to her side, as though she feared she might be tempted to commit an assault upon the little yellow man.
"I for my part, marvelled that he took it all so calmly.
"'I find out now,' he said at length with the utmost phlegm, and laying down his pipe, 'who it is I have before me. You are no doubt the engineering gentleman of whom the young lady has already told us. I congratulate you on your return, which will probably set all things to rights. If they went wrong it was your own fault. A person who allows so long a time to pass without being heard of, cannot be surprised at others coming forward in his absence. For the rest, I am prepared to give the lady whatever spoken or written assurance she may require. The best explanation, perhaps, will be found in this!
"So saying he went to a corner of the room, where all sorts of sketches and unfinished pictures were heaped up together, and after a short search, produced a study painted on paper, a female figure in the precise position of Bathsheba, and although the face was merely an outline, one saw at a glance that a quite different model must have sat for it--a coarse common-place person with black hair whose back and shoulders were widely celebrated amongst artists.
"'I thank you,' said the stranger, who seemed somewhat to have recovered the unexpected meeting. 'I believe every word you have said, but I hope you will not consider me too importunate if I repeat the request that the picture may be mine. You understand--'
"'I understand it all,' drily returned Van Kuylen, while lighting his clay-pipe with a large match; 'and as I have something to apologise for, and very much wish that the lady should not eternally resent my inconsiderate freak, I give you the picture for your new establishment. And now--you will excuse me. I have some business which cannot be postponed. A good journey to you.'
"Before one of us could find a word to reply, he made us an abrupt bow, and passed through a door leading into the interior of the house.
"We three who remained behind stood there in utter helplessness. I felt that I was one too many, and was planning how best to leave the pair alone, when suddenly the lovely girl came up to me, held out her hand, and with apparent composure said:
"'Farewell, dear sir; I thank you for all the kindness you have shown me. I will now go home and trouble you no further.'
"With that she turned round without casting one glance at her sun-burnt lover, and moved towards the door.
"'Katharine!' cried the young man, rushing towards her.
"'Leave me!' said the incensed beauty. 'We have no longer anything to do with each other. One who could believe that of me--who could suppose that I should ever degrade myself so far--'
"'Listen to me, dear Kate,' I interposed, for I saw that both the proud high-tempered creatures were just in the mood to part as suddenly as they had met; 'if you really believe that I am a friend to you, do try to follow me and consider the question more calmly. Just put yourself in the place of your Hans Lutz, (you will forgive me, my dear sir, for using your Christian name though we have not even been introduced,) and ask yourself whether a lover is very likely to retain his five senses, when he chances to enter a picture-gallery, and sees the girl of his heart turn her back upon him in that fashion. And yet supposing you had really been Frau van Kuylen, and your husband had painted you behind your back, as our greatest artists have been wont to do with their wives and mistresses, that would have been nothing so very out of the way either. Instead, therefore, of treating the matter so tragically, you ought rather to thank God for having brought things so happily round; to be reconciled to your lover; to my poor friend, who after all is the one to be pitied, for he goes empty away; and to your own face with which you were so very angry. It has, indeed, been an infliction to you, but at last it is to it that you are indebted for the happiness of having Mr. Hans Lutz again. For if Mrs. Bathsheba had not stolen your bewitching profile, who knows whether your lover would ever have come on your track here in Munich, and finally carried off picture and original both!'
"Such was the gist of my address, and my eloquence had the happiest results. There ensued a most affecting reconciliation, an embracing, kissing, and handshaking, whereof--as regards the last at all events--I had my due share, and in another five minutes I saw the happy pair drive off in the cab, radiant with delirious bliss, and had scarcely time to invite them to pay a visit to my house, and to call after the driver to go through the English garden, that being the best scene for such an idyll.
"Van Kuylen did not show himself again. But as I slowly followed the cab, and turned round once more, I thought I saw from the upper window of the small house, a resigned cloud of smoke eddy up from a white clay-pipe. He had not spared himself the pain of looking after the lovers from his lonely watch-tower.
"I need not say that I instantly went home, and accurately repeated the whole remarkable story to my dear wife. Alas! I failed to produce the desired effect thereby. There lurked in the soul of that excellent woman a prejudice against a girl who presumed to be so beautiful that all men ran after her, and even the steadiest landscape painters took in her an interest--fatherly, indeed, but dangerously warm. The suspicion that all might not have been so very right after all, seemed to gain confirmation, when day after day passed without bringing the happy pair to pay their promised visit. My wife went about again with a well-known air of magnanimously suppressed triumph, and treated me with such compassionate indulgence, that it almost drove me wild. But what was to be done? I must needs put up with it, and had only the choice of passing as a bad judge of character, or a secret sinner.
"However, in a fortnight's time the tide turned. I was sitting quietly over my work about noon, when in ran my little Christopher, and called out to me that I was to come instantly to mamma, that there was a most beautiful lady there with a gentleman, and that they had asked for me. There they were then, husband and wife, on their marriage trip through Italy to New York. On the day I had last seen them they had set out homewards to present themselves to their parents, and as Hans Lutz--his real name was Johann Ludwig Weinmann--was making a quantity of money over there in America, it was probably much the same to the father of the fair Kate, whether the result was attained by railway-making and bridge-building, or the tanning of leather. My good wife had at first--she afterwards confessed to me--sat rather monosyllabically there, but when I came in, and neither the young woman nor I blushed, nor exchanged any sign whatever of a private understanding, she finally resumed her equipoise, and was obliged to believe in me: more--in the course of the next half-hour she fell so completely in love with the beautiful world's wonder, she did not know how to let her go, and finally parted from her with the tenderest embraces. Later she said to me, 'It really is a very good thing she is gone to America.'
"The same evening brought another leave-taking, but only in the form of a letter. My good mynheer sent me a note, in which he after his own fashion, and with divers humorous marginal illustrations, announced his journey to Italy. He enclosed a small pen-and-ink drawing as a keepsake; which was very highly finished and in all respects a genuine Van Kuylen. Before a hut in a primeval forest sat a young pair under the shade of palms, bananas, and bread-fruit trees, a couple of fine children playing about their feet, the wife occupied with needle-work, the husband reading to her. Above them on the branch of a majestic tree squatted a small thin ape who was just about to throw a date into the beautiful young woman's lap. Whom the faces of the wedded pair resembled, and who had sat to the artist for the odd, pinched, resigned countenance of the ape it were needless to particularise."