Lust for Life

Aunt Wilhelmina welcomed Vincent and led him into the dining room. A portrait of Calvin by Ary Scheffer hung on the wall, and a silver service gleamed on a sideboard. The walls were done in dark wood panelling.

Before Vincent could get used to the customary darkness of the room, a tall, lithe girl came out of the shadows and greeted him warmly.

“Of course you wouldn’t know me,” she said in a rich voice, “but I’m your Cousin Kay.”

Vincent took her outstretched hand and felt the soft, warm flesh of a young woman for the first time in many months.

“We’ve never met,” the girl went on in that intimate tone, “and I think it rather curious, since I’m twenty-six, and you must be . . .?”

Vincent gazed at her in silence. Several moments passed before he realized that an answer was necessary. In order to make up for his stupidity, he blurted out in a loud, harsh voice, “Twenty-four. Younger than you.”

“Yes. Well, I suppose it’s not so curious after all. You have never visited Amsterdam and I have never been in the Brabant. But I’m afraid I’m being a poor hostess. Won’t you sit down?”

He sat on the edge of a stiff chair. With one of the swift, strange metamorphoses that changed him from an awkward, country boor to a polished gentleman, he said, “Mother often wished you would come to visit us. I think the Brabant would have pleased you. The countryside is very simpatico.”

“I know. Aunt Anna wrote and invited me several times. I must visit there very soon.”

“Yes,” replied Vincent, “you must.”

It was only a remote portion of his mind that heard and answered the girl. The rest of him was soaking up her beauty with the passionate thirst of a man who has drunk too long at a celibate well. Kay had the hardy features of the Dutch women, but they had been filed down, chiselled away to delicate proportions. Her hair was neither the corn blonde nor the raw red of her country-women, but a curious intermingling in which the fire of one had caught up the light of the other in a glowing, subtle warmth. She had guarded her skin against the sun and wind; the whiteness of her chin crept into the flush of her cheek with all the artistry of a little Dutch master. Her eyes were a deep blue, dancing to the joy of life; her full-lipped mouth was slightly open, as though for its acceptance.

She noticed Vincent’s silence and said, “What are you thinking about, Cousin? You seem preoccupied.”

“I was thinking that Rembrandt would have liked to paint you.”

Kay laughed low and with a ripe lusciousness in her throat. “Rembrandt only liked to paint ugly old women, didn’t he?” she asked.

“No,” replied Vincent. “He painted beautiful old women, women who were poor or in some way unhappy, but who through sorrow had gained a soul.”

For the first time Kay really looked at Vincent. She had glanced at him only casually when he came in and noticed his mop of rust-red hair and rather heavy face. Now she saw the full mouth, the deep set, burning eyes, the high, symmetrical forehead of the Van Goghs, and the uncrushable chin, stuck slightly out toward her.

“Forgive me for being stupid,” she murmured, almost in a whisper. “I understand what you mean about Rembrandt. He gets at the real essence of beauty, doesn’t he, when he paints those gnarled old people who have suffering and defeat carved into their faces.”

“What have you children been talking about so earnestly?” asked the Reverend Stricker from the doorway.

“We have been getting acquainted,” Kay answered. “Why didn’t you tell me I had such a nice cousin?”

Another man came into the room, a slender chap with an easy smile and charming manner. Kay rose and kissed him eagerly. “Cousin Vincent,” she said, “this is my husband, Mijnheer Vos.”

She returned in a few moments with a tow-headed boy of two, a vivacious child with a wistful face and the light blue eyes of his mother. Kay reached down and lifted the boy. Vos put his arms about the two of them.

“Will you sit on this side of the table with me, Vincent?” asked Aunt Wilhelmina.

Opposite Vincent, with Vos on one side and Jan propped up on the other, sat Kay. She had forgotten about Vincent now that her husband was home. The colour deepened in her cheek. Once, as her husband said something pointed in a low, guarded tone, she leaned over with a quick alertness and kissed him.

The vibrant waves of their love reached out and engulfed Vincent. For the first time since that fateful Sunday the old pain for Ursula arose from some mysterious source within him and flooded the outermost ramparts of his body and brain. The little family before him, with its clinging unity and joyous affection, brought him to a realization that he had been hungry, desperately hungry for love all these weary months, and that it was a hunger not easily destroyed.

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