The ground was a carpet of deep reddish brown in the glow of an autumn evening sun, tempered by the trees. Young birches sprang up, caught light on one side, and were sparkling green there, the shadowy sides of the stems were warm, deep black-green. Behind the saplings, behind the brownish red soil was a very delicate sky, bluish grey, warm, hardly blue, all aglow. Against it was a hazy border of green and a network of little stems and yellowish leaves. A few figures of wood gatherers were wandering around like dark masses of mysterious shadow. The white cap of a woman, who was bending to reach a dry branch, stood out brusquely against the deep red-brown of the ground. A dark silhouette of a man appeared above the underbrush; moulded against the sky, the figure was large and full of poetry.
While painting he said to himself, “I must not go away before there is something of an autumn evening feeling in it, something mysterious, something serious.” But the light was fading. He had to work quickly. The figures he painted in at once by a few strong strokes with a resolute brush. It struck him how firmly the little tree stems were rooted in the ground. He tried to paint them in, but the ground was already so sticky that a brush stroke was lost in it. He tried again and again, desperately, for it was getting darker. At last he saw he was defeated; no brush could suggest anything in that rich loam-brown of the earth. With a blind intuition he flung the brush away, squeezed the roots and trunks on the canvas from the tubes of paint, picked up another brush, and modelled the thick, coloured oil with the handle.
“Yes,” he exclaimed, as night finally claimed the woods, “now they stand there, rising from the ground, strongly rooted in it. I have said what I wanted to say!”
Weissenbruch looked in that evening. “Come along with me to Pulchri. We’re having some tableaux and charades.”
Vincent had not forgotten his last visit. “No, thanks, I don’t care to leave my wife.”
Weissenbruch walked over to Christine, kissed her hand, asked after her health, and played with the baby quite jovially. He evidently had no recollection of the last thing he had said to them.
“Let me see some of your new sketches, Vincent.”
Vincent complied only too gladly. Weissenbruch picked out a study of Monday’s market, where they were pulling down the stands; another of a line waiting in front of the soup kitchen; another of three old men at the insane asylum; another of a fishing smack at Scheveningen with the anchor raised, and a fifth that Vincent had made on his knees, in the mud of the dunes during a driving rain storm.
“Are these for sale? I’d like to buy them.”
“Is this another of your poor jokes, Weissenbruch?”
“I never joke about painting. These studies are superb. How much do you want?”
Vincent said, “Name your own price,” numbly, afraid that he was going to be ridiculed at any moment.
“Very well, how about five francs apiece? Twenty-five for the lot.”
Vincent’s eyes shot open. “That’s too much! My Uncle Cor only paid me two and a half francs.”
“He cheated you, my boy. All dealers cheat you. Some day they will sell for five thousand francs. What do you say, is it a deal?”
“Weissenbruch, sometimes you’re an angel and sometimes you’re a fiend!”
“That’s for variety, so my friends won’t get tired of me.”
He took out a wallet and handed Vincent twenty-five francs. “Now come along with me to Pulchri. You need a little entertainment. We’re having a farce by Tony Offermans. It will do you good to laugh.”
So Vincent went along. The hall of the club was crowded with men all smoking cheap and strong tobacco. The first tableau was after an etching by Nicholas Maes, The Stable at Bethlehem, very good on tone and colour, but decidedly off in expression. The other was after Rembrandt’s Isaac Blessing Jacob, with a splendid Rebecca looking on to see if her trick would succeed. The close air gave Vincent a headache. He left before the farce and went home, composing the sentences of a letter as he walked.
He told his father as much about the story of Christine as he thought expedient, enclosed Weissenbruch’s twenty-five francs, and asked Theodorus to come to The Hague as his guest.
A week later his father arrived. His blue eyes were fading, his step becoming slower. The last time they had been together, Theodorus had ordered his oldest son from the house. In the interim they had exchanged friendly letters. Theodorus and Anna Cornelia had sent several bundles of underwear, outer clothing, cigars, homemade cake, and an occasional ten franc note. Vincent did not know how his father would take to Christine. Sometimes men were understanding and generous, sometimes they were blind and vicious.
He did not think his father could remain indifferent and raise objections—near a cradle. A cradle was not like anything else; there was no fooling with it. His father would have to forgive whatever there might have been in Christine’s past.
Theodorus had a large bundle under his arm. Vincent opened it, drew out a warm coat for Christine, and knew that everything was all right. After she had gone upstairs to the attic bedroom, Theodorus and Vincent sat together in the studio.
“Vincent,” said his father, “there was one thing you did not mention in your letter. Is the baby yours?”
“No. She was carrying it when I met her.”
“Where is its father?”
“He deserted her.” He did not think it necessary to explain the child’s anonymity.
“But you will marry her, Vincent, won’t you? It’s not right to live this way.”
“I agree. I want to go through the legal ceremony as soon as possible. But Theo and I decided that it would be better to wait until I am earning a hundred and fifty francs a month through my drawing.”
Theodorus sighed. “Yes, perhaps that would be the best. Vincent, your mother would like you to come home for a visit sometime. And so should I. You will enjoy Nuenen, son; it is one of the most lovely villages in all the Brabant. The little church is so tiny, and looks like an Eskimo’s igloo. It seats less than a hundred people, imagine! There are hawthorn hedges around the parsonage, Vincent, and behind the church is a flower filled yard with sand mounds and old wooden crosses.”
“With wooden crosses!” said Vincent. “White ones?”
“Yes. The names are in black, but the rain is washing them away.”
“Is there a nice tall steeple on the church, Father?”
“A delicate, fragile one, Vincent, but it goes way, way up into the sky. Sometimes I think it almost reaches God.”
“Throwing a thin shadow over the graveyard.” Vincent’s eyes were sparkling. “I’d like to paint that.”
“There’s a stretch of heath and pine woods close by, and peasants digging in the fields. You must come home soon for a visit, son.”
“Yes, I must see Nuenen. The little crosses, and the steeple and the diggers in the field. I guess there will always be something of the Brabant about me.”
Theodorus returned home to assure his wife that things were not so bad with their boy as they had imagined. Vincent plunged into his work with an even greater zeal. More and more he found himself going back to Millet: “L’art c’est un combat; dans I’art il faut y mettre sa peau”. Theo believed in him, his mother and father did not disapprove of Christine, and no one in The Hague disturbed him any more. He was completely free to go ahead with his work.