When dinner was over the family played cards, but since Vincent did not know how to play, he settled in a quiet corner and read August Gruson’s “Histoire des Croisades.” From where he was sitting he could watch Kay and the changes of her quick, provocative smile. She left the table and came to his side.
“What are you reading, Cousin Vincent?” she asked.
He told her and then said, “It’s a fine little book, I should almost say written with the sentiment of Thys Maris.”
Kay smiled. He was always making these funny literary allusions. “Why Thys Maris?” she demanded.
“Read this and see if it doesn’t remind you of a Maris canvas, where the writer describes an old castle on a rock, with the autumn woods in twilight, and in the foreground the black fields, and a peasant who is ploughing with a white horse.”
While Kay was reading, Vincent drew up a chair for her. When she looked at him a thoughtful expression darkened her blue eyes.
“Yes,” she said, “it is just like a Maris. The writer and painter use their own medium to express the same thought.”
Vincent took the book and ran his finger across the page eagerly. “This line might have been lifted straight from Michelet or Carlyle.”
“You know, Cousin Vincent, for a man who has spent so little time in classrooms, you are surprisingly well educated. Do you still read a good many books?”
“No, I should like to, but I may not. Though in fact I need not long for it so much, for all things are found in the word of Christ—more perfect and more beautiful than in any other book.”
“Oh, Vincent,” exclaimed Kay, jumping to her feet, “that was so unlike you!”
Vincent stared at her in amazement.
“I think you are ever so much nicer when you’re seeing Thys Maris in the ‘Histoires des Croisades’—though Father says you ought to concentrate and not think of such things—than when you talk like a stuffy, provincial clergyman.”
Vos strolled over and said, “We’ve dealt you a hand, Kay.”
Kay looked for a moment into the live, burning coals under Vincent’s overhanging brows, then took her husband’s arm and joined the other card players.
4
MENDES DA COSTA knew that Vincent liked to talk to him about the more general things of life, so several times a week he invented excuses to accompany him back to town when their lesson was done.
One day he took Vincent through an interesting part of the city, the outskirts that extend from the Leidsche Poort, near the Vondel Park, to the Dutch railway station. It was full of sawmills, workmen’s cottages with little gardens, and was very populous. The quarter was cut through with many small canals.
“It must be a splendid thing to be a clergyman in a quarter like this,” said Vincent.
“Yes,” replied Mendes, as he filled his pipe and passed the cone-shaped bag of tobacco to Vincent, “these people need God and religion more than our friends uptown.”
They were crossing a tiny wooden bridge that might almost have been Japanese. Vincent stopped and said, “What do you mean, Mijnheer?”
“These workers,” said Mendes with a gentle sweep of his arm, “have a hard life of it. When illness comes they have no money for a doctor. The food for tomorrow comes from today’s labour, and hard labour it is, too. Their houses, as you see, are small and poor; they are never more than a stone’s throw away from privation and want. They’ve made a bad bargain with life; they need the thought of God to comfort them.”
Vincent lighted his pipe and dropped the match into the little canal below him. “And the people uptown?” he asked.
“They have good clothes to wear, secure positions, money put away against adversity. When they think of God, He is a prosperous old gentleman, rather well pleased with himself for the lovely way things are going on earth.”
“In short,” said Vincent, “they’re a little stuffy.”
“Dear me!” exclaimed Mendes. “I never said that.”
“No, I did.”
That night he spread his Greek books out before him, and then stared at the opposite wall for a long time. He remembered the slums of London, the sordid poverty and suffering; he remembered his desire to become an evangelist and help those people. His mental image flashed to Uncle Stricker’s church. The congregation was prosperous, well-educated, sensitive to and capable of acquiring the better things of life. Uncle Stricker’s sermons were beautiful and comforting, but who in the congregation needed comfort?
Six months had passed since he first came to Amsterdam. He was at last beginning to understand that hard work is but a poor substitute for natural ability. He pushed aside his language books and opened his algebra. At midnight Uncle Jan came in.
“I saw the light under your door, Vincent,” said the vice-admiral, “and the watchman told me he saw you walking in the Yard at four o’clock this morning. How many hours a day have you been working?”
“It varies. Between eighteen and twenty.”
“Twenty!” Uncle Jan shook his head; the misgiving grew more perceptible on his face. It was difficult for the vice-admiral to adjust himself to the thought of failure in the Van Gogh family. “You should not need so many.”
“I must get my work done, Uncle Jan.”
Uncle Jan brought up his bushy eyebrows. “Be that as it may,” he said, “I have promised your parents to take good care of you. So you will kindly get to bed, and in the future do not work so late.”
Vincent pushed aside his exercises. He had no need for sleep; he had no need for love or sympathy or pleasure. He had need only to learn his Latin and Greek, his algebra and grammar, so that he might pass his examinations, enter the University, become a minister, and do God’s practical work on earth.
5
BY MAY, JUST a year after he came to Amsterdam, he began to realize that his unfitness for formal education, would finally conquer him. This was not a statement of fact, but an admission of defeat, and every time one portion of his brain threw the realization before him, he whipped the rest of his mind to drown the admission in weary labour.
If it had been a simple question of the difficulty of the work, and his manifest unfitness for it, he would not have been disturbed. But the question that racked him night and day was, “Did he want to become a clever, gentleman clergyman like his Uncle Stricker?” What would happen to his ideal of personal service to the poor, the sick, the downtrodden, if he thought only of declensions and formulae for five more years?
One afternoon, late in May, when he had finished his lesson with Mendes, Vincent said, “Mijnheer da Costa, could you find time to take a walk with me?”
Mendes had been sensitive to the growing struggle in Vincent; he divined that the younger man had reached a point where a decision was imminent.
“Yes, I had planned to go for a little stroll. The air is very clear after the rains. I should be glad to accompany you.” He wrapped a wool scarf about his neck many times and put on a high collared, black coat. The two men went into the street, walked by the side of the same synagogue in which Baruch Spinoza had been excommunicated more than three centuries before, and after a few blocks passed Rembrandt’s old home in the Zeestraat.
“He died in poverty and disgrace,” said Mendes in an ordinary tone as they passed the old house.
Vincent looked up at him quickly. Mendes had a habit of piercing to the heart of a problem before one even mentioned it. There was a profound resilience about the man; things one said seemed to be plunged into fathomless depths for consideration. With Uncle Jan and Uncle Stricker, one’s words hit a precise wall and bounced back fast to the tune of yes! or no! Mendes always bathed one’s thought in the deep well of his mellow wisdom before he returned it.