Poor soul.She did come into the kitchen to me.'I am not to be painted now,' said she, and the tears in her eyes.She said no more.But I knew well what she did mean.I had seen ye.""Well," said Margaret Van Eyck, "I do confess so much, and I make you the judge, madam.Know that these young girls can do nothing of their own heads, but are most apt at mimicking aught their sweethearts do.Now your Gerard is reasonably handy at many things, and among the rest at the illuminator's craft.And Margaret she is his pupil, and a patient one: what marvel? having a woman's eye for colour, and eke a lover to ape.'Tis a trick Idespise at heart: for by it the great art of colour, which should be royal, aspiring, and free, becomes a poor slave to the petty crafts of writing and printing, and is fettered, imprisoned, and made little, body and soul, to match the littleness of books, and go to church in a rich fool's pocket.Natheless affection rules us all, and when the poor wench would bring me her thorn leaves, and lilies, and ivy, and dewberries, and ladybirds, and butterfly grubs, and all the scum of Nature-stuck fast in gold-leaf like wasps in a honey-pot, and withal her diurnal book, showing she had pored an hundred, or an hundred and fifty, or two hundred hours over each singular page, certes I was wroth that an immortal soul, and many hours of labour, and much manual skill, should be flung away on Nature's trash, leaves, insects, grubs, and on barren letters; but, having bowels, I did perforce restrain, and as it were, dam my better feelings, and looked kindly at the work to see how it might be bettered; and said I, 'Sith Heaven for our sins hath doomed us to spend time, and soul, and colour on great letters and little beetles, omitting such small fry as saints and heroes, their acts and passions, why not present the scum naturally?' I told her 'the grapes I saw, walking abroad, did hang i' the air, not stick in a wall; and even these insects,' quo' I, 'and Nature her slime in general, pass not their noxious lives wedged miserably in metal prisons like flies in honey-pots and glue-pots, but do crawl or hover at large, infesting air.' 'Ah my dear friend,' says she, 'I see now whither you drive; but this ground is gold; whereon we may not shade.' 'Who said so?' quoth I.
'All teachers of this craft,' says she; and (to make an end o' me at once, I trow) 'Gerard himself!' 'That for Gerard himself,'
quoth I, 'and all the gang; gi'e me a brush!'
"Then chose I, to shade her fruit and reptiles, a colour false in nature, but true relatively to that monstrous ground of glaring gold; and in five minutes out came a bunch of raspberries, stalk and all, and a'most flew in your mouth; likewise a butterfly grub she had so truly presented as might turn the stoutest stomach.My lady she flings her arms round my neck, and says she, 'Oh!'""Did she now?"
"The little love!" observed Denys, succeeding at last in wedging in a word.
Margaret Van Eyck stared at him; and then smiled.She went on to tell them how from step to step she had been led on to promise to resume the art she had laid aside with a sigh when her brothers died, and to paint the Madonna once more - with Margaret for model.Incidentally she even revealed how girls are turned into saints."Thy hair is adorable," said I."Why, 'tis red," quo' she.
"Ay," quoth I, "but what a red! how brown! how glossy! most hair is not worth a straw to us painters; thine the artist's very hue.
But thy violet eyes, which smack of earth, being now languid for lack of one Gerard, now full of fire in hopes of the same Gerard, these will I lift to heaven in fixed and holy meditation, and thy nose, which doth already somewhat aspire that way (though not so piously as Reicht's), will I debase a trifle, and somewhat enfeeble thy chin.""Enfeeble her chin? Alack! what may that mean? Ye go beyond me, mistress."'Tis a resolute chin.Not a jot too resolute for this wicked world; but when ye come to a Madonna? No thank you.""Well I never.A resolute chin."
Denys."The darling!"
"And now comes the rub.When you told me she was - the way she is, it gave me a shock; I dropped my brushes.Was I going to turn a girl, that couldn't keep her lover at a distance, into the Virgin Mary, at my time of life? I love the poor ninny still.But I adore our blessed Lady.Say you, 'a painter must not be peevish in such matters'? Well, most painters are men; and men are fine fellows.
They can do aught.Their saints and virgins are neither more nor less than their lemans, saving your presence.But know that for this very reason half their craft is lost on me, which find beneath their angels' white wings the very trollops I have seen flaunting it on the streets, bejewelled like Paynim idols, and put on like the queens in a pack o' cards.And I am not a fine fellow, but only a woman, and my painting is but one half craft, and t'other half devotion.So now you may read me.'Twas foolish, maybe, but I could not help it; yet am I sorry." And the old lady ended despondently a discourse which she had commenced in a'mighty defiant tone.
"Well, you know, dame," observed Catherine, "you must think it would go to the poor girl's heart, and she so fond of ye?"Margaret Van Eyck only sighed.
The Frisian girl, after biting her lips impatiently a little while, turned upon Catherine."Why, dame, think you 'twas for that alone Margaret and Peter hath left Sevenbergen? Nay.""For what else, then?"
"What else? Why, because Gerard's people slight her so cruel.Who would bide among hard-hearted folk that ha' driven her lad t'
Italy, and now he is gone, relent not, but face it out, and ne'er come anigh her that is left?""Reicht, I was going."
"Oh, ay, going, and going, and going.Ye should ha' said less or else done more.But with your words you did uplift her heart and let it down wi' your deeds.'They have never been,' said the poor thing to me, with such a sigh.Ay, here is one can feel for her: