THE NEW STUDIO looked so real, with plain greyish-brown paper, scrubbed wooden floors, studies on the walls, an easel at each end, and a large, white deal working table. Christine’s mother put up white muslin curtains at the windows. Adjoining the studio was an alcove where Vincent kept all his drawing boards, portfolios and woodcuts; in a corner was a closet for his bottles, pots, and books. The living room had a table, a few kitchen chairs, an oil stove, and a large wicker chair for Christine near the window. Beside it he put a small iron crib with a green cover, and above it the etching by Rembrandt of the two women by the cradle, one of them reading from the Bible by the light of a candle.
He secured everything that was strictly necessary for the kitchen; when Christine came back she could prepare dinner in ten minutes. He bought an extra knife, fork, spoon, and plate against the day when Theo should come to visit them. Up in the attic he put a large bed for himself and his wife, and the old one with all the bedding in good order for Herman. He and Christine’s mother got straw, seaweed, bedticking, and filled the mattresses themselves in the attic.
When Christine left the hospital, the doctor who treated her, the nurse of the ward, and the head nurse all came to say good-bye. Vincent realized more fully than before that she was a person for whom serious people might have sympathy and affection. “She has never seen what is good,” he said to himself, “so how can she be good?”
Christine’s mother and her boy Herman were at the Schenkweg to greet her. It was a delightful homecoming, for Vincent had told her nothing about the new nest. She ran about touching things; the cradle, the easy chair, the flower pot he had placed on the sill outside her window. She was in high spirits.
“The professor was awfully funny,” she cried. “He said, ‘I say, are you fond of gin and bitters? And can you smoke cigars?’ ‘Yes,’ I answered him. ‘I only asked it,’ he said, ‘to tell you that you need not give it up. But you must not use vinegar, pepper, or mustard. And you should eat meat at least once a week.’”
Their bedroom looked a good deal like a hold of a ship, for it had been wainscotted. Vincent had to carry the iron cradle upstairs every night and down again to the living room in the morning. He had to do all the housework for which Christine was still too weak; making the beds, lighting the fire, lifting and carrying and cleaning. He felt as though he had been together with Christine and the children for a long time, and that he was in his element. Although she still suffered from the operation, there was a renewing and a reviving in her.
Vincent went back to work with a new peace in his heart. It was good to have a hearth of one’s own, to feel the bustle and organization of a family about one. Living with Christine gave him courage and energy to go on with his work. If only Theo did not desert him he was certain that he could develop into a good painter.
In the Borinage he had slaved for God; here he had a new and more tangible kind of God, a religion that could be expressed in one sentence: that the figure of a labourer, some furrows in a ploughed field, a bit of sand, sea and sky were serious subjects, so difficult, but at the same time so beautiful, that it was indeed worth while to devote his life to the task of expressing the poetry hidden in them.
One afternoon, coming home from the dunes, he met Tersteeg in front of the Schenkweg house.
“I am glad to see you, Vincent,” said Tersteeg. “I thought I would come and inquire how you are getting on.”
Vincent dreaded the storm that he knew would break once Tersteeg got upstairs. He stood chatting with him a few moments on the street in order to gather strength. Tersteeg was friendly and pleasant. Vincent shivered.
When the two men entered, Christine was nursing the baby in her wicker chair. Herman was playing by the stove. Tersteeg gaped at them for a long, long time. When he spoke, it was in English.
“What is the meaning of that woman and child?”
“Christine is my wife. The child is ours.”
“You have actually married her?”
“We haven’t gone through the ceremony yet, if that’s what you mean.”
“How can you think of living with a woman . . . and children who . . .”
“Men usually marry, do they not?”
“But you have no money. You’re being supported by your brother.”
“Not at all. Theo pays me a salary. Everything I make belongs to him. He will get his money back some day.”
“Have you gone mad, Vincent? This is certainly a thing that comes from an unsound mind and temperament.”
“Human conduct, Mijnheer, is a great deal like drawing. The whole perspective changes with the shifted position of the eye, and depends not on the subject, but on the man who is looking.”
“I shall write to your father. Vincent. I shall write and tell him of the whole affair.”
“Don’t you think it would be ridiculous if they received an indignant letter from you, and soon after, a request from me to come and visit here at my expense?”
