All this was very well during the long months of the summer, autumn, and fall, when he left the house as early as five and six o’clock in the morning, to be gone until the light of day failed completely and he had to trudge home across the dunes in the cool dusk. But when a terrific snow-storm served to celebrate the first anniversary of their meeting in the wine shop opposite the Ryn station, and Vincent had to work at home from morning until night, it became more difficult to maintain a satisfactory relationship.
He went back to drawing, and saved money on paints, but the models ate him out of house and home. People who would gladly work for next to nothing at the worst kind of menial labour would demand a large sum just to come and sit for him. He asked permission to sketch at the insane asylum, but the authorities declared they had no precedent for it, and besides they were laying new floors so he could not work there except on visiting days.
His only hope lay in Christine. As soon as she was well and strong he expected her to pose for him, work as hard as she had before the baby came. Christine had different ideas. At first she would say, “I’m not strong enough. Wait a bit. You ain’t in any hurry.” When she was completely well again, she thought herself too busy.
“It’s not the same now as it was, Vincent,” she would say. “I got to nurse the baby. And I got to keep a whole house clean. There’s four people to cook for.”
Vincent arose at five in the morning to do the housework so that she would be free to pose during the day. “But I ain’t a model no more,” she protested. “I’m your wife.”
“Sien, you must pose for me! I can’t afford to hire models every day. That’s one of the reasons you’re here.”
Christine flared up into one of the unrestrained fits of temper that had been so common when she first met Vincent. “That’s all you took me in for! So you could save money out of me! I’m just a goddam servant to you! If I don’t pose you’ll throw me out again!”
Vincent thought for a moment and then said, “You heard all those things at your mother’s. You didn’t think of them for yourself.”
“Well, and what if I did? They’re true, ain’t they?”
“Sien, you’ll have to stop going there.”
“Why? I guess I love my mother, don’t I?”
“But they’re ruining things between us. The first thing you know they’ll have you back in their way of thinking. Then where will our marriage be?”
“Ain’t you the one tells me go there when there’s no food in the house? Make some more money and I won’t have to go back.”
When he finally did get her to pose, she was useless. She committed all the errors he had worked so hard to eradicate the year before. Sometimes he suspected that she wiggled, made awkward gestures purposely so that he would become disgusted and not bother her to pose any more. In the end he had to give her up. His expense for outside models increased. Along with it, the number of days that they were without money for food also increased, and so did the amount of time that Christine was forced to spend at her mother’s. Each time she came back from there he perceived a slight change in her bearing and attitude. He was caught in a vicious circle; if he used all his money for living, Christine would not go back to the influence of her mother; he could maintain their relationship on a wholesome plane. But if he did that, he would have to give up his work. Had he saved her life just to kill himself? If she did not go to her mother’s several times a month, she and the children would starve; if she did go she would eventually destroy their home. What was he to do?
Christine ill and carrying a child, Christine in the hospital, Christine recovering from the confinement, was one sort of person; a woman abandoned,
