When he returned, his mother had on her white kitchen cap and was placing kettles of water on the broad stove. The shining blue and white tiles of the wall gave the room a cheerful air.

“I’m fixing your favourite cheese bake, Vincent,” said Anna Cornelia. “Do you remember?”

“Do I remember! Oh, Mother!” He threw his arm about her shoulder roughly. She looked up at him with a wistful smile. Vincent was her eldest child and her favourite; his unhappiness was the only thing in life that grieved her.

“Is it good to be home with your mother?” she asked.

He pinched her fresh, wrinkled cheek playfully.

“Yes, sweetheart,” he answered.

She took the sketches of the Borains and studied them carefully.

“But Vincent, what has happened to their faces?”

“Nothing. Why?”

“They haven’t any.”

“I know. I was only interested in the figure.”

“But you can draw people’s faces, can’t you? I’m sure lots of women here in Etten would like to have their portraits painted. There’s a living in that.”

“Yes, I suppose so. But I’ll have to wait until my drawing is right.”

His mother was breaking eggs into a pan of sour cheese she had strained the day before. She paused with half the shell of an egg in each hand and turned from the stove.

“You mean you have to make your drawing right so the portraits will be good enough to sell?”

“No,” replied Vincent, sketching rapidly with his pencil, “I have to make my drawing right so that my drawing will be right.”

Anna Cornelia stirred the yolks into the white cheese thoughtfully and then said, “I’m afraid I don’t understand that, son.”

“Neither do I,” said Vincent, “but anyway it’s so.”

Over the fluffy golden cheese bake at breakfast, Anna Cornelia broke the news to her husband. They had been doing a great deal of uneasy speculating about Vincent in private.

“Is there a future in that, Vincent?” asked his father. “Will you be able to support yourself?”

“Not just at first. Theo is going to help me until I get on my feet. After my drawing becomes accurate, I should be able to make money. Draftsmen in London and Paris earn from ten to fifteen francs a day, and the men who do illustrations for the magazines make good money.”

Theodorus was relieved to find that Vincent had something—anything in mind, and was not going to drift idly as he had all these years.

“I hope, if you begin this work, Vincent, you will keep on with it. You’ll never get anywhere changing from pillar to post.”

“This is the end, Father. I’ll not change again.”

2

AFTER A TIME the rain stopped and warm weather set in. Vincent took his drawing material and easel out of doors and began exploring the country. He liked best to work on the heath, near Seppe, though he often went to a big swamp in the Passievaart to draw the water lilies. Etten was a small, closely knit town and its people looked at him askance. The black velvet suit was the first of its kind to be seen in the village; never before had the natives known a full grown man to spend his days in the open fields with nothing but pencil and drawing paper. He was courteous to his father’s parishioners in a rough, disinterested sort of way, but they wanted to have nothing to do with him. In this tiny, provincial settlement he was a freak, a sport; everything about him was bizarre; his clothes, his manner, his red beard, his history, the fact that he did not work, his incessant sitting in the fields and looking at things. They mistrusted and were afraid of him because he was different, even though he did them no harm and asked only to be let alone. Vincent had no idea the people did not like him.

He was doing a large study of the pine wood that was being cut down, concentrating on a lone tree at the border of a creek. One of the labourers who was clearing away would come and watch him draw, looking over his shoulder with a vacant grin, and occasionally breaking into a loud snigger. The sketch took Vincent some time. Each day the peasant’s guffaws grew louder. Vincent decided to find out just what amused the man.

“You find it funny,” he asked politely, “that I draw a tree?”

The man roared. “Yes, yes, it is so funny. You must be fou!”

Vincent deliberated for a moment and then asked, “Would I be fou if I planted a tree?”

The peasant sobered up instantly. “Oh, no, certainly not.”

“Would I be fou if I tended the tree and took care of it?”

“No, of course not.”

“Would I be fou if I picked the fruit off?”

“Vous vous moquez de moi!”

“Well then, would I be fou if I chopped the tree down, just as they have done here?”

“Oh, no, trees must be cut down.”

“Then I can plant a tree, tend it, pick it, and cut it down, but if I draw one I am fou. Is that right?”

The peasant broke into his broad grin again. “Yes, you must be fou to sit there like that. All the village says so.”