"She was once more silent, and seemed to have forgotten all about her intended narration. There was a Sabbath stillness all around; we only caught through the open door the sound of little Babette's heavy shoes on the gravel walks, and the twittering of birds in the meadows. Van Kuylen had risen and gone to a carved cupboard, in which he had a habit of keeping all sorts of odds and ends; he now brought out of it a wicker-covered flask of curious shape, filled three small glasses from it, and presented them on an old china-tray, first to the young girl, then to me. After we had both declined, he tossed them all three off in succession, and then sat down before his easel, not painting, but resting his head on his hand.
"'What surprises me,' said I, breaking silence at length, 'is that I have never met you before, Miss Kate. Yet I am a pretty constant lounger in our streets, and not unobservant; indeed, my dear wife reproves me for looking over-boldly under the bonnets of pretty girls. You must live like a mole in some underground dwelling, or you never could have escaped me.'
"'Nay,' said she with a slight smile, the first which had lit up her melancholy; 'I walk out every day. I cannot sit still. I find time hang so heavy, as I am not skilled in work. But then I wear a very thick veil, the everlasting staring is so hateful to me, particularly in a strange place. There was only one evening, when standing before a bright shop-window, that I did venture to throw back my veil--at that very moment Herr van Kuylen chanced to pass, and since then he has often and often recognized me, though I am wrapped up like a nun. Besides I always have Babette with me. I should be afraid of going out alone, for though it is now more than a year since I left home, I still feel so desolate and forlorn, and my heart aches so, that I am often tempted to jump into the first deep water I come across, and get rid of myself, and my whole useless existence.'
"Her smile had vanished, and instead, tears stood in her eyes.
"'Were you not then beloved in your home?' I enquired. 'So beautiful and sweet a child must--'
"'Loved! Yes, indeed, if only there had been sense in their affection. I was loved sometimes too much, sometimes too little. If I had had another face it would all have been right enough. But they expected all sorts of wonders, and out of sheer vanity must make me unhappy. There were six brothers and sisters older than myself--I am the youngest and last--and all the rest, who had quite common-place human countenances, are now contented and well provided for, married unnoticed folk of whom no bad or good is said, and about whom no one troubles himself to enquire. But as for me, no sooner was I out of my swaddling-clothes than I was pronounced a little wonder of the world, and all the aunts and cousins lifted their hands in amazement at the sight of me, and told my mother no princess need be ashamed of having brought such a child into the world. And there was something wonderful in it, too. My father was a poor schoolmaster, my mother a sexton's daughter, neither of them particularly handsome; only through my maternal grandmother, pretty hands and feet, and beautiful long hair, had come into the family. But as it happened, while I was coming into the world, Count F----, the patron of our church, put up a magnificent new window in St. Catharine's, representing the Saint kneeling by the wheel, a palm-branch between her folded hands, and painted in such beautiful vivid colours, people were never tired of looking at it. Our whole village, Catholics and Protestants, crowded to see it, and for weeks nothing else was spoken of, at least in our house. My eldest brother, who already drew very well, copied it at once, but my good mother especially saw the picture--as she afterwards told us--constantly before her day and night, whether her eyes were open or shut; and when I was born, she insisted upon it that I must be baptised by the name of Katharine. It was not long before they all took to calling me "the fair Kate," and all agreed that I had stolen my face from the picture on the window.
"'You may suppose that when I first came to understand this, trotting about as a little child, I had no cause to regret it. Everybody coaxed and praised me, and if the kissing and stroking was at times rather too much of a good thing, yet on the whole it had its advantages. As the last of the batch, too, I was better treated in every way than my brothers and sisters, nor had I anything to endure from their jealousy, for they really, as well as my parents, did consider me a thing apart, a special gift and grace of God to the family, reflecting some glory on its other members. It was a thing, of course, that I--so far as our poverty permitted it--should be well dressed, have the best food kept for me, and receive more instruction than the rest. My father used to devote his two hours of leisure to me; I must needs learn French and pianoforte playing, and it was evident to all that not only must I take no share in the house-work, but that my delicate fingers must not be spoilt by sewing or knitting. I only wonder that I did not become more idle and vain than I actually was. But indeed to me, too, it seemed so much a thing of course that I did not give it any particular thought. Apricots have different flavours to wild pears, and cost different sums. That is all very natural. One man has a hundred thousand dollars, another a voice in his throat that bewitches people, a third is so learned that all take off their hats to him, and I was "the fair Kate," with whom everybody fell in love. What the exact value of that was--I mean the falling in love--I did not know; I had not found out that I too had a heart, I was not even very fond of my own family, because I found it tiresome to be always so much made of, and as to falling in love with myself, that couldn't well happen, as I had been used to my bit of red and white, and all the rest that people made such a fuss about, from a child.
"'I had only one playfellow that I cared at all for, and for the very reason that he was rather cross than kind to me; a youth different to the rest, but neither particularly handsome or lively, and one of the poorest. His father shipped charcoal up and down the Rhine, and worked very hard; his mother was a quiet sickly woman, always at home or in the church, with a sorrowful face that made me feel ashamed of my smart clothes. Her son, too--he was about five years older than I, and had often to help his father--would look more crossly than ever out of his eyes if he met me on a Sunday, when my mother had decked me with all sorts of colours. He made no remarks, but he always avoided me on those occasions, and childish as I was, and vain, too, of being the fair Kate, this never failed to give me a pang. I would contrive to get into my every-day clothes to creep down about twilight to the banks of the Rhine where his cottage stood, and I was quite happy if Hans Lutz would only be good-natured to me and say, "Now you look like a human being again, and not like a doll." He had a way--silent as he was--of amusing me better than anybody else, would cut me out little boats of bark that rode at anchor in a little harbour that he built; he could play me my favourite airs on a reed-pipe, and it was often night, and I had to be scolded away before I would consent to part from him.
"'You see already what that was leading to. I could no longer do without him, although others held him cheap as being inferior to them all, because he had had the small-pox and went about in the coarsest and most thread-bare jacket. I almost think there was some vanity in it. I seemed to myself to be a princess condescending to the charcoal-burner; then again in my better hours I noticed that I had an especial respect for him, more indeed than for any other human creature, and that I never respected myself so much as when he had given me a kind word.
"'Our years of childish play were nearly over; he was fifteen, I ten, when a legacy came to his parents, not, indeed, enough to set them up with carriage and horses, but to make them much more comfortable than before. The father gave up the charcoal-loading business, and became--I really do not quite know what--a sort of factor or agent. The eldest son, my Hans Lutz, was sent off to a school for artisans; he was to be an engineer, and was indeed made for it. His younger brother, who was about my own age, remained at home and took to violin playing, in hopes of gaining admission into the Ducal Chapel; they had a distant cousin there who played the bassoon.