Lust for Life

THE NEXT MORNING no one called him. He climbed lethargically out of bed. He shaved around his face in a circular swash, leaving several patches of beard. Ursula did not appear at breakfast. He walked downtown to Goupils. As he passed the same men that he had seen the morning before he noticed that they had altered. They looked like such lonely souls, hurrying away to their futile labours.

He did not see the laburnums in bloom nor the chestnut trees that lined the road. The sun was shining even more brightly than the morning before. He did not know it.

During the day he sold twenty épreuves d’artiste in colour of the Venus Anadyomene after Ingres. There was a big profit in these pictures for Goupils, but Vincent had lost his sense of delight in making money for the gallery. He had very little patience with the people who came in to buy. They not only could not tell the difference between good and bad art, but seemed to have a positive talent for choosing the artificial, the obvious, and the cheap.

His fellow clerks had never thought him a jolly chap, but he had done his best to make himself pleasant and agreeable. “What do you suppose is bothering the member of our illustrious Van Gogh family?” one of the clerks asked another.

“I dare say he got out of the wrong side of bed this morning.”

“A jolly lot he has to worry about. His uncle, Vincent Van Gogh, is half owner of all the Goupil Galleries in Paris, Berlin, Brussels, The Hague, and Amsterdam. The old man is sick and has no children; everyone says he’s leaving his half of the business to this chap.”

“Some people have all the luck.”

“That’s only half the story. His uncle, Hendrik Van Gogh, owns big art shops in Brussels and Amsterdam, and still another uncle, Cornelius Van Gogh, is the head of the biggest firm in Holland. Why, the Van Goghs are the greatest family of picture dealers in Europe. One day our red-headed friend in the next room will practically control Continental art!”

When Vincent walked into the dining room of the Loyers’ that night he found Ursula and her mother talking together in undertones. They stopped as soon as he came in, and left a sentence hanging in mid-air.

Ursula ran into the kitchen. “Good evening,” said Madame Loyer with a curious glint in her eye.

Vincent ate his dinner alone at the large table. Ursula’s blow had stunned but not defeated him. He simply was not going to take “no” for an answer. He would crowd the other man out of Ursula’s mind.

It was almost a week before he could catch her standing still long enough to speak to her. He had eaten and slept very little during that week; his stolidity had given way to nervousness. His sales at the gallery had dropped off considerably. The greenness had gone from his eyes and left them a pain-shot blue. He had more difficulty than ever in finding words when he wanted to speak.

He followed her into the garden after the big Sunday dinner. “Mademoiselle Ursula,” he said, “I’m sorry if I frightened you the other night.”

She glanced up at him out of large, cool eyes, as though surprised that he should have followed her.

“Oh, it doesn’t matter. It was of no importance. Let’s forget it, shall we?”

“I’d like very much to forget that I was rude to you. But the things I said were true.”

He took a step toward her. She moved away.

“Why speak of it again?” Ursula asked. “The whole episode has quite gone out of my mind.” She turned her back on him and walked down the path. He hurried after her.

“I must speak of it again. Ursula, you don’t understand how much I love you! You don’t know how unhappy I’ve been this past week. Why do you keep running away from me?”

“Shall we go in? I think Mother is expecting callers.”

“It can’t be true that you love this other man. I would have seen it in your eyes if you had.”

“I’m afraid I’ve not got any more time to spare. When did you say you were going home for your holiday?”

He gulped. “In July.”

“How fortunate. My fiancé is coming to spend his July holiday with me, and we’ll need his old room.”

“I’ll never give you up to him, Ursula.”

“You’ll simply have to stop this sort of thing. If you don’t, Mother says you can find new lodgings.”

He spent the next two months trying to dissuade her. All his early characteristics returned; if he could not be with Ursula he wanted to be by himself so that no one could interfere with his thinking about her. He was unfriendly to the people at the store. The world that had been awakened by Ursula’s love went fast asleep again and he became the sombre, morose lad his parents had known in Zundert.

July came, and with it his holiday. He did not wish to leave London for two weeks. He had the feeling that Ursula could not love anyone else as long as he was in the house.

He went down into the parlour. Ursula and her mother were sitting there. They exchanged one of their significant looks.