"When your oil has been washed in bottle, put it into this trough with water, and put the trough in the sun all day.You will soon see the water turbid again.But mark, you must not carry this game too far, or the sun will turn your oil to varnish.When it is as clear as crystal, not too luscious, drain carefully, and cork it up tight.Grind your own prime colours, and lay them on with this oil, and they shall live.Hubert would put sand or salt in the water to clear the oil quicker.But Jan used to say, 'Water will do it best; give water time.' Jan Van Eyck was never in a hurry, and that is why the world will not forget him in a hurry."This and several other receipts, quae nunc perscribere longum est, Margaret gave him with sparkling eyes, and Gerard received them like' a legacy from Heaven, so interesting are some things that read uninteresting.Thus provided with money and knowledge, Gerard decided to marry and fly with his wife to Italy.Nothing remained now but to inform Margaret Brandt of his resolution, and to publish the banns as quietly as possible.He went to Sevenbergen earlier than usual on both these errands.He began with Margaret;told her of the Dame Van Eyck's goodness, and the resolution he had come to at last, and invited her co-operation.
She refused it plump.
"No, Gerard; you and I have never spoken of your family, but when you come to marriage - " She stopped, then began again."I do think your father has no ill-will to me more than to another.He told Peter Buyskens as much, and Peter told me.But so long as he is bent on your being a priest (you ought have told me this instead of I you), I could not marry you, Gerard, dearly as I love you."Gerard strove in vain to shake this resolution.He found it very easy to make her cry, but impossible to make her yield.Then Gerard was impatient and unjust.
"Very well!" he cried; "then you are on their side, and you will drive me to be a priest, for this must end one way or another.My parents hate me in earnest, but my lover only loves me in jest."And with this wild, bitter speech, he flung away home again, and left Margaret weeping.
When a man misbehaves, the effect is curious on a girl who loves him sincerely.It makes her pity him.This, to some of us males, seems anything but logical.The fault is in our own eye; the logic is too swift for us.The girl argues thus:- "How unhappy, how vexed, poor *** must be; him to misbehave! Poor thing!"Margaret was full of this sweet womanly pity, when, to her great surprise, scarce an hour and a half after he left her, Gerard came running back to her with the fragments of a picture in his hand, and panting with anger and grief.
"There, Margaret! see! see! the wretches! Look at their spite!
They have cut your portrait to pieces."
Margaret looked, and, sure enough, some malicious hand had cut her portrait into five pieces.She was a good girl, but she was not ice; she turned red to her very forehead.
"Who did it?"
"Nay, I know not.I dared not ask; for I should hate the hand that did it, ay, till my dying day.My poor Margaret! The butchers, the ruffians! Six months' work cut out of my life, and nothing to show for it now.See, they have hacked through your very face; the sweet face that every one loves who knows it.oh.heartless, merciless vipers!""Never mind, Gerard," said Margaret, panting."Since this is how they treat you for my sake - Ye rob him of my portrait, do ye?
Well, then, he shall have the face itself, such as it is.""Oh, Margaret!"
"Yes, Gerard; since they are so cruel, I will be the kinder:
forgive me for refusing you.I will be your wife: to-morrow, if it is your pleasure."Gerard kissed her hands with rapture, and then her lips; and in a tumult of joy ran for Peter and Martin.They came and witnessed the betrothal; a solemn ceremony in those days, and indeed for more than a century later, though now abolished.
