← catalogue

The Moon and Sixpence

by W. Somerset Maugham · English · Gutenberg #222 · 424,493 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Moon and Sixpence
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: The Moon and Sixpence

Author: W. Somerset Maugham


        
Release date: February 1, 1995 [eBook #222]
                Most recently updated: December 2, 2023

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/222

Credits: Charles Keller and John Hamm


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MOON AND SIXPENCE ***




[Illustration]




The Moon and Sixpence

by W. Somerset Maugham

Author of “Of Human Bondage”




Table of Contents

 Chapter I
 Chapter II
 Chapter III
 Chapter IV
 Chapter V
 Chapter VI
 Chapter VII
 Chapter VIII
 Chapter IX
 Chapter X
 Chapter XI
 Chapter XII
 Chapter XIII
 Chapter XIV
 Chapter XV
 Chapter XVI
 Chapter XVII
 Chapter XVIII
 Chapter XIX
 Chapter XX
 Chapter XXI
 Chapter XXII
 Chapter XXIII
 Chapter XXIV
 Chapter XXV
 Chapter XXVI
 Chapter XXVII
 Chapter XXVIII
 Chapter XXIX
 Chapter XXX
 Chapter XXXI
 Chapter XXXII
 Chapter XXXIII
 Chapter XXXIV
 Chapter XXXV
 Chapter XXXVI
 Chapter XXXVII
 Chapter XXXVIII
 Chapter XXXIX
 Chapter XL
 Chapter XLI
 Chapter XLII
 Chapter XLIII
 Chapter XLIV
 Chapter XLV
 Chapter XLVI
 Chapter XLVII
 Chapter XLVIII
 Chapter XLIX
 Chapter L
 Chapter LI
 Chapter LII
 Chapter LIII
 Chapter LIV
 Chapter LV
 Chapter LVI
 Chapter LVII
 Chapter LVIII




The Moon and Sixpence




Chapter I


I confess that when first I made acquaintance with Charles Strickland I
never for a moment discerned that there was in him anything out of the
ordinary. Yet now few will be found to deny his greatness. I do not
speak of that greatness which is achieved by the fortunate politician
or the successful soldier; that is a quality which belongs to the place
he occupies rather than to the man; and a change of circumstances
reduces it to very discreet proportions. The Prime Minister out of
office is seen, too often, to have been but a pompous rhetorician, and
the General without an army is but the tame hero of a market town. The
greatness of Charles Strickland was authentic. It may be that you do
not like his art, but at all events you can hardly refuse it the
tribute of your interest. He disturbs and arrests. The time has passed
when he was an object of ridicule, and it is no longer a mark of
eccentricity to defend or of perversity to extol him. His faults are
accepted as the necessary complement to his merits. It is still
possible to discuss his place in art, and the adulation of his admirers
is perhaps no less capricious than the disparagement of his detractors;
but one thing can never be doubtful, and that is that he had genius. To
my mind the most interesting thing in art is the personality of the
artist; and if that is singular, I am willing to excuse a thousand
faults. I suppose Velasquez was a better painter than El Greco, but
custom stales one’s admiration for him: the Cretan, sensual and tragic,
proffers the mystery of his soul like a standing sacrifice. The artist,
painter, poet, or musician, by his decoration, sublime or beautiful,
satisfies the aesthetic sense; but that is akin to the sexual instinct,
and shares its barbarity: he lays before you also the greater gift of
himself. To pursue his secret has something of the fascination of a
detective story. It is a riddle which shares with the universe the
merit of having no answer. The most insignificant of Strickland’s works
suggests a personality which is strange, tormented, and complex; and it
is this surely which prevents even those who do not like his pictures
from being indifferent to them; it is this which has excited so curious
an interest in his life and character.

It was not till four years after Strickland’s death that Maurice Huret
wrote that article in the _Mercure de France_ which rescued the unknown
painter from oblivion and blazed the trail which succeeding writers,
with more or less docility, have followed. For a long time no critic
has enjoyed in France a more incontestable authority, and it was
impossible not to be impressed by the claims he made; they seemed
extravagant; but later judgments have confirmed his estimate, and the
reputation of Charles Strickland is now firmly established on the lines
which he laid down. The rise of this reputation is one of the most
romantic incidents in the history of art. But I do not propose to deal
with Charles Strickland’s work except in so far as it touches upon his
character. I cannot agree with the painters who claim superciliously
that the layman can understand nothing of painting, and that he can
best show his appreciation of their works by silence and a cheque-book.
It is a grotesque misapprehension which sees in art no more than a
craft comprehensible perfectly only to the craftsman: art is a
manifestation of emotion, and emotion speaks a language that all may
understand. But I will allow that the critic who has not a practical
knowledge of technique is seldom able to say anything on the subject of
real value, and my ignorance of painting is extreme. Fortunately, there
is no need for me to risk the adventure, since my friend, Mr. Edward
Leggatt, an able writer as well as an admirable painter, has
exhaustively discussed Charles Strickland’s work in a little book[1]
which is a charming example of a style, for the most part, less happily
cultivated in England than in France.

[1] “A Modern Artist: Notes on the Work of Charles Strickland,” by
Edward Leggatt, A.R.H.A. Martin Secker, 1917.


Maurice Huret in his famous article gave an outline of Charles
Strickland’s life which was well calculated to whet the appetites of
the inquiring. With his disinterested passion for art, he had a real
desire to call the attention of the wise to a talent which was in the
highest degree original; but he was too good a journalist to be unaware
that the “human interest” would enable him more easily to effect his
purpose. And when such as had come in contact with Strickland in the
past, writers who had known him in London, painters who had met him in
the cafés of Montmartre, discovered to their amazement that where they
had seen but an unsuccessful artist, like another, authentic genius had
rubbed shoulders with them there began to appear in the magazines of
France and America a succession of articles, the reminiscences of one,
the appreciation of another, which added to Strickland’s notoriety, and
fed without satisfying the curiosity of the public. The subject was
grateful, and the industrious Weitbrecht-Rotholz in his imposing
monograph[2] has been able to give a remarkable list of authorities.

[2] “Karl Strickland: sein Leben und seine Kunst,” by Hugo
Weitbrecht-Rotholz, Ph.D. Schwingel und Hanisch. Leipzig, 1914.


The faculty for myth is innate in the human race. It seizes with
avidity upon any incidents, surprising or mysterious, in the career of
those who have at all distinguished themselves from their fellows, and
invents a legend to which it then attaches a fanatical belief. It is
the protest of romance against the commonplace of life. The incidents
of the legend become the hero’s surest passport to immortality. The
ironic philosopher reflects with a smile that Sir Walter Raleigh is
more safely inshrined in the memory of mankind because he set his cloak
for the Virgin Queen to walk on than because he carried the English
name to undiscovered countries. Charles Strickland lived obscurely. He
made enemies rather than friends. It is not strange, then, that those
who wrote of him should have eked out their scanty recollections with a
lively fancy, and it is evident that there was enough in the little
that was known of him to give opportunity to the romantic scribe; there
was much in his life which was strange and terrible, in his character
something outrageous, and in his fate not a little that was pathetic.
In due course a legend arose of such circumstantiality that the wise
historian would hesitate to attack it.

But a wise historian is precisely what the Rev. Robert Strickland is
not. He wrote his biography[3] avowedly to “remove certain
misconceptions which had gained currency” in regard to the later part
of his father’s life, and which had “caused considerable pain to
persons still living.” It is obvious that there was much in the
commonly received account of Strickland’s life to embarrass a
respectable family. I have read this work with a good deal of
amusement, and upon this I congratulate myself, since it is colourless
and dull. Mr. Strickland has drawn the portrait of an excellent husband
and father, a man of kindly temper, industrious habits, and moral
disposition. The modern clergyman has acquired in his study of the
science which I believe is called exegesis an astonishing facility for
explaining things away, but the subtlety with which the Rev. Robert
Strickland has “interpreted” all the facts in his father’s life which a
dutiful son might find it inconvenient to remember must surely lead him
in the fullness of time to the highest dignities of the Church. I see
already his muscular calves encased in the gaiters episcopal. It was a
hazardous, though maybe a gallant thing to do, since it is probable
that the legend commonly received has had no small share in the growth
of Strickland’s reputation; for there are many who have been attracted
to his art by the detestation in which they held his character or the
compassion with which they regarded his death; and the son’s
well-meaning efforts threw a singular chill upon the father’s admirers.
It is due to no accident that when one of his most important works,
_The Woman of Samaria_,[4] was sold at Christie’s shortly after the
discussion which followed the publication of Mr. Strickland’s
biography, it fetched £235 less than it had done nine months before
when it was bought by the distinguished collector whose sudden death
had brought it once more under the hammer. Perhaps Charles Strickland’s
power and originality would scarcely have sufficed to turn the scale if
the remarkable mythopoeic faculty of mankind had not brushed aside with
impatience a story which disappointed all its craving for the
extraordinary. And presently Dr. Weitbrecht-Rotholz produced the work
which finally set at rest the misgivings of all lovers of art.

[3] “Strickland: The Man and His Work,” by his son, Robert Strickland.
Wm. Heinemann, 1913.


[4] This was described in Christie’s catalogue as follows: “A nude
woman, a native of the Society Islands, is lying on the ground beside a
brook. Behind is a tropical Landscape with palm-trees, bananas, etc. 60
in. x 48 in.”


Dr. Weitbrecht-Rotholz belongs to that school of historians which
believes that human nature is not only about as bad as it can be, but a
great deal worse; and certainly the reader is safer of entertainment in
their hands than in those of the writers who take a malicious pleasure
in representing the great figures of romance as patterns of the
domestic virtues. For my part, I should be sorry to think that there
was nothing between Anthony and Cleopatra but an economic situation;
and it will require a great deal more evidence than is ever likely to
be available, thank God, to persuade me that Tiberius was as blameless
a monarch as King George V. Dr. Weitbrecht-Rotholz has dealt in such
terms with the Rev. Robert Strickland’s innocent biography that it is
difficult to avoid feeling a certain sympathy for the unlucky parson.
His decent reticence is branded as hypocrisy, his circumlocutions are
roundly called lies, and his silence is vilified as treachery. And on
the strength of peccadillos, reprehensible in an author, but excusable
in a son, the Anglo-Saxon race is accused of prudishness, humbug,
pretentiousness, deceit, cunning, and bad cooking. Personally I think
it was rash of Mr. Strickland, in refuting the account which had gained
belief of a certain “unpleasantness” between his father and mother, to
state that Charles Strickland in a letter written from Paris had
described her as “an excellent woman,” since Dr. Weitbrecht-Rotholz was
able to print the letter in facsimile, and it appears that the passage
referred to ran in fact as follows: _God damn my wife. She is an
excellent woman. I wish she was in hell._ It is not thus that the
Church in its great days dealt with evidence that was unwelcome.

Dr. Weitbrecht-Rotholz was an enthusiastic admirer of Charles
Strickland, and there was no danger that he would whitewash him. He had
an unerring eye for the despicable motive in actions that had all the
appearance of innocence. He was a psycho-pathologist, as well as a
student of art, and the subconscious had few secrets from him. No
mystic ever saw deeper meaning in common things. The mystic sees the
ineffable, and the psycho-pathologist the unspeakable. There is a
singular fascination in watching the eagerness with which the learned
author ferrets out every circumstance which may throw discredit on his
hero. His heart warms to him when he can bring forward some example of
cruelty or meanness, and he exults like an inquisitor at the _auto da
fé_ of an heretic when with some forgotten story he can confound the
filial piety of the Rev. Robert Strickland. His industry has been
amazing. Nothing has been too small to escape him, and you may be sure
that if Charles Strickland left a laundry bill unpaid it will be given
you _in extenso_, and if he forebore to return a borrowed half-crown no
detail of the transaction will be omitted.




Chapter II


When so much has been written about Charles Strickland, it may seem
unnecessary that I should write more. A painter’s monument is his work.
It is true I knew him more intimately than most: I met him first before
ever he became a painter, and I saw him not infrequently during the
difficult years he spent in Paris; but I do not suppose I should ever
have set down my recollections if the hazards of the war had not taken
me to Tahiti. There, as is notorious, he spent the last years of his
life; and there I came across persons who were familiar with him. I
find myself in a position to throw light on just that part of his
tragic career which has remained most obscure. If they who believe in
Strickland’s greatness are right, the personal narratives of such as
knew him in the flesh can hardly be superfluous. What would we not give
for the reminiscences of someone who had been as intimately acquainted
with El Greco as I was with Strickland?

But I seek refuge in no such excuses. I forget who it was that
recommended men for their soul’s good to do each day two things they
disliked: it was a wise man, and it is a precept that I have followed
scrupulously; for every day I have got up and I have gone to bed. But
there is in my nature a strain of asceticism, and I have subjected my
flesh each week to a more severe mortification. I have never failed to
read the Literary Supplement of _The Times._ It is a salutary
discipline to consider the vast number of books that are written, the
fair hopes with which their authors see them published, and the fate
which awaits them. What chance is there that any book will make its way
among that multitude? And the successful books are but the successes of
a season. Heaven knows what pains the author has been at, what bitter
experiences he has endured and what heartache suffered, to give some
chance reader a few hours’ relaxation or to while away the tedium of a
journey. And if I may judge from the reviews, many of these books are
well and carefully written; much thought has gone to their composition;
to some even has been given the anxious labour of a lifetime. The moral
I draw is that the writer should seek his reward in the pleasure of his
work and in release from the burden of his thought; and, indifferent to
aught else, care nothing for praise or censure, failure or success.

Now the war has come, bringing with it a new attitude. Youth has turned
to gods we of an earlier day knew not, and it is possible to see
already the direction in which those who come after us will move. The
younger generation, conscious of strength and tumultuous, have done
with knocking at the door; they have burst in and seated themselves in
our seats. The air is noisy with their shouts. Of their elders some, by
imitating the antics of youth, strive to persuade themselves that their
day is not yet over; they shout with the lustiest, but the war cry
sounds hollow in their mouth; they are like poor wantons attempting
with pencil, paint and powder, with shrill gaiety, to recover the
illusion of their spring. The wiser go their way with a decent grace.
In their chastened smile is an indulgent mockery. They remember that
they too trod down a sated generation, with just such clamor and with
just such scorn, and they foresee that these brave torch-bearers will
presently yield their place also. There is no last word. The new
evangel was old when Nineveh reared her greatness to the sky. These
gallant words which seem so novel to those that speak them were said in
accents scarcely changed a hundred times before. The pendulum swings
backwards and forwards. The circle is ever travelled anew.

Sometimes a man survives a considerable time from an era in which he
had his place into one which is strange to him, and then the curious
are offered one of the most singular spectacles in the human comedy.
Who now, for example, thinks of George Crabbe? He was a famous poet in
his day, and the world recognised his genius with a unanimity which the
greater complexity of modern life has rendered infrequent. He had
learnt his craft at the school of Alexander Pope, and he wrote moral
stories in rhymed couplets. Then came the French Revolution and the
Napoleonic Wars, and the poets sang new songs. Mr. Crabbe continued to
write moral stories in rhymed couplets. I think he must have read the
verse of these young men who were making so great a stir in the world,
and I fancy he found it poor stuff. Of course, much of it was. But the
odes of Keats and of Wordsworth, a poem or two by Coleridge, a few more
by Shelley, discovered vast realms of the spirit that none had explored
before. Mr. Crabbe was as dead as mutton, but Mr. Crabbe continued to
write moral stories in rhymed couplets. I have read desultorily the
writings of the younger generation. It may be that among them a more
fervid Keats, a more ethereal Shelley, has already published numbers
the world will willingly remember. I cannot tell. I admire their
polish—their youth is already so accomplished that it seems absurd to
speak of promise—I marvel at the felicity of their style; but with all
their copiousness (their vocabulary suggests that they fingered Roget’s
_Thesaurus_ in their cradles) they say nothing to me: to my mind they
know too much and feel too obviously; I cannot stomach the heartiness
with which they slap me on the back or the emotion with which they hurl
themselves on my bosom; their passion seems to me a little anaemic and
their dreams a trifle dull. I do not like them. I am on the shelf. I
will continue to write moral stories in rhymed couplets. But I should
be thrice a fool if I did it for aught but my own entertainment.




Chapter III


But all this is by the way.

I was very young when I wrote my first book. By a lucky chance it
excited attention, and various persons sought my acquaintance.

It is not without melancholy that I wander among my recollections of
the world of letters in London when first, bashful but eager, I was
introduced to it. It is long since I frequented it, and if the novels
that describe its present singularities are accurate much in it is now
changed. The venue is different. Chelsea and Bloomsbury have taken the
place of Hampstead, Notting Hill Gate, and High Street, Kensington.
Then it was a distinction to be under forty, but now to be more than
twenty-five is absurd. I think in those days we were a little shy of
our emotions, and the fear of ridicule tempered the more obvious forms
of pretentiousness. I do not believe that there was in that genteel
Bohemia an intensive culture of chastity, but I do not remember so
crude a promiscuity as seems to be practised in the present day. We did
not think it hypocritical to draw over our vagaries the curtain of a
decent silence. The spade was not invariably called a bloody shovel.
Woman had not yet altogether come into her own.

I lived near Victoria Station, and I recall long excursions by bus to
the hospitable houses of the literary. In my timidity I wandered up and
down the street while I screwed up my courage to ring the bell; and
then, sick with apprehension, was ushered into an airless room full of
people. I was introduced to this celebrated person after that one, and
the kind words they said about my book made me excessively
uncomfortable. I felt they expected me to say clever things, and I
never could think of any till after the party was over. I tried to
conceal my embarrassment by handing round cups of tea and rather
ill-cut bread-and-butter. I wanted no one to take notice of me, so that
I could observe these famous creatures at my ease and listen to the
clever things they said.

I have a recollection of large, unbending women with great noses and
rapacious eyes, who wore their clothes as though they were armour; and
of little, mouse-like spinsters, with soft voices and a shrewd glance.
I never ceased to be fascinated by their persistence in eating buttered
toast with their gloves on, and I observed with admiration the
unconcern with which they wiped their fingers on their chair when they
thought no one was looking. It must have been bad for the furniture,
but I suppose the hostess took her revenge on the furniture of her
friends when, in turn, she visited them. Some of them were dressed
fashionably, and they said they couldn’t for the life of them see why
you should be dowdy just because you had written a novel; if you had a
neat figure you might as well make the most of it, and a smart shoe on
a small foot had never prevented an editor from taking your “stuff.”
But others thought this frivolous, and they wore “art fabrics” and
barbaric jewelry. The men were seldom eccentric in appearance. They
tried to look as little like authors as possible. They wished to be
taken for men of the world, and could have passed anywhere for the
managing clerks of a city firm. They always seemed a little tired. I
had never known writers before, and I found them very strange, but I do
not think they ever seemed to me quite real.

I remember that I thought their conversation brilliant, and I used to
listen with astonishment to the stinging humour with which they would
tear a brother-author to pieces the moment that his back was turned.
The artist has this advantage over the rest of the world, that his
friends offer not only their appearance and their character to his
satire, but also their work. I despaired of ever expressing myself with
such aptness or with such fluency. In those days conversation was still
cultivated as an art; a neat repartee was more highly valued than the
crackling of thorns under a pot; and the epigram, not yet a mechanical
appliance by which the dull may achieve a semblance of wit, gave
sprightliness to the small talk of the urbane. It is sad that I can
remember nothing of all this scintillation. But I think the
conversation never settled down so comfortably as when it turned to the
details of the trade which was the other side of the art we practised.
When we had done discussing the merits of the latest book, it was
natural to wonder how many copies had been sold, what advance the
author had received, and how much he was likely to make out of it. Then
we would speak of this publisher and of that, comparing the generosity
of one with the meanness of another; we would argue whether it was
better to go to one who gave handsome royalties or to another who
“pushed” a book for all it was worth. Some advertised badly and some
well. Some were modern and some were old-fashioned. Then we would talk
of agents and the offers they had obtained for us; of editors and the
sort of contributions they welcomed, how much they paid a thousand, and
whether they paid promptly or otherwise. To me it was all very
romantic. It gave me an intimate sense of being a member of some mystic
brotherhood.




Chapter IV


No one was kinder to me at that time than Rose Waterford. She combined
a masculine intelligence with a feminine perversity, and the novels she
wrote were original and disconcerting. It was at her house one day that
I met Charles Strickland’s wife. Miss Waterford was giving a tea-party,
and her small room was more than usually full. Everyone seemed to be
talking, and I, sitting in silence, felt awkward; but I was too shy to
break into any of the groups that seemed absorbed in their own affairs.
Miss Waterford was a good hostess, and seeing my embarrassment came up
to me.

“I want you to talk to Mrs. Strickland,” she said. “She’s raving about
your book.”

“What does she do?” I asked.

I was conscious of my ignorance, and if Mrs. Strickland was a
well-known writer I thought it as well to ascertain the fact before I
spoke to her.

Rose Waterford cast down her eyes demurely to give greater effect to
her reply.

“She gives luncheon-parties. You’ve only got to roar a little, and
she’ll ask you.”

Rose Waterford was a cynic. She looked upon life as an opportunity for
writing novels and the public as her raw material. Now and then she
invited members of it to her house if they showed an appreciation of
her talent and entertained with proper lavishness. She held their
weakness for lions in good-humoured contempt, but played to them her
part of the distinguished woman of letters with decorum.

I was led up to Mrs. Strickland, and for ten minutes we talked
together. I noticed nothing about her except that she had a pleasant
voice. She had a flat in Westminster, overlooking the unfinished
cathedral, and because we lived in the same neighbourhood we felt
friendly disposed to one another. The Army and Navy Stores are a bond
of union between all who dwell between the river and St. James’s Park.
Mrs. Strickland asked me for my address, and a few days later I
received an invitation to luncheon.

My engagements were few, and I was glad to accept. When I arrived, a
little late, because in my fear of being too early I had walked three
times round the cathedral, I found the party already complete. Miss
Waterford was there and Mrs. Jay, Richard Twining and George Road. We
were all writers. It was a fine day, early in spring, and we were in a
good humour. We talked about a hundred things. Miss Waterford, torn
between the aestheticism of her early youth, when she used to go to
parties in sage green, holding a daffodil, and the flippancy of her
maturer years, which tended to high heels and Paris frocks, wore a new
hat. It put her in high spirits. I had never heard her more malicious
about our common friends. Mrs. Jay, aware that impropriety is the soul
of wit, made observations in tones hardly above a whisper that might
well have tinged the snowy tablecloth with a rosy hue. Richard Twining
bubbled over with quaint absurdities, and George Road, conscious that
he need not exhibit a brilliancy which was almost a by-word, opened his
mouth only to put food into it. Mrs. Strickland did not talk much, but
she had a pleasant gift for keeping the conversation general; and when
there was a pause she threw in just the right remark to set it going
once more. She was a woman of thirty-seven, rather tall and plump,
without being fat; she was not pretty, but her face was pleasing,
chiefly, perhaps, on account of her kind brown eyes. Her skin was
rather sallow. Her dark hair was elaborately dressed. She was the only
woman of the three whose face was free of make-up, and by contrast with
the others she seemed simple and unaffected.

The dining-room was in the good taste of the period. It was very
severe. There was a high dado of white wood and a green paper on which
were etchings by Whistler in neat black frames. The green curtains with
their peacock design, hung in straight lines, and the green carpet, in
the pattern of which pale rabbits frolicked among leafy trees,
suggested the influence of William Morris. There was blue delft on the
chimney-piece. At that time there must have been five hundred
dining-rooms in London decorated in exactly the same manner. It was
chaste, artistic, and dull.

When we left I walked away with Miss Waterford, and the fine day and
her new hat persuaded us to saunter through the Park.

“That was a very nice party,” I said.

“Did you think the food was good? I told her that if she wanted writers
she must feed them well.”

“Admirable advice,” I answered. “But why does she want them?”

Miss Waterford shrugged her shoulders.

“She finds them amusing. She wants to be in the movement. I fancy she’s
rather simple, poor dear, and she thinks we’re all wonderful. After
all, it pleases her to ask us to luncheon, and it doesn’t hurt us. I
like her for it.”

Looking back, I think that Mrs. Strickland was the most harmless of all
the lion-hunters that pursue their quarry from the rarefied heights of
Hampstead to the nethermost studios of Cheyne Walk. She had led a very
quiet youth in the country, and the books that came down from Mudie’s
Library brought with them not only their own romance, but the romance
of London. She had a real passion for reading (rare in her kind, who
for the most part are more interested in the author than in his book,
in the painter than in his pictures), and she invented a world of the
imagination in which she lived with a freedom she never acquired in the
world of every day. When she came to know writers it was like
adventuring upon a stage which till then she had known only from the
other side of the footlights. She saw them dramatically, and really
seemed herself to live a larger life because she entertained them and
visited them in their fastnesses. She accepted the rules with which
they played the game of life as valid for them, but never for a moment
thought of regulating her own conduct in accordance with them. Their
moral eccentricities, like their oddities of dress, their wild theories
and paradoxes, were an entertainment which amused her, but had not the
slightest influence on her convictions.

“Is there a Mr. Strickland?” I asked

“Oh yes; he’s something in the city. I believe he’s a stockbroker. He’s
very dull.”

“Are they good friends?”

“They adore one another. You’ll meet him if you dine there. But she
doesn’t often have people to dinner. He’s very quiet. He’s not in the
least interested in literature or the arts.”

“Why do nice women marry dull men?”

“Because intelligent men won’t marry nice women.”

I could not think of any retort to this, so I asked if Mrs. Strickland
had children.

“Yes; she has a boy and a girl. They’re both at school.”

The subject was exhausted, and we began to talk of other things.




Chapter V


During the summer I met Mrs. Strickland not infrequently. I went now
and then to pleasant little luncheons at her flat, and to rather more
formidable tea-parties. We took a fancy to one another. I was very
young, and perhaps she liked the idea of guiding my virgin steps on the
hard road of letters; while for me it was pleasant to have someone I
could go to with my small troubles, certain of an attentive ear and
reasonable counsel. Mrs. Strickland had the gift of sympathy. It is a
charming faculty, but one often abused by those who are conscious of
its possession: for there is something ghoulish in the avidity with
which they will pounce upon the misfortune of their friends so that
they may exercise their dexterity. It gushes forth like an oil-well,
and the sympathetic pour out their sympathy with an abandon that is
sometimes embarrassing to their victims. There are bosoms on which so
many tears have been shed that I cannot bedew them with mine. Mrs.
Strickland used her advantage with tact. You felt that you obliged her
by accepting her sympathy. When, in the enthusiasm of my youth, I
remarked on this to Rose Waterford, she said:

“Milk is very nice, especially with a drop of brandy in it, but the
domestic cow is only too glad to be rid of it. A swollen udder is very
uncomfortable.”

Rose Waterford had a blistering tongue. No one could say such bitter
things; on the other hand, no one could do more charming ones.

There was another thing I liked in Mrs. Strickland. She managed her
surroundings with elegance. Her flat was always neat and cheerful, gay
with flowers, and the chintzes in the drawing-room, notwithstanding
their severe design, were bright and pretty. The meals in the artistic
little dining-room were pleasant; the table looked nice, the two maids
were trim and comely; the food was well cooked. It was impossible not
to see that Mrs. Strickland was an excellent housekeeper. And you felt
sure that she was an admirable mother. There were photographs in the
drawing-room of her son and daughter. The son—his name was Robert—was a
boy of sixteen at Rugby; and you saw him in flannels and a cricket cap,
and again in a tail-coat and a stand-up collar. He had his mother’s
candid brow and fine, reflective eyes. He looked clean, healthy, and
normal.

“I don’t know that he’s very clever,” she said one day, when I was
looking at the photograph, “but I know he’s good. He has a charming
character.”

The daughter was fourteen. Her hair, thick and dark like her mother’s,
fell over her shoulders in fine profusion, and she had the same kindly
expression and sedate, untroubled eyes.

“They’re both of them the image of you,” I said.

“Yes; I think they are more like me than their father.”

“Why have you never let me meet him?” I asked.

“Would you like to?”

She smiled, her smile was really very sweet, and she blushed a little;
it was singular that a woman of that age should flush so readily.
Perhaps her naivete was her greatest charm.

“You know, he’s not at all literary,” she said. “He’s a perfect
philistine.”

She said this not disparagingly, but affectionately rather, as though,
by acknowledging the worst about him, she wished to protect him from
the aspersions of her friends.

“He’s on the Stock Exchange, and he’s a typical broker. I think he’d
bore you to death.”

“Does he bore you?” I asked.

“You see, I happen to be his wife. I’m very fond of him.”

She smiled to cover her shyness, and I fancied she had a fear that I
would make the sort of gibe that such a confession could hardly have
failed to elicit from Rose Waterford. She hesitated a little. Her eyes
grew tender.

“He doesn’t pretend to be a genius. He doesn’t even make much money on
the Stock Exchange. But he’s awfully good and kind.”

“I think I should like him very much.”

“I’ll ask you to dine with us quietly some time, but mind, you come at
your own risk; don’t blame me if you have a very dull evening.”




Chapter VI


But when at last I met Charles Strickland, it was under circumstances
which allowed me to do no more than just make his acquaintance. One
morning Mrs. Strickland sent me round a note to say that she was giving
a dinner-party that evening, and one of her guests had failed her. She
asked me to stop the gap. She wrote:

“It’s only decent to warn you that you will be bored to extinction. It
was a thoroughly dull party from the beginning, but if you will come I
shall be uncommonly grateful. And you and I can have a little chat by
ourselves.”


It was only neighbourly to accept.

When Mrs. Strickland introduced me to her husband, he gave me a rather
indifferent hand to shake. Turning to him gaily, she attempted a small
jest.

“I asked him to show him that I really had a husband. I think he was
beginning to doubt it.”

Strickland gave the polite little laugh with which people acknowledge a
facetiousness in which they see nothing funny, but did not speak. New
arrivals claimed my host’s attention, and I was left to myself. When at
last we were all assembled, waiting for dinner to be announced, I
reflected, while I chatted with the woman I had been asked to “take
in,” that civilised man practises a strange ingenuity in wasting on
tedious exercises the brief span of his life. It was the kind of party
which makes you wonder why the hostess has troubled to bid her guests,
and why the guests have troubled to come. There were ten people. They
met with indifference, and would part with relief. It was, of course, a
purely social function. The Stricklands “owed” dinners to a number of
persons, whom they took no interest in, and so had asked them; these
persons had accepted. Why? To avoid the tedium of dining _tête-à-tête_,
to give their servants a rest, because there was no reason to refuse,
because they were “owed” a dinner.

The dining-room was inconveniently crowded. There was a K.C. and his
wife, a Government official and his wife, Mrs. Strickland’s sister and
her husband, Colonel MacAndrew, and the wife of a Member of Parliament.
It was because the Member of Parliament found that he could not leave
the House that I had been invited. The respectability of the party was
portentous. The women were too nice to be well dressed, and too sure of
their position to be amusing. The men were solid. There was about all
of them an air of well-satisfied prosperity.

Everyone talked a little louder than natural in an instinctive desire
to make the party go, and there was a great deal of noise in the room.
But there was no general conversation. Each one talked to his
neighbour; to his neighbour on the right during the soup, fish, and
entree; to his neighbour on the left during the roast, sweet, and
savoury. They talked of the political situation and of golf, of their
children and the latest play, of the pictures at the Royal Academy, of
the weather and their plans for the holidays. There was never a pause,
and the noise grew louder. Mrs. Strickland might congratulate herself
that her party was a success. Her husband played his part with decorum.
Perhaps he did not talk very much, and I fancied there was towards the
end a look of fatigue in the faces of the women on either side of him.
They were finding him heavy. Once or twice Mrs. Strickland’s eyes
rested on him somewhat anxiously.

At last she rose and shepherded the ladies out of one room. Strickland
shut the door behind her, and, moving to the other end of the table,
took his place between the K.C. and the Government official. He passed
round the port again and handed us cigars. The K.C. remarked on the
excellence of the wine, and Strickland told us where he got it. We
began to chat about vintages and tobacco. The K.C. told us of a case he
was engaged in, and the Colonel talked about polo. I had nothing to say
and so sat silent, trying politely to show interest in the
conversation; and because I thought no one was in the least concerned
with me, examined Strickland at my ease. He was bigger than I expected:
I do not know why I had imagined him slender and of insignificant
appearance; in point of fact he was broad and heavy, with large hands
and feet, and he wore his evening clothes clumsily. He gave you
somewhat the idea of a coachman dressed up for the occasion. He was a
man of forty, not good-looking, and yet not ugly, for his features were
rather good; but they were all a little larger than life-size, and the
effect was ungainly. He was clean shaven, and his large face looked
uncomfortably naked. His hair was reddish, cut very short, and his eyes
were small, blue or grey. He looked commonplace. I no longer wondered
that Mrs. Strickland felt a certain embarrassment about him; he was
scarcely a credit to a woman who wanted to make herself a position in
the world of art and letters. It was obvious that he had no social
gifts, but these a man can do without; he had no eccentricity even, to
take him out of the common run; he was just a good, dull, honest, plain
man. One would admire his excellent qualities, but avoid his company.
He was null. He was probably a worthy member of society, a good husband
and father, an honest broker; but there was no reason to waste one’s
time over him.




Chapter VII


The season was drawing to its dusty end, and everyone I knew was
arranging to go away. Mrs. Strickland was taking her family to the
coast of Norfolk, so that the children might have the sea and her
husband golf. We said good-bye to one another, and arranged to meet in
the autumn. But on my last day in town, coming out of the Stores, I met
her with her son and daughter; like myself, she had been making her
final purchases before leaving London, and we were both hot and tired.
I proposed that we should all go and eat ices in the park.

I think Mrs. Strickland was glad to show me her children, and she
accepted my invitation with alacrity. They were even more attractive
than their photographs had suggested, and she was right to be proud of
them. I was young enough for them not to feel shy, and they chattered
merrily about one thing and another. They were extraordinarily nice,
healthy young children. It was very agreeable under the trees.

When in an hour they crowded into a cab to go home, I strolled idly to
my club. I was perhaps a little lonely, and it was with a touch of envy
that I thought of the pleasant family life of which I had had a
glimpse. They seemed devoted to one another. They had little private
jokes of their own which, unintelligible to the outsider, amused them
enormously. Perhaps Charles Strickland was dull judged by a standard
that demanded above all things verbal scintillation; but his
intelligence was adequate to his surroundings, and that is a passport,
not only to reasonable success, but still more to happiness. Mrs.
Strickland was a charming woman, and she loved him. I pictured their
lives, troubled by no untoward adventure, honest, decent, and, by
reason of those two upstanding, pleasant children, so obviously
destined to carry on the normal traditions of their race and station,
not without significance. They would grow old insensibly; they would
see their son and daughter come to years of reason, marry in due
course—the one a pretty girl, future mother of healthy children; the
other a handsome, manly fellow, obviously a soldier; and at last,
prosperous in their dignified retirement, beloved by their descendants,
after a happy, not unuseful life, in the fullness of their age they
would sink into the grave.

That must be the story of innumerable couples, and the pattern of life
it offers has a homely grace. It reminds you of a placid rivulet,
meandering smoothly through green pastures and shaded by pleasant
trees, till at last it falls into the vasty sea; but the sea is so
calm, so silent, so indifferent, that you are troubled suddenly by a
vague uneasiness. Perhaps it is only by a kink in my nature, strong in
me even in those days, that I felt in such an existence, the share of
the great majority, something amiss. I recognised its social values, I
saw its ordered happiness, but a fever in my blood asked for a wilder
course. There seemed to me something alarming in such easy delights. In
my heart was a desire to live more dangerously. I was not unprepared
for jagged rocks and treacherous shoals if I could only have
change—change and the excitement of the unforeseen.




Chapter VIII


On reading over what I have written of the Stricklands, I am conscious
that they must seem shadowy. I have been able to invest them with none
of those characteristics which make the persons of a book exist with a
real life of their own; and, wondering if the fault is mine, I rack my
brains to remember idiosyncrasies which might lend them vividness. I
feel that by dwelling on some trick of speech or some queer habit I
should be able to give them a significance peculiar to themselves. As
they stand they are like the figures in an old tapestry; they do not
separate themselves from the background, and at a distance seem to lose
their pattern, so that you have little but a pleasing piece of colour.
My only excuse is that the impression they made on me was no other.
There was just that shadowiness about them which you find in people
whose lives are part of the social organism, so that they exist in it
and by it only. They are like cells in the body, essential, but, so
long as they remain healthy, engulfed in the momentous whole. The
Stricklands were an average family in the middle class. A pleasant,
hospitable woman, with a harmless craze for the small lions of literary
society; a rather dull man, doing his duty in that state of life in
which a merciful Providence had placed him; two nice-looking, healthy
children. Nothing could be more ordinary. I do not know that there was
anything about them to excite the attention of the curious.

When I reflect on all that happened later, I ask myself if I was
thick-witted not to see that there was in Charles Strickland at least
something out of the common. Perhaps. I think that I have gathered in
the years that intervene between then and now a fair knowledge of
mankind, but even if when I first met the Stricklands I had the
experience which I have now, I do not believe that I should have judged
them differently. But because I have learnt that man is incalculable, I
should not at this time of day be so surprised by the news that reached
me when in the early autumn I returned to London.

I had not been back twenty-four hours before I ran across Rose
Waterford in Jermyn Street.

“You look very gay and sprightly,” I said. “What’s the matter with
you?”

She smiled, and her eyes shone with a malice I knew already. It meant
that she had heard some scandal about one of her friends, and the
instinct of the literary woman was all alert.

“You did meet Charles Strickland, didn’t you?”

Not only her face, but her whole body, gave a sense of alacrity. I
nodded. I wondered if the poor devil had been hammered on the Stock
Exchange or run over by an omnibus.

“Isn’t it dreadful? He’s run away from his wife.”

Miss Waterford certainly felt that she could not do her subject justice
on the curb of Jermyn Street, and so, like an artist, flung the bare
fact at me and declared that she knew no details. I could not do her
the injustice of supposing that so trifling a circumstance would have
prevented her from giving them, but she was obstinate.

“I tell you I know nothing,” she said, in reply to my agitated
questions, and then, with an airy shrug of the shoulders: “I believe
that a young person in a city tea-shop has left her situation.”

She flashed a smile at me, and, protesting an engagement with her
dentist, jauntily walked on. I was more interested than distressed. In
those days my experience of life at first hand was small, and it
excited me to come upon an incident among people I knew of the same
sort as I had read in books. I confess that time has now accustomed me
to incidents of this character among my acquaintance. But I was a
little shocked. Strickland was certainly forty, and I thought it
disgusting that a man of his age should concern himself with affairs of
the heart. With the superciliousness of extreme youth, I put
thirty-five as the utmost limit at which a man might fall in love
without making a fool of himself. And this news was slightly
disconcerting to me personally, because I had written from the country
to Mrs. Strickland, announcing my return, and had added that unless I
heard from her to the contrary, I would come on a certain day to drink
a dish of tea with her. This was the very day, and I had received no
word from Mrs. Strickland. Did she want to see me or did she not? It
was likely enough that in the agitation of the moment my note had
escaped her memory. Perhaps I should be wiser not to go. On the other
hand, she might wish to keep the affair quiet, and it might be highly
indiscreet on my part to give any sign that this strange news had
reached me. I was torn between the fear of hurting a nice woman’s
feelings and the fear of being in the way. I felt she must be
suffering, and I did not want to see a pain which I could not help; but
in my heart was a desire, that I felt a little ashamed of, to see how
she was taking it. I did not know what to do.

Finally it occurred to me that I would call as though nothing had
happened, and send a message in by the maid asking Mrs. Strickland if
it was convenient for her to see me. This would give her the
opportunity to send me away. But I was overwhelmed with embarrassment
when I said to the maid the phrase I had prepared, and while I waited
for the answer in a dark passage I had to call up all my strength of
mind not to bolt. The maid came back. Her manner suggested to my
excited fancy a complete knowledge of the domestic calamity.

“Will you come this way, sir?” she said.

I followed her into the drawing-room. The blinds were partly drawn to
darken the room, and Mrs. Strickland was sitting with her back to the
light. Her brother-in-law, Colonel MacAndrew, stood in front of the
fireplace, warming his back at an unlit fire. To myself my entrance
seemed excessively awkward. I imagined that my arrival had taken them
by surprise, and Mrs. Strickland had let me come in only because she
had forgotten to put me off. I fancied that the Colonel resented the
interruption.

“I wasn’t quite sure if you expected me,” I said, trying to seem
unconcerned.

“Of course I did. Anne will bring the tea in a minute.”

Even in the darkened room, I could not help seeing that Mrs.
Strickland’s face was all swollen with tears. Her skin, never very
good, was earthy.

“You remember my brother-in-law, don’t you? You met at dinner, just
before the holidays.”

We shook hands. I felt so shy that I could think of nothing to say, but
Mrs. Strickland came to my rescue. She asked me what I had been doing
with myself during the summer, and with this help I managed to make
some conversation till tea was brought in. The Colonel asked for a
whisky-and-soda.

“You’d better have one too, Amy,” he said.

“No; I prefer tea.”

This was the first suggestion that anything untoward had happened. I
took no notice, and did my best to engage Mrs. Strickland in talk. The
Colonel, still standing in front of the fireplace, uttered no word. I
wondered how soon I could decently take my leave, and I asked myself
why on earth Mrs. Strickland had allowed me to come. There were no
flowers, and various knick-knacks, put away during the summer, had not
been replaced; there was something cheerless and stiff about the room
which had always seemed so friendly; it gave you an odd feeling, as
though someone were lying dead on the other side of the wall. I
finished tea.

“Will you have a cigarette?” asked Mrs. Strickland.

She looked about for the box, but it was not to be seen.

“I’m afraid there are none.”

Suddenly she burst into tears, and hurried from the room.

I was startled. I suppose now that the lack of cigarettes, brought as a
rule by her husband, forced him back upon her recollection, and the new
feeling that the small comforts she was used to were missing gave her a
sudden pang. She realised that the old life was gone and done with. It
was impossible to keep up our social pretences any longer.

“I dare say you’d like me to go,” I said to the Colonel, getting up.

“I suppose you’ve heard that blackguard has deserted her,” he cried
explosively.

I hesitated.

“You know how people gossip,” I answered. “I was vaguely told that
something was wrong.”

“He’s bolted. He’s gone off to Paris with a woman. He’s left Amy
without a penny.”

“I’m awfully sorry,” I said, not knowing what else to say.

The Colonel gulped down his whisky. He was a tall, lean man of fifty,
with a drooping moustache and grey hair. He had pale blue eyes and a
weak mouth. I remembered from my previous meeting with him that he had
a foolish face, and was proud of the fact that for the ten years before
he left the army he had played polo three days a week.

“I don’t suppose Mrs. Strickland wants to be bothered with me just
now,” I said. “Will you tell her how sorry I am? If there’s anything I
can do. I shall be delighted to do it.”

He took no notice of me.

“I don’t know what’s to become of her. And then there are the children.
Are they going to live on air? Seventeen years.”

“What about seventeen years?”

“They’ve been married,” he snapped. “I never liked him. Of course he
was my brother-in-law, and I made the best of it. Did you think him a
gentleman? She ought never to have married him.”

“Is it absolutely final?”

“There’s only one thing for her to do, and that’s to divorce him.
That’s what I was telling her when you came in. ‘Fire in with your
petition, my dear Amy,’ I said. ‘You owe it to yourself and you owe it
to the children.’ He’d better not let me catch sight of him. I’d thrash
him within an inch of his life.”

I could not help thinking that Colonel MacAndrew might have some
difficulty in doing this, since Strickland had struck me as a hefty
fellow, but I did not say anything. It is always distressing when
outraged morality does not possess the strength of arm to administer
direct chastisement on the sinner. I was making up my mind to another
attempt at going when Mrs. Strickland came back. She had dried her eyes
and powdered her nose.

“I’m sorry I broke down,” she said. “I’m glad you didn’t go away.”

She sat down. I did not at all know what to say. I felt a certain
shyness at referring to matters which were no concern of mine. I did
not then know the besetting sin of woman, the passion to discuss her
private affairs with anyone who is willing to listen. Mrs. Strickland
seemed to make an effort over herself.

“Are people talking about it?” she asked.

I was taken aback by her assumption that I knew all about her domestic
misfortune.

“I’ve only just come back. The only person I’ve seen is Rose
Waterford.”

Mrs. Strickland clasped her hands.

“Tell me exactly what she said.” And when I hesitated, she insisted. “I
particularly want to know.”

“You know the way people talk. She’s not very reliable, is she? She
said your husband had left you.”

“Is that all?”

I did not choose to repeat Rose Waterford’s parting reference to a girl
from a tea-shop. I lied.

“She didn’t say anything about his going with anyone?”

“No.”

“That’s all I wanted to know.”

I was a little puzzled, but at all events I understood that I might now
take my leave. When I shook hands with Mrs. Strickland I told her that
if I could be of any use to her I should be very glad. She smiled
wanly.

“Thank you so much. I don’t know that anybody can do anything for me.”

Too shy to express my sympathy, I turned to say good-bye to the
Colonel. He did not take my hand.

“I’m just coming. If you’re walking up Victoria Street, I’ll come along
with you.”

“All right,” I said. “Come on.”




Chapter IX


“This is a terrible thing,” he said, the moment we got out into the
street.

I realised that he had come away with me in order to discuss once more
what he had been already discussing for hours with his sister-in-law.

“We don’t know who the woman is, you know,” he said. “All we know is
that the blackguard’s gone to Paris.”

“I thought they got on so well.”

“So they did. Why, just before you came in Amy said they’d never had a
quarrel in the whole of their married life. You know Amy. There never
was a better woman in the world.”

Since these confidences were thrust on me, I saw no harm in asking a
few questions.

“But do you mean to say she suspected nothing?”

“Nothing. He spent August with her and the children in Norfolk. He was
just the same as he’d always been. We went down for two or three days,
my wife and I, and I played golf with him. He came back to town in
September to let his partner go away, and Amy stayed on in the country.
They’d taken a house for six weeks, and at the end of her tenancy she
wrote to tell him on which day she was arriving in London. He answered
from Paris. He said he’d made up his mind not to live with her any
more.”

“What explanation did he give?”

“My dear fellow, he gave no explanation. I’ve seen the letter. It
wasn’t more than ten lines.”

“But that’s extraordinary.”

We happened then to cross the street, and the traffic prevented us from
speaking. What Colonel MacAndrew had told me seemed very improbable,
and I suspected that Mrs. Strickland, for reasons of her own, had
concealed from him some part of the facts. It was clear that a man
after seventeen years of wedlock did not leave his wife without certain
occurrences which must have led her to suspect that all was not well
with their married life. The Colonel caught me up.

“Of course, there was no explanation he could give except that he’d
gone off with a woman. I suppose he thought she could find that out for
herself. That’s the sort of chap he was.”

“What is Mrs. Strickland going to do?”

“Well, the first thing is to get our proofs. I’m going over to Paris
myself.”

“And what about his business?”

“That’s where he’s been so artful. He’s been drawing in his horns for
the last year.”

“Did he tell his partner he was leaving?”

“Not a word.”

Colonel MacAndrew had a very sketchy knowledge of business matters, and
I had none at all, so I did not quite understand under what conditions
Strickland had left his affairs. I gathered that the deserted partner
was very angry and threatened proceedings. It appeared that when
everything was settled he would be four or five hundred pounds out of
pocket.

“It’s lucky the furniture in the flat is in Amy’s name. She’ll have
that at all events.”

“Did you mean it when you said she wouldn’t have a bob?”

“Of course I did. She’s got two or three hundred pounds and the
furniture.”

“But how is she going to live?”

“God knows.”

The affair seemed to grow more complicated, and the Colonel, with his
expletives and his indignation, confused rather than informed me. I was
glad that, catching sight of the clock at the Army and Navy Stores, he
remembered an engagement to play cards at his club, and so left me to
cut across St. James Park.




Chapter X


A day or two later Mrs. Strickland sent me round a note asking if I
could go and see her that evening after dinner. I found her alone. Her
black dress, simple to austerity, suggested her bereaved condition, and
I was innocently astonished that notwithstanding a real emotion she was
able to dress the part she had to play according to her notions of
seemliness.

“You said that if I wanted you to do anything you wouldn’t mind doing
it,” she remarked.

“It was quite true.”

“Will you go over to Paris and see Charlie?”

“I?”

I was taken aback. I reflected that I had only seen him once. I did not
know what she wanted me to do.

“Fred is set on going.” Fred was Colonel MacAndrew. “But I’m sure he’s
not the man to go. He’ll only make things worse. I don’t know who else
to ask.”

Her voice trembled a little, and I felt a brute even to hesitate.

“But I’ve not spoken ten words to your husband. He doesn’t know me.
He’ll probably just tell me to go to the devil.”

“That wouldn’t hurt you,” said Mrs. Strickland, smiling.

“What is it exactly you want me to do?”

She did not answer directly.

“I think it’s rather an advantage that he doesn’t know you. You see, he
never really liked Fred; he thought him a fool; he didn’t understand
soldiers. Fred would fly into a passion, and there’d be a quarrel, and
things would be worse instead of better. If you said you came on my
behalf, he couldn’t refuse to listen to you.”

“I haven’t known you very long,” I answered. “I don’t see how anyone
can be expected to tackle a case like this unless he knows all the
details. I don’t want to pry into what doesn’t concern me. Why don’t
you go and see him yourself?”

“You forget he isn’t alone.”

I held my tongue. I saw myself calling on Charles Strickland and
sending in my card; I saw him come into the room, holding it between
finger and thumb:

“To what do I owe this honour?”

“I’ve come to see you about your wife.”

“Really. When you are a little older you will doubtless learn the
advantage of minding your own business. If you will be so good as to
turn your head slightly to the left, you will see the door. I wish you
good-afternoon.”

I foresaw that it would be difficult to make my exit with dignity, and
I wished to goodness that I had not returned to London till Mrs.
Strickland had composed her difficulties. I stole a glance at her. She
was immersed in thought. Presently she looked up at me, sighed deeply,
and smiled.

“It was all so unexpected,” she said. “We’d been married seventeen
years. I never dreamed that Charlie was the sort of man to get
infatuated with anyone. We always got on very well together. Of course,
I had a great many interests that he didn’t share.”

“Have you found out who”—I did not quite know how to express
myself—“who the person, who it is he’s gone away with?”

“No. No one seems to have an idea. It’s so strange. Generally when a
man falls in love with someone people see them about together, lunching
or something, and her friends always come and tell the wife. I had no
warning—nothing. His letter came like a thunderbolt. I thought he was
perfectly happy.”

She began to cry, poor thing, and I felt very sorry for her. But in a
little while she grew calmer.

“It’s no good making a fool of myself,” she said, drying her eyes. “The
only thing is to decide what is the best thing to do.”

She went on, talking somewhat at random, now of the recent past, then
of their first meeting and their marriage; but presently I began to
form a fairly coherent picture of their lives; and it seemed to me that
my surmises had not been incorrect. Mrs. Strickland was the daughter of
an Indian civilian, who on his retirement had settled in the depths of
the country, but it was his habit every August to take his family to
Eastbourne for change of air; and it was here, when she was twenty,
that she met Charles Strickland. He was twenty-three. They played
together, walked on the front together, listened together to the nigger
minstrels; and she had made up her mind to accept him a week before he
proposed to her. They lived in London, first in Hampstead, and then, as
he grew more prosperous, in town. Two children were born to them.

“He always seemed very fond of them. Even if he was tired of me, I
wonder that he had the heart to leave them. It’s all so incredible.
Even now I can hardly believe it’s true.”

At last she showed me the letter he had written. I was curious to see
it, but had not ventured to ask for it.


“MY DEAR AMY,

“I think you will find everything all right in the flat. I have given
Anne your instructions, and dinner will be ready for you and the
children when you come. I shall not be there to meet you. I have made
up my mind to live apart from you, and I am going to Paris in the
morning. I shall post this letter on my arrival. I shall not come back.
My decision is irrevocable.


“Yours always,
“CHARLES STRICKLAND.”


“Not a word of explanation or regret. Don’t you think it’s inhuman?”

“It’s a very strange letter under the circumstances,” I replied.

“There’s only one explanation, and that is that he’s not himself. I
don’t know who this woman is who’s got hold of him, but she’s made him
into another man. It’s evidently been going on a long time.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Fred found that out. My husband said he went to the club three or four
nights a week to play bridge. Fred knows one of the members, and said
something about Charles being a great bridge-player. The man was
surprised. He said he’d never even seen Charles in the card-room. It’s
quite clear now that when I thought Charles was at his club he was with
her.”

I was silent for a moment. Then I thought of the children.

“It must have been difficult to explain to Robert,” I said.

“Oh, I never said a word to either of them. You see, we only came up to
town the day before they had to go back to school. I had the presence
of mind to say that their father had been called away on business.”

It could not have been very easy to be bright and careless with that
sudden secret in her heart, nor to give her attention to all the things
that needed doing to get her children comfortably packed off. Mrs.
Strickland’s voice broke again.

“And what is to happen to them, poor darlings? How are we going to
live?”

She struggled for self-control, and I saw her hands clench and unclench
spasmodically. It was dreadfully painful.

“Of course I’ll go over to Paris if you think I can do any good, but
you must tell me exactly what you want me to do.”

“I want him to come back.”

“I understood from Colonel MacAndrew that you’d made up your mind to
divorce him.”

“I’ll never divorce him,” she answered with a sudden violence. “Tell
him that from me. He’ll never be able to marry that woman. I’m as
obstinate as he is, and I’ll never divorce him. I have to think of my
children.”

I think she added this to explain her attitude to me, but I thought it
was due to a very natural jealousy rather than to maternal solicitude.

“Are you in love with him still?”

“I don’t know. I want him to come back. If he’ll do that we’ll let
bygones be bygones. After all, we’ve been married for seventeen years.
I’m a broadminded woman. I wouldn’t have minded what he did as long as
I knew nothing about it. He must know that his infatuation won’t last.
If he’ll come back now everything can be smoothed over, and no one will
know anything about it.”

It chilled me a little that Mrs. Strickland should be concerned with
gossip, for I did not know then how great a part is played in women’s
life by the opinion of others. It throws a shadow of insincerity over
their most deeply felt emotions.

It was known where Strickland was staying. His partner, in a violent
letter, sent to his bank, had taunted him with hiding his whereabouts:
and Strickland, in a cynical and humourous reply, had told his partner
exactly where to find him. He was apparently living in an Hôtel.

“I’ve never heard of it,” said Mrs. Strickland. “But Fred knows it
well. He says it’s very expensive.”

She flushed darkly. I imagined that she saw her husband installed in a
luxurious suite of rooms, dining at one smart restaurant after another,
and she pictured his days spent at race-meetings and his evenings at
the play.

“It can’t go on at his age,” she said. “After all, he’s forty. I could
understand it in a young man, but I think it’s horrible in a man of his
years, with children who are nearly grown up. His health will never
stand it.”

Anger struggled in her breast with misery.

“Tell him that our home cries out for him. Everything is just the same,
and yet everything is different. I can’t live without him. I’d sooner
kill myself. Talk to him about the past, and all we’ve gone through
together. What am I to say to the children when they ask for him? His
room is exactly as it was when he left it. It’s waiting for him. We’re
all waiting for him.”

Now she told me exactly what I should say. She gave me elaborate
answers to every possible observation of his.

“You will do everything you can for me?” she said pitifully. “Tell him
what a state I’m in.”

I saw that she wished me to appeal to his sympathies by every means in
my power. She was weeping freely. I was extraordinarily touched. I felt
indignant at Strickland’s cold cruelty, and I promised to do all I
could to bring him back. I agreed to go over on the next day but one,
and to stay in Paris till I had achieved something. Then, as it was
growing late and we were both exhausted by so much emotion, I left her.




Chapter XI


During the journey I thought over my errand with misgiving. Now that I
was free from the spectacle of Mrs. Strickland’s distress I could
consider the matter more calmly. I was puzzled by the contradictions
that I saw in her behaviour. She was very unhappy, but to excite my
sympathy she was able to make a show of her unhappiness. It was evident
that she had been prepared to weep, for she had provided herself with a
sufficiency of handkerchiefs; I admired her forethought, but in
retrospect it made her tears perhaps less moving. I could not decide
whether she desired the return of her husband because she loved him, or
because she dreaded the tongue of scandal; and I was perturbed by the
suspicion that the anguish of love contemned was alloyed in her broken
heart with the pangs, sordid to my young mind, of wounded vanity. I had
not yet learnt how contradictory is human nature; I did not know how
much pose there is in the sincere, how much baseness in the noble, nor
how much goodness in the reprobate.

But there was something of an adventure in my trip, and my spirits rose
as I approached Paris. I saw myself, too, from the dramatic standpoint,
and I was pleased with my role of the trusted friend bringing back the
errant husband to his forgiving wife. I made up my mind to see
Strickland the following evening, for I felt instinctively that the
hour must be chosen with delicacy. An appeal to the emotions is little
likely to be effectual before luncheon. My own thoughts were then
constantly occupied with love, but I never could imagine connubial
bliss till after tea.

I enquired at my hotel for that in which Charles Strickland was living.
It was called the Hôtel des Belges. But the concierge, somewhat to my
surprise, had never heard of it. I had understood from Mrs. Strickland
that it was a large and sumptuous place at the back of the Rue de
Rivoli. We looked it out in the directory. The only hotel of that name
was in the Rue des Moines. The quarter was not fashionable; it was not
even respectable. I shook my head.

“I’m sure that’s not it,” I said.

The concierge shrugged his shoulders. There was no other hotel of that
name in Paris. It occurred to me that Strickland had concealed his
address, after all. In giving his partner the one I knew he was perhaps
playing a trick on him. I do not know why I had an inkling that it
would appeal to Strickland’s sense of humour to bring a furious
stockbroker over to Paris on a fool’s errand to an ill-famed house in a
mean street. Still, I thought I had better go and see. Next day about
six o’clock I took a cab to the Rue des Moines, but dismissed it at the
corner, since I preferred to walk to the hotel and look at it before I
went in. It was a street of small shops subservient to the needs of
poor people, and about the middle of it, on the left as I walked down,
was the Hôtel des Belges. My own hotel was modest enough, but it was
magnificent in comparison with this. It was a tall, shabby building,
that cannot have been painted for years, and it had so bedraggled an
air that the houses on each side of it looked neat and clean. The dirty
windows were all shut. It was not here that Charles Strickland lived in
guilty splendour with the unknown charmer for whose sake he had
abandoned honour and duty. I was vexed, for I felt that I had been made
a fool of, and I nearly turned away without making an enquiry. I went
in only to be able to tell Mrs. Strickland that I had done my best.

The door was at the side of a shop. It stood open, and just within was
a sign: _Bureau au premier._ I walked up narrow stairs, and on the
landing found a sort of box, glassed in, within which were a desk and a
couple of chairs. There was a bench outside, on which it might be
presumed the night porter passed uneasy nights. There was no one about,
but under an electric bell was written _Garcon._ I rang, and presently
a waiter appeared. He was a young man with furtive eyes and a sullen
look. He was in shirt-sleeves and carpet slippers.

I do not know why I made my enquiry as casual as possible.

“Does Mr. Strickland live here by any chance?” I asked.

“Number thirty-two. On the sixth floor.”

I was so surprised that for a moment I did not answer.

“Is he in?”

The waiter looked at a board in the _bureau._

“He hasn’t left his key. Go up and you’ll see.”

I thought it as well to put one more question.

_“Madame est là?”_

_“Monsieur est seul.”_

The waiter looked at me suspiciously as I made my way upstairs. They
were dark and airless. There was a foul and musty smell. Three flights
up a Woman in a dressing-gown, with touzled hair, opened a door and
looked at me silently as I passed. At length I reached the sixth floor,
and knocked at the door numbered thirty-two. There was a sound within,
and the door was partly opened. Charles Strickland stood before me. He
uttered not a word. He evidently did not know me.

I told him my name. I tried my best to assume an airy manner.

“You don’t remember me. I had the pleasure of dining with you last
July.”

“Come in,” he said cheerily. “I’m delighted to see you. Take a pew.”

I entered. It was a very small room, overcrowded with furniture of the
style which the French know as Louis Philippe. There was a large wooden
bedstead on which was a billowing red eiderdown, and there was a large
wardrobe, a round table, a very small washstand, and two stuffed chairs
covered with red rep. Everything was dirty and shabby. There was no
sign of the abandoned luxury that Colonel MacAndrew had so confidently
described. Strickland threw on the floor the clothes that burdened one
of the chairs, and I sat down on it.

“What can I do for you?” he asked.

In that small room he seemed even bigger than I remembered him. He wore
an old Norfolk jacket, and he had not shaved for several days. When
last I saw him he was spruce enough, but he looked ill at ease: now,
untidy and ill-kempt, he looked perfectly at home. I did not know how
he would take the remark I had prepared.

“I’ve come to see you on behalf of your wife.”

“I was just going out to have a drink before dinner. You’d better come
too. Do you like absinthe?”

“I can drink it.”

“Come on, then.”

He put on a bowler hat much in need of brushing.

“We might dine together. You owe me a dinner, you know.”

“Certainly. Are you alone?”

I flattered myself that I had got in that important question very
naturally.

“Oh yes. In point of fact I’ve not spoken to a soul for three days. My
French isn’t exactly brilliant.”

I wondered as I preceded him downstairs what had happened to the little
lady in the tea-shop. Had they quarrelled already, or was his
infatuation passed? It seemed hardly likely if, as appeared, he had
been taking steps for a year to make his desperate plunge. We walked to
the Avenue de Clichy, and sat down at one of the tables on the pavement
of a large café.




Chapter XII


The Avenue de Clichy was crowded at that hour, and a lively fancy might
see in the passers-by the personages of many a sordid romance. There
were clerks and shopgirls; old fellows who might have stepped out of
the pages of Honore de Balzac; members, male and female, of the
professions which make their profit of the frailties of mankind. There
is in the streets of the poorer quarters of Paris a thronging vitality
which excites the blood and prepares the soul for the unexpected.

“Do you know Paris well?” I asked.

“No. We came on our honeymoon. I haven’t been since.”

“How on earth did you find out your hotel?”

“It was recommended to me. I wanted something cheap.”

The absinthe came, and with due solemnity we dropped water over the
melting sugar.

“I thought I’d better tell you at once why I had come to see you,” I
said, not without embarrassment.

His eyes twinkled. “I thought somebody would come along sooner or
later. I’ve had a lot of letters from Amy.”

“Then you know pretty well what I’ve got to say.”

“I’ve not read them.”

I lit a cigarette to give myself a moment’s time. I did not quite know
now how to set about my mission. The eloquent phrases I had arranged,
pathetic or indignant, seemed out of place on the Avenue de Clichy.
Suddenly he gave a chuckle.

“Beastly job for you this, isn’t it?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I answered.

“Well, look here, you get it over, and then we’ll have a jolly
evening.”

I hesitated.

“Has it occurred to you that your wife is frightfully unhappy?”

“She’ll get over it.”

I cannot describe the extraordinary callousness with which he made this
reply. It disconcerted me, but I did my best not to show it. I adopted
the tone used by my Uncle Henry, a clergyman, when he was asking one of
his relatives for a subscription to the Additional Curates Society.

“You don’t mind my talking to you frankly?”

He shook his head, smiling.

“Has she deserved that you should treat her like this?”

“No.”

“Have you any complaint to make against her?”

“None.”

“Then, isn’t it monstrous to leave her in this fashion, after seventeen
years of married life, without a fault to find with her?”

“Monstrous.”

I glanced at him with surprise. His cordial agreement with all I said
cut the ground from under my feet. It made my position complicated, not
to say ludicrous. I was prepared to be persuasive, touching, and
hortatory, admonitory and expostulating, if need be vituperative even,
indignant and sarcastic; but what the devil does a mentor do when the
sinner makes no bones about confessing his sin? I had no experience,
since my own practice has always been to deny everything.

“What, then?” asked Strickland.

I tried to curl my lip.

“Well, if you acknowledge that, there doesn’t seem much more to be
said.”

“I don’t think there is.”

I felt that I was not carrying out my embassy with any great skill. I
was distinctly nettled.

“Hang it all, one can’t leave a woman without a bob.”

“Why not?”

“How is she going to live?”

“I’ve supported her for seventeen years. Why shouldn’t she support
herself for a change?”

“She can’t.”

“Let her try.”

Of course there were many things I might have answered to this. I might
have spoken of the economic position of woman, of the contract, tacit
and overt, which a man accepts by his marriage, and of much else; but I
felt that there was only one point which really signified.

“Don’t you care for her any more?”

“Not a bit,” he replied.

The matter was immensely serious for all the parties concerned, but
there was in the manner of his answer such a cheerful effrontery that I
had to bite my lips in order not to laugh. I reminded myself that his
behaviour was abominable. I worked myself up into a state of moral
indignation.

“Damn it all, there are your children to think of. They’ve never done
you any harm. They didn’t ask to be brought into the world. If you
chuck everything like this, they’ll be thrown on the streets.

“They’ve had a good many years of comfort. It’s much more than the
majority of children have. Besides, somebody will look after them. When
it comes to the point, the MacAndrews will pay for their schooling.”

“But aren’t you fond of them? They’re such awfully nice kids. Do you
mean to say you don’t want to have anything more to do with them?”

“I liked them all right when they were kids, but now they’re growing up
I haven’t got any particular feeling for them.”

“It’s just inhuman.”

“I dare say.”

“You don’t seem in the least ashamed.”

“I’m not.”

I tried another tack.

“Everyone will think you a perfect swine.”

“Let them.”

“Won’t it mean anything to you to know that people loathe and despise
you?”

“No.”

His brief answer was so scornful that it made my question, natural
though it was, seem absurd. I reflected for a minute or two.

“I wonder if one can live quite comfortably when one’s conscious of the
disapproval of one’s fellows? Are you sure it won’t begin to worry you?
Everyone has some sort of a conscience, and sooner or later it will
find you out. Supposing your wife died, wouldn’t you be tortured by
remorse?”

He did not answer, and I waited for some time for him to speak. At last
I had to break the silence myself.

“What have you to say to that?”

“Only that you’re a damned fool.”

“At all events, you can be forced to support your wife and children,” I
retorted, somewhat piqued. “I suppose the law has some protection to
offer them.”

“Can the law get blood out of a stone? I haven’t any money. I’ve got
about a hundred pounds.”

I began to be more puzzled than before. It was true that his hotel
pointed to the most straitened circumstances.

“What are you going to do when you’ve spent that?”

“Earn some.”

He was perfectly cool, and his eyes kept that mocking smile which made
all I said seem rather foolish. I paused for a little while to consider
what I had better say next. But it was he who spoke first.

“Why doesn’t Amy marry again? She’s comparatively young, and she’s not
unattractive. I can recommend her as an excellent wife. If she wants to
divorce me I don’t mind giving her the necessary grounds.”

Now it was my turn to smile. He was very cunning, but it was evidently
this that he was aiming at. He had some reason to conceal the fact that
he had run away with a woman, and he was using every precaution to hide
her whereabouts. I answered with decision.

“Your wife says that nothing you can do will ever induce her to divorce
you. She’s quite made up her mind. You can put any possibility of that
definitely out of your head.”

He looked at me with an astonishment that was certainly not feigned.
The smile abandoned his lips, and he spoke quite seriously.

“But, my dear fellow, I don’t care. It doesn’t matter a twopenny damn
to me one way or the other.”

I laughed.

“Oh, come now; you mustn’t think us such fools as all that. We happen
to know that you came away with a woman.”

He gave a little start, and then suddenly burst into a shout of
laughter. He laughed so uproariously that people sitting near us looked
round, and some of them began to laugh too.

“I don’t see anything very amusing in that.”

“Poor Amy,” he grinned.

Then his face grew bitterly scornful.

“What poor minds women have got! Love. It’s always love. They think a
man leaves only because he wants others. Do you think I should be such
a fool as to do what I’ve done for a woman?”

“Do you mean to say you didn’t leave your wife for another woman?”

“Of course not.”

“On your word of honour?”

I don’t know why I asked for that. It was very ingenuous of me.

“On my word of honour.”

“Then, what in God’s name have you left her for?”

“I want to paint.”

I looked at him for quite a long time. I did not understand. I thought
he was mad. It must be remembered that I was very young, and I looked
upon him as a middle-aged man. I forgot everything but my own
amazement.

“But you’re forty.”

“That’s what made me think it was high time to begin.”

“Have you ever painted?”

“I rather wanted to be a painter when I was a boy, but my father made
me go into business because he said there was no money in art. I began
to paint a bit a year ago. For the last year I’ve been going to some
classes at night.”

“Was that where you went when Mrs. Strickland thought you were playing
bridge at your club?”

“That’s it.”

“Why didn’t you tell her?”

“I preferred to keep it to myself.”

“Can you paint?”

“Not yet. But I shall. That’s why I’ve come over here. I couldn’t get
what I wanted in London. Perhaps I can here.”

“Do you think it’s likely that a man will do any good when he starts at
your age? Most men begin painting at eighteen.”

“I can learn quicker than I could when I was eighteen.”

“What makes you think you have any talent?”

He did not answer for a minute. His gaze rested on the passing throng,
but I do not think he saw it. His answer was no answer.

“I’ve got to paint.”

“Aren’t you taking an awful chance?”

He looked at me. His eyes had something strange in them, so that I felt
rather uncomfortable.

“How old are you? Twenty-three?”

It seemed to me that the question was beside the point. It was natural
that I should take chances; but he was a man whose youth was past, a
stockbroker with a position of respectability, a wife and two children.
A course that would have been natural for me was absurd for him. I
wished to be quite fair.

“Of course a miracle may happen, and you may be a great painter, but
you must confess the chances are a million to one against it. It’ll be
an awful sell if at the end you have to acknowledge you’ve made a hash
of it.”

“I’ve got to paint,” he repeated.

“Supposing you’re never anything more than third-rate, do you think it
will have been worth while to give up everything? After all, in any
other walk in life it doesn’t matter if you’re not very good; you can
get along quite comfortably if you’re just adequate; but it’s different
with an artist.”

“You blasted fool,” he said.

“I don’t see why, unless it’s folly to say the obvious.”

“I tell you I’ve got to paint. I can’t help myself. When a man falls
into the water it doesn’t matter how he swims, well or badly: he’s got
to get out or else he’ll drown.”

There was real passion in his voice, and in spite of myself I was
impressed. I seemed to feel in him some vehement power that was
struggling within him; it gave me the sensation of something very
strong, overmastering, that held him, as it were, against his will. I
could not understand. He seemed really to be possessed of a devil, and
I felt that it might suddenly turn and rend him. Yet he looked ordinary
enough. My eyes, resting on him curiously, caused him no embarrassment.
I wondered what a stranger would have taken him to be, sitting there in
his old Norfolk jacket and his unbrushed bowler; his trousers were
baggy, his hands were not clean; and his face, with the red stubble of
the unshaved chin, the little eyes, and the large, aggressive nose, was
uncouth and coarse. His mouth was large, his lips were heavy and
sensual. No; I could not have placed him.

“You won’t go back to your wife?” I said at last.

“Never.”

“She’s willing to forget everything that’s happened and start afresh.
She’ll never make you a single reproach.”

“She can go to hell.”

“You don’t care if people think you an utter blackguard? You don’t care
if she and your children have to beg their bread?”

“Not a damn.”

I was silent for a moment in order to give greater force to my next
remark. I spoke as deliberately as I could.

“You are a most unmitigated cad.”

“Now that you’ve got that off your chest, let’s go and have dinner.”




Chapter XIII


I dare say it would have been more seemly to decline this proposal. I
think perhaps I should have made a show of the indignation I really
felt, and I am sure that Colonel MacAndrew at least would have thought
well of me if I had been able to report my stout refusal to sit at the
same table with a man of such character. But the fear of not being able
to carry it through effectively has always made me shy of assuming the
moral attitude; and in this case the certainty that my sentiments would
be lost on Strickland made it peculiarly embarrassing to utter them.
Only the poet or the saint can water an asphalt pavement in the
confident anticipation that lilies will reward his labour.

I paid for what we had drunk, and we made our way to a cheap
restaurant, crowded and gay, where we dined with pleasure. I had the
appetite of youth and he of a hardened conscience. Then we went to a
tavern to have coffee and liqueurs.

I had said all I had to say on the subject that had brought me to
Paris, and though I felt it in a manner treacherous to Mrs. Strickland
not to pursue it, I could not struggle against his indifference. It
requires the feminine temperament to repeat the same thing three times
with unabated zest. I solaced myself by thinking that it would be
useful for me to find out what I could about Strickland’s state of
mind. It also interested me much more. But this was not an easy thing
to do, for Strickland was not a fluent talker. He seemed to express
himself with difficulty, as though words were not the medium with which
his mind worked; and you had to guess the intentions of his soul by
hackneyed phrases, slang, and vague, unfinished gestures. But though he
said nothing of any consequence, there was something in his personality
which prevented him from being dull. Perhaps it was sincerity. He did
not seem to care much about the Paris he was now seeing for the first
time (I did not count the visit with his wife), and he accepted sights
which must have been strange to him without any sense of astonishment.
I have been to Paris a hundred times, and it never fails to give me a
thrill of excitement; I can never walk its streets without feeling
myself on the verge of adventure. Strickland remained placid. Looking
back, I think now that he was blind to everything but to some
disturbing vision in his soul.

One rather absurd incident took place. There were a number of harlots
in the tavern: some were sitting with men, others by themselves; and
presently I noticed that one of these was looking at us. When she
caught Strickland’s eye she smiled. I do not think he saw her. In a
little while she went out, but in a minute returned and, passing our
table, very politely asked us to buy her something to drink. She sat
down and I began to chat with her; but, it was plain that her interest
was in Strickland. I explained that he knew no more than two words of
French. She tried to talk to him, partly by signs, partly in pidgin
French, which, for some reason, she thought would be more
comprehensible to him, and she had half a dozen phrases of English. She
made me translate what she could only express in her own tongue, and
eagerly asked for the meaning of his replies. He was quite
good-tempered, a little amused, but his indifference was obvious.

“I think you’ve made a conquest,” I laughed.

“I’m not flattered.”

In his place I should have been more embarrassed and less calm. She had
laughing eyes and a most charming mouth. She was young. I wondered what
she found so attractive in Strickland. She made no secret of her
desires, and I was bidden to translate.

“She wants you to go home with her.”

“I’m not taking any,” he replied.

I put his answer as pleasantly as I could. It seemed to me a little
ungracious to decline an invitation of that sort, and I ascribed his
refusal to lack of money.

“But I like him,” she said. “Tell him it’s for love.”

When I translated this, Strickland shrugged his shoulders impatiently.

“Tell her to go to hell,” he said.

His manner made his answer quite plain, and the girl threw back her
head with a sudden gesture. Perhaps she reddened under her paint. She
rose to her feet.

_“Monsieur n’est pas poli,”_ she said.

She walked out of the inn. I was slightly vexed.

“There wasn’t any need to insult her that I can see,” I said. “After
all, it was rather a compliment she was paying you.”

“That sort of thing makes me sick,” he said roughly.

I looked at him curiously. There was a real distaste in his face, and
yet it was the face of a coarse and sensual man. I suppose the girl had
been attracted by a certain brutality in it.

“I could have got all the women I wanted in London. I didn’t come here
for that.”




Chapter XIV


During the journey back to England I thought much of Strickland. I
tried to set in order what I had to tell his wife. It was
unsatisfactory, and I could not imagine that she would be content with
me; I was not content with myself. Strickland perplexed me. I could not
understand his motives. When I had asked him what first gave him the
idea of being a painter, he was unable or unwilling to tell me. I could
make nothing of it. I tried to persuade myself than an obscure feeling
of revolt had been gradually coming to a head in his slow mind, but to
challenge this was the undoubted fact that he had never shown any
impatience with the monotony of his life. If, seized by an intolerable
boredom, he had determined to be a painter merely to break with irksome
ties, it would have been comprehensible, and commonplace; but
commonplace is precisely what I felt he was not. At last, because I was
romantic, I devised an explanation which I acknowledged to be
far-fetched, but which was the only one that in any way satisfied me.
It was this: I asked myself whether there was not in his soul some
deep-rooted instinct of creation, which the circumstances of his life
had obscured, but which grew relentlessly, as a cancer may grow in the
living tissues, till at last it took possession of his whole being and
forced him irresistibly to action. The cuckoo lays its egg in the
strange bird’s nest, and when the young one is hatched it shoulders its
foster-brothers out and breaks at last the nest that has sheltered it.

But how strange it was that the creative instinct should seize upon
this dull stockbroker, to his own ruin, perhaps, and to the misfortune
of such as were dependent on him; and yet no stranger than the way in
which the spirit of God has seized men, powerful and rich, pursuing
them with stubborn vigilance till at last, conquered, they have
abandoned the joy of the world and the love of women for the painful
austerities of the cloister. Conversion may come under many shapes, and
it may be brought about in many ways. With some men it needs a
cataclysm, as a stone may be broken to fragments by the fury of a
torrent; but with some it comes gradually, as a stone may be worn away
by the ceaseless fall of a drop of water. Strickland had the directness
of the fanatic and the ferocity of the apostle.

But to my practical mind it remained to be seen whether the passion
which obsessed him would be justified of its works. When I asked him
what his brother-students at the night classes he had attended in
London thought of his painting, he answered with a grin:

“They thought it a joke.”

“Have you begun to go to a studio here?”

“Yes. The blighter came round this morning—the master, you know; when
he saw my drawing he just raised his eyebrows and walked on.”

Strickland chuckled. He did not seem discouraged. He was independent of
the opinion of his fellows.

And it was just that which had most disconcerted me in my dealings with
him. When people say they do not care what others think of them, for
the most part they deceive themselves. Generally they mean only that
they will do as they choose, in the confidence that no one will know
their vagaries; and at the utmost only that they are willing to act
contrary to the opinion of the majority because they are supported by
the approval of their neighbours. It is not difficult to be
unconventional in the eyes of the world when your unconventionality is
but the convention of your set. It affords you then an inordinate
amount of self-esteem. You have the self-satisfaction of courage
without the inconvenience of danger. But the desire for approbation is
perhaps the most deeply seated instinct of civilised man. No one runs
so hurriedly to the cover of respectability as the unconventional woman
who has exposed herself to the slings and arrows of outraged propriety.
I do not believe the people who tell me they do not care a row of pins
for the opinion of their fellows. It is the bravado of ignorance. They
mean only that they do not fear reproaches for peccadillos which they
are convinced none will discover.

But here was a man who sincerely did not mind what people thought of
him, and so convention had no hold on him; he was like a wrestler whose
body is oiled; you could not get a grip on him; it gave him a freedom
which was an outrage. I remember saying to him:

“Look here, if everyone acted like you, the world couldn’t go on.”

“That’s a damned silly thing to say. Everyone doesn’t want to act like
me. The great majority are perfectly content to do the ordinary thing.”

And once I sought to be satirical.

“You evidently don’t believe in the maxim: Act so that every one of
your actions is capable of being made into a universal rule.”

“I never heard it before, but it’s rotten nonsense.”

“Well, it was Kant who said it.”

“I don’t care; it’s rotten nonsense.”

Nor with such a man could you expect the appeal to conscience to be
effective. You might as well ask for a reflection without a mirror. I
take it that conscience is the guardian in the individual of the rules
which the community has evolved for its own preservation. It is the
policeman in all our hearts, set there to watch that we do not break
its laws. It is the spy seated in the central stronghold of the ego.
Man’s desire for the approval of his fellows is so strong, his dread of
their censure so violent, that he himself has brought his enemy within
his gates; and it keeps watch over him, vigilant always in the
interests of its master to crush any half-formed desire to break away
from the herd. It will force him to place the good of society before
his own. It is the very strong link that attaches the individual to the
whole. And man, subservient to interests he has persuaded himself are
greater than his own, makes himself a slave to his taskmaster. He sits
him in a seat of honour. At last, like a courtier fawning on the royal
stick that is laid about his shoulders, he prides himself on the
sensitiveness of his conscience. Then he has no words hard enough for
the man who does not recognise its sway; for, a member of society now,
he realises accurately enough that against him he is powerless. When I
saw that Strickland was really indifferent to the blame his conduct
must excite, I could only draw back in horror as from a monster of
hardly human shape.

The last words he said to me when I bade him good-night were:

“Tell Amy it’s no good coming after me. Anyhow, I shall change my
hotel, so she wouldn’t be able to find me.”

“My own impression is that she’s well rid of you,” I said.

“My dear fellow, I only hope you’ll be able to make her see it. But
women are very unintelligent.”




Chapter XV


When I reached London I found waiting for me an urgent request that I
should go to Mrs. Strickland’s as soon after dinner as I could. I found
her with Colonel MacAndrew and his wife. Mrs. Strickland’s sister was
older than she, not unlike her, but more faded; and she had the
efficient air, as though she carried the British Empire in her pocket,
which the wives of senior officers acquire from the consciousness of
belonging to a superior caste. Her manner was brisk, and her
good-breeding scarcely concealed her conviction that if you were not a
soldier you might as well be a counter-jumper. She hated the Guards,
whom she thought conceited, and she could not trust herself to speak of
their ladies, who were so remiss in calling. Her gown was dowdy and
expensive.

Mrs. Strickland was plainly nervous.

“Well, tell us your news,” she said.

“I saw your husband. I’m afraid he’s quite made up his mind not to
return.” I paused a little. “He wants to paint.”

“What do you mean?” cried Mrs. Strickland, with the utmost
astonishment.

“Did you never know that he was keen on that sort of thing.”

“He must be as mad as a hatter,” exclaimed the Colonel.

Mrs. Strickland frowned a little. She was searching among her
recollections.

“I remember before we were married he used to potter about with a
paint-box. But you never saw such daubs. We used to chaff him. He had
absolutely no gift for anything like that.”

“Of course it’s only an excuse,” said Mrs. MacAndrew.

Mrs. Strickland pondered deeply for some time. It was quite clear that
she could not make head or tail of my announcement. She had put some
order into the drawing-room by now, her housewifely instincts having
got the better of her dismay; and it no longer bore that deserted look,
like a furnished house long to let, which I had noticed on my first
visit after the catastrophe. But now that I had seen Strickland in
Paris it was difficult to imagine him in those surroundings. I thought
it could hardly have failed to strike them that there was something
incongruous in him.

“But if he wanted to be an artist, why didn’t he say so?” asked Mrs.
Strickland at last. “I should have thought I was the last person to be
unsympathetic to—to aspirations of that kind.”

Mrs. MacAndrew tightened her lips. I imagine that she had never looked
with approval on her sister’s leaning towards persons who cultivated
the arts. She spoke of “culchaw” derisively.

Mrs. Strickland continued:

“After all, if he had any talent I should be the first to encourage it.
I wouldn’t have minded sacrifices. I’d much rather be married to a
painter than to a stockbroker. If it weren’t for the children, I
wouldn’t mind anything. I could be just as happy in a shabby studio in
Chelsea as in this flat.”

“My dear, I have no patience with you,” cried Mrs. MacAndrew. “You
don’t mean to say you believe a word of this nonsense?”

“But I think it’s true,” I put in mildly.

She looked at me with good-humoured contempt.

“A man doesn’t throw up his business and leave his wife and children at
the age of forty to become a painter unless there’s a woman in it. I
suppose he met one of your—artistic friends, and she’s turned his
head.”

A spot of colour rose suddenly to Mrs. Strickland’s pale cheeks.

“What is she like?”

I hesitated a little. I knew that I had a bombshell.

“There isn’t a woman.”

Colonel MacAndrew and his wife uttered expressions of incredulity, and
Mrs. Strickland sprang to her feet.

“Do you mean to say you never saw her?”

“There’s no one to see. He’s quite alone.”

“That’s preposterous,” cried Mrs. MacAndrew.

“I knew I ought to have gone over myself,” said the Colonel. “You can
bet your boots I’d have routed her out fast enough.”

“I wish you had gone over,” I replied, somewhat tartly. “You’d have
seen that every one of your suppositions was wrong. He’s not at a smart
hotel. He’s living in one tiny room in the most squalid way. If he’s
left his home, it’s not to live a gay life. He’s got hardly any money.”

“Do you think he’s done something that we don’t know about, and is
lying doggo on account of the police?”

The suggestion sent a ray of hope in all their breasts, but I would
have nothing to do with it.

“If that were so, he would hardly have been such a fool as to give his
partner his address,” I retorted acidly. “Anyhow, there’s one thing I’m
positive of, he didn’t go away with anyone. He’s not in love. Nothing
is farther from his thoughts.”

There was a pause while they reflected over my words.

“Well, if what you say is true,” said Mrs. MacAndrew at last, “things
aren’t so bad as I thought.”

Mrs. Strickland glanced at her, but said nothing.

She was very pale now, and her fine brow was dark and lowering. I could
not understand the expression of her face. Mrs. MacAndrew continued:

“If it’s just a whim, he’ll get over it.”

“Why don’t you go over to him, Amy?” hazarded the Colonel. “There’s no
reason why you shouldn’t live with him in Paris for a year. We’ll look
after the children. I dare say he’d got stale. Sooner or later he’ll be
quite ready to come back to London, and no great harm will have been
done.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” said Mrs. MacAndrew. “I’d give him all the rope
he wants. He’ll come back with his tail between his legs and settle
down again quite comfortably.” Mrs. MacAndrew looked at her sister
coolly. “Perhaps you weren’t very wise with him sometimes. Men are
queer creatures, and one has to know how to manage them.”

Mrs. MacAndrew shared the common opinion of her sex that a man is
always a brute to leave a woman who is attached to him, but that a
woman is much to blame if he does. _Le cœur a ses raisons que la raison
ne connait pas._

Mrs. Strickland looked slowly from one to another of us.

“He’ll never come back,” she said.

“Oh, my dear, remember what we’ve just heard. He’s been used to comfort
and to having someone to look after him. How long do you think it’ll be
before he gets tired of a scrubby room in a scrubby hotel? Besides, he
hasn’t any money. He must come back.”

“As long as I thought he’d run away with some woman I thought there was
a chance. I don’t believe that sort of thing ever answers. He’d have
got sick to death of her in three months. But if he hasn’t gone because
he’s in love, then it’s finished.”

“Oh, I think that’s awfully subtle,” said the Colonel, putting into the
word all the contempt he felt for a quality so alien to the traditions
of his calling. “Don’t you believe it. He’ll come back, and, as Dorothy
says, I dare say he’ll be none the worse for having had a bit of a
fling.”

“But I don’t want him back,” she said.

“Amy!”

It was anger that had seized Mrs. Strickland, and her pallor was the
pallor of a cold and sudden rage. She spoke quickly now, with little
gasps.

“I could have forgiven it if he’d fallen desperately in love with
someone and gone off with her. I should have thought that natural. I
shouldn’t really have blamed him. I should have thought he was led
away. Men are so weak, and women are so unscrupulous. But this is
different. I hate him. I’ll never forgive him now.”

Colonel MacAndrew and his wife began to talk to her together. They were
astonished. They told her she was mad. They could not understand. Mrs.
Strickland turned desperately to me.

“Don’t _you_ see?” she cried.

“I’m not sure. Do you mean that you could have forgiven him if he’d
left you for a woman, but not if he’s left you for an idea? You think
you’re a match for the one, but against the other you’re helpless?”

Mrs. Strickland gave me a look in which I read no great friendliness,
but did not answer. Perhaps I had struck home. She went on in a low and
trembling voice:

“I never knew it was possible to hate anyone as much as I hate him. Do
you know, I’ve been comforting myself by thinking that however long it
lasted he’d want me at the end? I knew when he was dying he’d send for
me, and I was ready to go; I’d have nursed him like a mother, and at
the last I’d have told him that it didn’t matter, I’d loved him always,
and I forgave him everything.”

I have always been a little disconcerted by the passion women have for
behaving beautifully at the death-bed of those they love. Sometimes it
seems as if they grudge the longevity which postpones their chance of
an effective scene.

“But now—now it’s finished. I’m as indifferent to him as if he were a
stranger. I should like him to die miserable, poor, and starving,
without a friend. I hope he’ll rot with some loathsome disease. I’ve
done with him.”

I thought it as well then to say what Strickland had suggested.

“If you want to divorce him, he’s quite willing to do whatever is
necessary to make it possible.”

“Why should I give him his freedom?”

“I don’t think he wants it. He merely thought it might be more
convenient to you.”

Mrs. Strickland shrugged her shoulders impatiently. I think I was a
little disappointed in her. I expected then people to be more of a
piece than I do now, and I was distressed to find so much
vindictiveness in so charming a creature. I did not realise how motley
are the qualities that go to make up a human being. Now I am well aware
that pettiness and grandeur, malice and charity, hatred and love, can
find place side by side in the same human heart.

I wondered if there was anything I could say that would ease the sense
of bitter humiliation which at present tormented Mrs. Strickland. I
thought I would try.

“You know, I’m not sure that your husband is quite responsible for his
actions. I do not think he is himself. He seems to me to be possessed
by some power which is using him for its own ends, and in whose hold he
is as helpless as a fly in a spider’s web. It’s as though someone had
cast a spell over him. I’m reminded of those strange stories one
sometimes hears of another personality entering into a man and driving
out the old one. The soul lives unstably in the body, and is capable of
mysterious transformations. In the old days they would say Charles
Strickland had a devil.”

Mrs. MacAndrew smoothed down the lap of her gown, and gold bangles fell
over her wrists.

“All that seems to me very far-fetched,” she said acidly. “I don’t deny
that perhaps Amy took her husband a little too much for granted. If she
hadn’t been so busy with her own affairs, I can’t believe that she
wouldn’t have suspected something was the matter. I don’t think that
Alec could have something on his mind for a year or more without my
having a pretty shrewd idea of it.”

The Colonel stared into vacancy, and I wondered whether anyone could be
quite so innocent of guile as he looked.

“But that doesn’t prevent the fact that Charles Strickland is a
heartless beast.” She looked at me severely. “I can tell you why he
left his wife—from pure selfishness and nothing else whatever.”

“That is certainly the simplest explanation,” I said. But I thought it
explained nothing. When, saying I was tired, I rose to go, Mrs.
Strickland made no attempt to detain me.




Chapter XVI


What followed showed that Mrs. Strickland was a woman of character.
Whatever anguish she suffered she concealed. She saw shrewdly that the
world is quickly bored by the recital of misfortune, and willingly
avoids the sight of distress. Whenever she went out—and compassion for
her misadventure made her friends eager to entertain her—she bore a
demeanour that was perfect. She was brave, but not too obviously;
cheerful, but not brazenly; and she seemed more anxious to listen to
the troubles of others than to discuss her own. Whenever she spoke of
her husband it was with pity. Her attitude towards him at first
perplexed me. One day she said to me:

“You know, I’m convinced you were mistaken about Charles being alone.
From what I’ve been able to gather from certain sources that I can’t
tell you, I know that he didn’t leave England by himself.”

“In that case he has a positive genius for covering up his tracks.”

She looked away and slightly coloured.

“What I mean is, if anyone talks to you about it, please don’t
contradict it if they say he eloped with somebody.”

“Of course not.”

She changed the conversation as though it were a matter to which she
attached no importance. I discovered presently that a peculiar story
was circulating among her friends. They said that Charles Strickland
had become infatuated with a French dancer, whom he had first seen in
the ballet at the Empire, and had accompanied her to Paris. I could not
find out how this had arisen, but, singularly enough, it created much
sympathy for Mrs. Strickland, and at the same time gave her not a
little prestige. This was not without its use in the calling which she
had decided to follow. Colonel MacAndrew had not exaggerated when he
said she would be penniless, and it was necessary for her to earn her
own living as quickly as she could. She made up her mind to profit by
her acquaintance with so many writers, and without loss of time began
to learn shorthand and typewriting. Her education made it likely that
she would be a typist more efficient than the average, and her story
made her claims appealing. Her friends promised to send her work, and
took care to recommend her to all theirs.

The MacAndrews, who were childless and in easy circumstances, arranged
to undertake the care of the children, and Mrs. Strickland had only
herself to provide for. She let her flat and sold her furniture. She
settled in two tiny rooms in Westminster, and faced the world anew. She
was so efficient that it was certain she would make a success of the
adventure.




Chapter XVII


It was about five years after this that I decided to live in Paris for
a while. I was growing stale in London. I was tired of doing much the
same thing every day. My friends pursued their course with
uneventfulness; they had no longer any surprises for me, and when I met
them I knew pretty well what they would say; even their love-affairs
had a tedious banality. We were like tram-cars running on their lines
from terminus to terminus, and it was possible to calculate within
small limits the number of passengers they would carry. Life was
ordered too pleasantly. I was seized with panic. I gave up my small
apartment, sold my few belongings, and resolved to start afresh.

I called on Mrs. Strickland before I left. I had not seen her for some
time, and I noticed changes in her; it was not only that she was older,
thinner, and more lined; I think her character had altered. She had
made a success of her business, and now had an office in Chancery Lane;
she did little typing herself, but spent her time correcting the work
of the four girls she employed. She had had the idea of giving it a
certain daintiness, and she made much use of blue and red inks; she
bound the copy in coarse paper, that looked vaguely like watered silk,
in various pale colours; and she had acquired a reputation for neatness
and accuracy. She was making money. But she could not get over the idea
that to earn her living was somewhat undignified, and she was inclined
to remind you that she was a lady by birth. She could not help bringing
into her conversation the names of people she knew which would satisfy
you that she had not sunk in the social scale. She was a little ashamed
of her courage and business capacity, but delighted that she was going
to dine the next night with a K.C. who lived in South Kensington. She
was pleased to be able to tell you that her son was at Cambridge, and
it was with a little laugh that she spoke of the rush of dances to
which her daughter, just out, was invited. I suppose I said a very
stupid thing.

“Is she going into your business?” I asked.

“Oh no; I wouldn’t let her do that,” Mrs. Strickland answered. “She’s
so pretty. I’m sure she’ll marry well.”

“I should have thought it would be a help to you.”

“Several people have suggested that she should go on the stage, but of
course I couldn’t consent to that, I know all the chief dramatists, and
I could get her a part to-morrow, but I shouldn’t like her to mix with
all sorts of people.”

I was a little chilled by Mrs. Strickland’s exclusiveness.

“Do you ever hear of your husband?”

“No; I haven’t heard a word. He may be dead for all I know.”

“I may run across him in Paris. Would you like me to let you know about
him?”

She hesitated a minute.

“If he’s in any real want I’m prepared to help him a little. I’d send
you a certain sum of money, and you could give it him gradually, as he
needed it.”

“That’s very good of you,” I said.

But I knew it was not kindness that prompted the offer. It is not true
that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes,
but suffering, for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.




Chapter XVIII


In point of fact, I met Strickland before I had been a fortnight in
Paris.

I quickly found myself a tiny apartment on the fifth floor of a house
in the Rue des Dames, and for a couple of hundred francs bought at a
second-hand dealer’s enough furniture to make it habitable. I arranged
with the concierge to make my coffee in the morning and to keep the
place clean. Then I went to see my friend Dirk Stroeve.

Dirk Stroeve was one of those persons whom, according to your
character, you cannot think of without derisive laughter or an
embarrassed shrug of the shoulders. Nature had made him a buffoon. He
was a painter, but a very bad one, whom I had met in Rome, and I still
remembered his pictures. He had a genuine enthusiasm for the
commonplace. His soul palpitating with love of art, he painted the
models who hung about the stairway of Bernini in the Piazza de Spagna,
undaunted by their obvious picturesqueness; and his studio was full of
canvases on which were portrayed moustachioed, large-eyed peasants in
peaked hats, urchins in becoming rags, and women in bright petticoats.
Sometimes they lounged at the steps of a church, and sometimes dallied
among cypresses against a cloudless sky; sometimes they made love by a
Renaissance well-head, and sometimes they wandered through the Campagna
by the side of an ox-waggon. They were carefully drawn and carefully
painted. A photograph could not have been more exact. One of the
painters at the Villa Medici had called him _Le Maître de la Boîte à
Chocolats._ To look at his pictures you would have thought that Monet,
Manet, and the rest of the Impressionists had never been.

“I don’t pretend to be a great painter,” he said, “I’m not a Michael
Angelo, no, but I have something. I sell. I bring romance into the
homes of all sorts of people. Do you know, they buy my pictures not
only in Holland, but in Norway and Sweden and Denmark? It’s mostly
merchants who buy them, and rich tradesmen. You can’t imagine what the
winters are like in those countries, so long and dark and cold. They
like to think that Italy is like my pictures. That’s what they expect.
That’s what I expected Italy to be before I came here.”

And I think that was the vision that had remained with him always,
dazzling his eyes so that he could not see the truth; and
notwithstanding the brutality of fact, he continued to see with the
eyes of the spirit an Italy of romantic brigands and picturesque ruins.
It was an ideal that he painted—a poor one, common and shop-soiled, but
still it was an ideal; and it gave his character a peculiar charm.

It was because I felt this that Dirk Stroeve was not to me, as to
others, merely an object of ridicule. His fellow-painters made no
secret of their contempt for his work, but he earned a fair amount of
money, and they did not hesitate to make free use of his purse. He was
generous, and the needy, laughing at him because he believed so naively
their stories of distress, borrowed from him with effrontery. He was
very emotional, yet his feeling, so easily aroused, had in it something
absurd, so that you accepted his kindness, but felt no gratitude. To
take money from him was like robbing a child, and you despised him
because he was so foolish. I imagine that a pickpocket, proud of his
light fingers, must feel a sort of indignation with the careless woman
who leaves in a cab a vanity-bag with all her jewels in it. Nature had
made him a butt, but had denied him insensibility. He writhed under the
jokes, practical and otherwise, which were perpetually made at his
expense, and yet never ceased, it seemed wilfully, to expose himself to
them. He was constantly wounded, and yet his good-nature was such that
he could not bear malice: the viper might sting him, but he never
learned by experience, and had no sooner recovered from his pain than
he tenderly placed it once more in his bosom. His life was a tragedy
written in the terms of knockabout farce. Because I did not laugh at
him he was grateful to me, and he used to pour into my sympathetic ear
the long list of his troubles. The saddest thing about them was that
they were grotesque, and the more pathetic they were, the more you
wanted to laugh.

But though so bad a painter, he had a very delicate feeling for art,
and to go with him to picture-galleries was a rare treat. His
enthusiasm was sincere and his criticism acute. He was catholic. He had
not only a true appreciation of the old masters, but sympathy with the
moderns. He was quick to discover talent, and his praise was generous.
I think I have never known a man whose judgment was surer. And he was
better educated than most painters. He was not, like most of them,
ignorant of kindred arts, and his taste for music and literature gave
depth and variety to his comprehension of painting. To a young man like
myself his advice and guidance were of incomparable value.

When I left Rome I corresponded with him, and about once in two months
received from him long letters in queer English, which brought before
me vividly his spluttering, enthusiastic, gesticulating conversation.
Some time before I went to Paris he had married an Englishwoman, and
was now settled in a studio in Montmartre. I had not seen him for four
years, and had never met his wife.




Chapter XIX


I had not announced my arrival to Stroeve, and when I rang the bell of
his studio, on opening the door himself, for a moment he did not know
me. Then he gave a cry of delighted surprise and drew me in. It was
charming to be welcomed with so much eagerness. His wife was seated
near the stove at her sewing, and she rose as I came in. He introduced
me.

“Don’t you remember?” he said to her. “I’ve talked to you about him
often.” And then to me: “But why didn’t you let me know you were
coming? How long have you been here? How long are you going to stay?
Why didn’t you come an hour earlier, and we would have dined together?”

He bombarded me with questions. He sat me down in a chair, patting me
as though I were a cushion, pressed cigars upon me, cakes, wine. He
could not let me alone. He was heart-broken because he had no whisky,
wanted to make coffee for me, racked his brain for something he could
possibly do for me, and beamed and laughed, and in the exuberance of
his delight sweated at every pore.

“You haven’t changed,” I said, smiling, as I looked at him.

He had the same absurd appearance that I remembered. He was a fat
little man, with short legs, young still—he could not have been more
than thirty—but prematurely bald. His face was perfectly round, and he
had a very high colour, a white skin, red cheeks, and red lips. His
eyes were blue and round too, he wore large gold-rimmed spectacles, and
his eyebrows were so fair that you could not see them. He reminded you
of those jolly, fat merchants that Rubens painted.

When I told him that I meant to live in Paris for a while, and had
taken an apartment, he reproached me bitterly for not having let him
know. He would have found me an apartment himself, and lent me
furniture—did I really mean that I had gone to the expense of buying
it?—and he would have helped me to move in. He really looked upon it as
unfriendly that I had not given him the opportunity of making himself
useful to me. Meanwhile, Mrs. Stroeve sat quietly mending her
stockings, without talking, and she listened to all he said with a
quiet smile on her lips.

“So, you see, I’m married,” he said suddenly; “what do you think of my
wife?”

He beamed at her, and settled his spectacles on the bridge of his nose.
The sweat made them constantly slip down.

“What on earth do you expect me to say to that?” I laughed.

“Really, Dirk,” put in Mrs. Stroeve, smiling.

“But isn’t she wonderful? I tell you, my boy, lose no time; get married
as soon as ever you can. I’m the happiest man alive. Look at her
sitting there. Doesn’t she make a picture? Chardin, eh? I’ve seen all
the most beautiful women in the world; I’ve never seen anyone more
beautiful than Madame Dirk Stroeve.”

“If you don’t be quiet, Dirk, I shall go away.”

_“Mon petit chou”_, he said.

She flushed a little, embarrassed by the passion in his tone. His
letters had told me that he was very much in love with his wife, and I
saw that he could hardly take his eyes off her. I could not tell if she
loved him. Poor pantaloon, he was not an object to excite love, but the
smile in her eyes was affectionate, and it was possible that her
reserve concealed a very deep feeling. She was not the ravishing
creature that his love-sick fancy saw, but she had a grave comeliness.
She was rather tall, and her gray dress, simple and quite well-cut, did
not hide the fact that her figure was beautiful. It was a figure that
might have appealed more to the sculptor than to the costumier. Her
hair, brown and abundant, was plainly done, her face was very pale, and
her features were good without being distinguished. She had quiet gray
eyes. She just missed being beautiful, and in missing it was not even
pretty. But when Stroeve spoke of Chardin it was not without reason,
and she reminded me curiously of that pleasant housewife in her mob-cap
and apron whom the great painter has immortalised. I could imagine her
sedately busy among her pots and pans, making a ritual of her household
duties, so that they acquired a moral significance; I did not suppose
that she was clever or could ever be amusing, but there was something
in her grave intentness which excited my interest. Her reserve was not
without mystery. I wondered why she had married Dirk Stroeve. Though
she was English, I could not exactly place her, and it was not obvious
from what rank in society she sprang, what had been her upbringing, or
how she had lived before her marriage. She was very silent, but when
she spoke it was with a pleasant voice, and her manners were natural.

I asked Stroeve if he was working.

“Working? I’m painting better than I’ve ever painted before.”

We sat in the studio, and he waved his hand to an unfinished picture on
an easel. I gave a little start. He was painting a group of Italian
peasants, in the costume of the Campagna, lounging on the steps of a
Roman church.

“Is that what you’re doing now?” I asked.

“Yes. I can get my models here just as well as in Rome.”

“Don’t you think it’s very beautiful?” said Mrs. Stroeve.

“This foolish wife of mine thinks I’m a great artist,” said he.

His apologetic laugh did not disguise the pleasure that he felt. His
eyes lingered on his picture. It was strange that his critical sense,
so accurate and unconventional when he dealt with the work of others,
should be satisfied in himself with what was hackneyed and vulgar
beyond belief.

“Show him some more of your pictures,” she said.

“Shall I?”

Though he had suffered so much from the ridicule of his friends, Dirk
Stroeve, eager for praise and naively self-satisfied, could never
resist displaying his work. He brought out a picture of two
curly-headed Italian urchins playing marbles.

“Aren’t they sweet?” said Mrs. Stroeve.

And then he showed me more. I discovered that in Paris he had been
painting just the same stale, obviously picturesque things that he had
painted for years in Rome. It was all false, insincere, shoddy; and yet
no one was more honest, sincere, and frank than Dirk Stroeve. Who could
resolve the contradiction?

I do not know what put it into my head to ask:

“I say, have you by any chance run across a painter called Charles
Strickland?”

“You don’t mean to say you know him?” cried Stroeve.

“Beast,” said his wife.

Stroeve laughed.

_“Ma pauvre chèrie.”_ He went over to her and kissed both her hands.
“She doesn’t like him. How strange that you should know Strickland!”

“I don’t like bad manners,” said Mrs. Stroeve.

Dirk, laughing still, turned to me to explain.

“You see, I asked him to come here one day and look at my pictures.
Well, he came, and I showed him everything I had.” Stroeve hesitated a
moment with embarrassment. I do not know why he had begun the story
against himself; he felt an awkwardness at finishing it. “He looked
at—at my pictures, and he didn’t say anything. I thought he was
reserving his judgment till the end. And at last I said: ‘There, that’s
the lot!’ He said: ‘I came to ask you to lend me twenty francs.’”

“And Dirk actually gave it him,” said his wife indignantly.

“I was so taken aback. I didn’t like to refuse. He put the money in his
pocket, just nodded, said ‘Thanks,’ and walked out.”

Dirk Stroeve, telling the story, had such a look of blank astonishment
on his round, foolish face that it was almost impossible not to laugh.

“I shouldn’t have minded if he’d said my pictures were bad, but he said
nothing—nothing.”

“And you _will_ tell the story, Dirk,” Said his wife.

It was lamentable that one was more amused by the ridiculous figure cut
by the Dutchman than outraged by Strickland’s brutal treatment of him.

“I hope I shall never see him again,” said Mrs. Stroeve.

Stroeve smiled and shrugged his shoulders. He had already recovered his
good-humour.

“The fact remains that he’s a great artist, a very great artist.”

“Strickland?” I exclaimed. “It can’t be the same man.”

“A big fellow with a red beard. Charles Strickland. An Englishman.”

“He had no beard when I knew him, but if he has grown one it might well
be red. The man I’m thinking of only began painting five years ago.”

“That’s it. He’s a great artist.”

“Impossible.”

“Have I ever been mistaken?” Dirk asked me. “I tell you he has genius.
I’m convinced of it. In a hundred years, if you and I are remembered at
all, it will be because we knew Charles Strickland.”

I was astonished, and at the same time I was very much excited. I
remembered suddenly my last talk with him.

“Where can one see his work?” I asked. “Is he having any success? Where
is he living?”

“No; he has no success. I don’t think he’s ever sold a picture. When
you speak to men about him they only laugh. But I _know_ he’s a great
artist. After all, they laughed at Manet. Corot never sold a picture. I
don’t know where he lives, but I can take you to see him. He goes to a
café in the Avenue de Clichy at seven o’clock every evening. If you
like we’ll go there to-morrow.”

“I’m not sure if he’ll wish to see me. I think I may remind him of a
time he prefers to forget. But I’ll come all the same. Is there any
chance of seeing any of his pictures?”

“Not from him. He won’t show you a thing. There’s a little dealer I
know who has two or three. But you mustn’t go without me; you wouldn’t
understand. I must show them to you myself.”

“Dirk, you make me impatient,” said Mrs. Stroeve. “How can you talk
like that about his pictures when he treated you as he did?” She turned
to me. “Do you know, when some Dutch people came here to buy Dirk’s
pictures he tried to persuade them to buy Strickland’s? He insisted on
bringing them here to show.”

“What did _you_ think of them?” I asked her, smiling.

“They were awful.”

“Ah, sweetheart, you don’t understand.”

“Well, your Dutch people were furious with you. They thought you were
having a joke with them.”

Dirk Stroeve took off his spectacles and wiped them. His flushed face
was shining with excitement.

“Why should you think that beauty, which is the most precious thing in
the world, lies like a stone on the beach for the careless passer-by to
pick up idly? Beauty is something wonderful and strange that the artist
fashions out of the chaos of the world in the torment of his soul. And
when he has made it, it is not given to all to know it. To recognize it
you must repeat the adventure of the artist. It is a melody that he
sings to you, and to hear it again in your own heart you want knowledge
and sensitiveness and imagination.”

“Why did I always think your pictures beautiful, Dirk? I admired them
the very first time I saw them.”

Stroeve’s lips trembled a little.

“Go to bed, my precious. I will walk a few steps with our friend, and
then I will come back.”




Chapter XX


Dirk Stroeve agreed to fetch me on the following evening and take me to
the café at which Strickland was most likely to be found. I was
interested to learn that it was the same as that at which Strickland
and I had drunk absinthe when I had gone over to Paris to see him. The
fact that he had never changed suggested a sluggishness of habit which
seemed to me characteristic.

“There he is,” said Stroeve, as we reached the café.

Though it was October, the evening was warm, and the tables on the
pavement were crowded. I ran my eyes over them, but did not see
Strickland.

“Look. Over there, in the corner. He’s playing chess.”

I noticed a man bending over a chess-board, but could see only a large
felt hat and a red beard. We threaded our way among the tables till we
came to him.

“Strickland.”

He looked up.

“Hulloa, fatty. What do you want?”

“I’ve brought an old friend to see you.”

Strickland gave me a glance, and evidently did not recognise me. He
resumed his scrutiny of the chess-board.

“Sit down, and don’t make a noise,” he said.

He moved a piece and straightway became absorbed in the game. Poor
Stroeve gave me a troubled look, but I was not disconcerted by so
little. I ordered something to drink, and waited quietly till
Strickland had finished. I welcomed the opportunity to examine him at
my ease. I certainly should never have known him. In the first place
his red beard, ragged and untrimmed, hid much of his face, and his hair
was long; but the most surprising change in him was his extreme
thinness. It made his great nose protrude more arrogantly; it
emphasized his cheekbones; it made his eyes seem larger. There were
deep hollows at his temples. His body was cadaverous. He wore the same
suit that I had seen him in five years before; it was torn and stained,
threadbare, and it hung upon him loosely, as though it had been made
for someone else. I noticed his hands, dirty, with long nails; they
were merely bone and sinew, large and strong; but I had forgotten that
they were so shapely. He gave me an extraordinary impression as he sat
there, his attention riveted on his game—an impression of great
strength; and I could not understand why it was that his emaciation
somehow made it more striking.

Presently, after moving, he leaned back and gazed with a curious
abstraction at his antagonist. This was a fat, bearded Frenchman. The
Frenchman considered the position, then broke suddenly into jovial
expletives, and with an impatient gesture, gathering up the pieces,
flung them into their box. He cursed Strickland freely, then, calling
for the waiter, paid for the drinks, and left. Stroeve drew his chair
closer to the table.

“Now I suppose we can talk,” he said.

Strickland’s eyes rested on him, and there was in them a malicious
expression. I felt sure he was seeking for some gibe, could think of
none, and so was forced to silence.

“I’ve brought an old friend to see you,” repeated Stroeve, beaming
cheerfully.

Strickland looked at me thoughtfully for nearly a minute. I did not
speak.

“I’ve never seen him in my life,” he said.

I do not know why he said this, for I felt certain I had caught a gleam
of recognition in his eyes. I was not so easily abashed as I had been
some years earlier.

“I saw your wife the other day,” I said. “I felt sure you’d like to
have the latest news of her.”

He gave a short laugh. His eyes twinkled.

“We had a jolly evening together,” he said. “How long ago is it?”

“Five years.”

He called for another absinthe. Stroeve, with voluble tongue, explained
how he and I had met, and by what an accident we discovered that we
both knew Strickland. I do not know if Strickland listened. He glanced
at me once or twice reflectively, but for the most part seemed occupied
with his own thoughts; and certainly without Stroeve’s babble the
conversation would have been difficult. In half an hour the Dutchman,
looking at his watch, announced that he must go. He asked whether I
would come too. I thought, alone, I might get something out of
Strickland, and so answered that I would stay.

When the fat man had left I said:

“Dirk Stroeve thinks you’re a great artist.”

“What the hell do you suppose I care?”

“Will you let me see your pictures?”

“Why should I?”

“I might feel inclined to buy one.”

“I might not feel inclined to sell one.”

“Are you making a good living?” I asked, smiling.

He chuckled.

“Do I look it?”

“You look half starved.”

“I am half starved.”

“Then come and let’s have a bit of dinner.”

“Why do you ask me?”

“Not out of charity,” I answered coolly. “I don’t really care a
twopenny damn if you starve or not.”

His eyes lit up again.

“Come on, then,” he said, getting up. “I’d like a decent meal.”




Chapter XXI


I let him take me to a restaurant of his choice, but on the way I
bought a paper. When we had ordered our dinner, I propped it against a
bottle of St. Galmier and began to read. We ate in silence. I felt him
looking at me now and again, but I took no notice. I meant to force him
to conversation.

“Is there anything in the paper?” he said, as we approached the end of
our silent meal.

I fancied there was in his tone a slight note of exasperation.

“I always like to read the _feuilleton_ on the drama,” I said.

I folded the paper and put it down beside me.

“I’ve enjoyed my dinner,” he remarked.

“I think we might have our coffee here, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

We lit our cigars. I smoked in silence. I noticed that now and then his
eyes rested on me with a faint smile of amusement. I waited patiently.

“What have you been up to since I saw you last?” he asked at length.

I had not very much to say. It was a record of hard work and of little
adventure; of experiments in this direction and in that; of the gradual
acquisition of the knowledge of books and of men. I took care to ask
Strickland nothing about his own doings. I showed not the least
interest in him, and at last I was rewarded. He began to talk of
himself. But with his poor gift of expression he gave but indications
of what he had gone through, and I had to fill up the gaps with my own
imagination. It was tantalising to get no more than hints into a
character that interested me so much. It was like making one’s way
through a mutilated manuscript. I received the impression of a life
which was a bitter struggle against every sort of difficulty; but I
realised that much which would have seemed horrible to most people did
not in the least affect him. Strickland was distinguished from most
Englishmen by his perfect indifference to comfort; it did not irk him
to live always in one shabby room; he had no need to be surrounded by
beautiful things. I do not suppose he had ever noticed how dingy was
the paper on the wall of the room in which on my first visit I found
him. He did not want arm-chairs to sit in; he really felt more at his
ease on a kitchen chair. He ate with appetite, but was indifferent to
what he ate; to him it was only food that he devoured to still the
pangs of hunger; and when no food was to be had he seemed capable of
doing without. I learned that for six months he had lived on a loaf of
bread and a bottle of milk a day. He was a sensual man, and yet was
indifferent to sensual things. He looked upon privation as no hardship.
There was something impressive in the manner in which he lived a life
wholly of the spirit.

When the small sum of money which he brought with him from London came
to an end he suffered from no dismay. He sold no pictures; I think he
made little attempt to sell any; he set about finding some way to make
a bit of money. He told me with grim humour of the time he had spent
acting as guide to Cockneys who wanted to see the night side of life in
Paris; it was an occupation that appealed to his sardonic temper and
somehow or other he had acquired a wide acquaintance with the more
disreputable quarters of the city. He told me of the long hours he
spent walking about the Boulevard de la Madeleine on the look-out for
Englishmen, preferably the worse for liquor, who desired to see things
which the law forbade. When in luck he was able to make a tidy sum; but
the shabbiness of his clothes at last frightened the sight-seers, and
he could not find people adventurous enough to trust themselves to him.
Then he happened on a job to translate the advertisements of patent
medicines which were sent broadcast to the medical profession in
England. During a strike he had been employed as a house-painter.

Meanwhile he had never ceased to work at his art; but, soon tiring of
the studios, entirely by himself. He had never been so poor that he
could not buy canvas and paint, and really he needed nothing else. So
far as I could make out, he painted with great difficulty, and in his
unwillingness to accept help from anyone lost much time in finding out
for himself the solution of technical problems which preceding
generations had already worked out one by one. He was aiming at
something, I knew not what, and perhaps he hardly knew himself; and I
got again more strongly the impression of a man possessed. He did not
seem quite sane. It seemed to me that he would not show his pictures
because he was really not interested in them. He lived in a dream, and
the reality meant nothing to him. I had the feeling that he worked on a
canvas with all the force of his violent personality, oblivious of
everything in his effort to get what he saw with the mind’s eye; and
then, having finished, not the picture perhaps, for I had an idea that
he seldom brought anything to completion, but the passion that fired
him, he lost all care for it. He was never satisfied with what he had
done; it seemed to him of no consequence compared with the vision that
obsessed his mind.

“Why don’t you ever send your work to exhibitions?” I asked. “I should
have thought you’d like to know what people thought about it.”

“Would you?”

I cannot describe the unmeasurable contempt he put into the two words.

“Don’t you want fame? It’s something that most artists haven’t been
indifferent to.”

“Children. How can you care for the opinion of the crowd, when you
don’t care twopence for the opinion of the individual?”

“We’re not all reasonable beings,” I laughed.

“Who makes fame? Critics, writers, stockbrokers, women.”

“Wouldn’t it give you a rather pleasing sensation to think of people
you didn’t know and had never seen receiving emotions, subtle and
passionate, from the work of your hands? Everyone likes power. I can’t
imagine a more wonderful exercise of it than to move the souls of men
to pity or terror.”

“Melodrama.”

“Why do you mind if you paint well or badly?”

“I don’t. I only want to paint what I see.”

“I wonder if I could write on a desert island, with the certainty that
no eyes but mine would ever see what I had written.”

Strickland did not speak for a long time, but his eyes shone strangely,
as though he saw something that kindled his soul to ecstasy.

“Sometimes I’ve thought of an island lost in a boundless sea, where I
could live in some hidden valley, among strange trees, in silence.
There I think I could find what I want.”

He did not express himself quite like this. He used gestures instead of
adjectives, and he halted. I have put into my own words what I think he
wanted to say.

“Looking back on the last five years, do you think it was worth it?” I
asked.

He looked at me, and I saw that he did not know what I meant. I
explained.

“You gave up a comfortable home and a life as happy as the average. You
were fairly prosperous. You seem to have had a rotten time in Paris. If
you had your time over again would you do what you did?”

“Rather.”

“Do you know that you haven’t asked anything about your wife and
children? Do you never think of them?”

“No.”

“I wish you weren’t so damned monosyllabic. Have you never had a
moment’s regret for all the unhappiness you caused them?”

His lips broke into a smile, and he shook his head.

“I should have thought sometimes you couldn’t help thinking of the
past. I don’t mean the past of seven or eight years ago, but further
back still, when you first met your wife, and loved her, and married
her. Don’t you remember the joy with which you first took her in your
arms?”

“I don’t think of the past. The only thing that matters is the
everlasting present.”

I thought for a moment over this reply. It was obscure, perhaps, but I
thought that I saw dimly his meaning.

“Are you happy?” I asked.

“Yes.”

I was silent. I looked at him reflectively. He held my stare, and
presently a sardonic twinkle lit up his eyes.

“I’m afraid you disapprove of me?”

“Nonsense,” I answered promptly; “I don’t disapprove of the
boa-constrictor; on the contrary, I’m interested in his mental
processes.”

“It’s a purely professional interest you take in me?”

“Purely.”

“It’s only right that you shouldn’t disapprove of me. You have a
despicable character.”

“Perhaps that’s why you feel at home with me,” I retorted.

He smiled dryly, but said nothing. I wish I knew how to describe his
smile. I do not know that it was attractive, but it lit up his face,
changing the expression, which was generally sombre, and gave it a look
of not ill-natured malice. It was a slow smile, starting and sometimes
ending in the eyes; it was very sensual, neither cruel nor kindly, but
suggested rather the inhuman glee of the satyr. It was his smile that
made me ask him:

“Haven’t you been in love since you came to Paris?”

“I haven’t got time for that sort of nonsense. Life isn’t long enough
for love and art.”

“Your appearance doesn’t suggest the anchorite.”

“All that business fills me with disgust.”

“Human nature is a nuisance, isn’t it?” I said.

“Why are you sniggering at me?”

“Because I don’t believe you.”

“Then you’re a damned fool.”

I paused, and I looked at him searchingly.

“What’s the good of trying to humbug me?” I said.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

I smiled.

“Let me tell you. I imagine that for months the matter never comes into
your head, and you’re able to persuade yourself that you’ve finished
with it for good and all. You rejoice in your freedom, and you feel
that at last you can call your soul your own. You seem to walk with
your head among the stars. And then, all of a sudden you can’t stand it
any more, and you notice that all the time your feet have been walking
in the mud. And you want to roll yourself in it. And you find some
woman, coarse and low and vulgar, some beastly creature in whom all the
horror of sex is blatant, and you fall upon her like a wild animal. You
drink till you’re blind with rage.”

He stared at me without the slightest movement. I held his eyes with
mine. I spoke very slowly.

“I’ll tell you what must seem strange, that when it’s over you feel so
extraordinarily pure. You feel like a disembodied spirit, immaterial;
and you seem to be able to touch beauty as though it were a palpable
thing; and you feel an intimate communion with the breeze, and with the
trees breaking into leaf, and with the iridescence of the river. You
feel like God. Can you explain that to me?”

He kept his eyes fixed on mine till I had finished, and then he turned
away. There was on his face a strange look, and I thought that so might
a man look when he had died under the torture. He was silent. I knew
that our conversation was ended.




Chapter XXII


I settled down in Paris and began to write a play. I led a very regular
life, working in the morning, and in the afternoon lounging about the
gardens of the Luxembourg or sauntering through the streets. I spent
long hours in the Louvre, the most friendly of all galleries and the
most convenient for meditation; or idled on the quays, fingering
second-hand books that I never meant to buy. I read a page here and
there, and made acquaintance with a great many authors whom I was
content to know thus desultorily. In the evenings I went to see my
friends. I looked in often on the Stroeves, and sometimes shared their
modest fare. Dirk Stroeve flattered himself on his skill in cooking
Italian dishes, and I confess that his _spaghetti_ were very much
better than his pictures. It was a dinner for a King when he brought in
a huge dish of it, succulent with tomatoes, and we ate it together with
the good household bread and a bottle of red wine. I grew more intimate
with Blanche Stroeve, and I think, because I was English and she knew
few English people, she was glad to see me. She was pleasant and
simple, but she remained always rather silent, and I knew not why, gave
me the impression that she was concealing something. But I thought that
was perhaps no more than a natural reserve accentuated by the verbose
frankness of her husband. Dirk never concealed anything. He discussed
the most intimate matters with a complete lack of self-consciousness.
Sometimes he embarrassed his wife, and the only time I saw her put out
of countenance was when he insisted on telling me that he had taken a
purge, and went into somewhat realistic details on the subject. The
perfect seriousness with which he narrated his misfortunes convulsed me
with laughter, and this added to Mrs. Stroeve’s irritation.

“You seem to like making a fool of yourself,” she said.

His round eyes grew rounder still, and his brow puckered in dismay as
he saw that she was angry.

“Sweetheart, have I vexed you? I’ll never take another. It was only
because I was bilious. I lead a sedentary life. I don’t take enough
exercise. For three days I hadn’t ...”

“For goodness sake, hold your tongue,” she interrupted, tears of
annoyance in her eyes.

His face fell, and he pouted his lips like a scolded child. He gave me
a look of appeal, so that I might put things right, but, unable to
control myself, I shook with helpless laughter.

We went one day to the picture-dealer in whose shop Stroeve thought he
could show me at least two or three of Strickland’s pictures, but when
we arrived were told that Strickland himself had taken them away. The
dealer did not know why.

“But don’t imagine to yourself that I make myself bad blood on that
account. I took them to oblige Monsieur Stroeve, and I said I would
sell them if I could. But really—” He shrugged his shoulders. “I’m
interested in the young men, but _voyons_, you yourself, Monsieur
Stroeve, you don’t think there’s any talent there.”

“I give you my word of honour, there’s no one painting to-day in whose
talent I am more convinced. Take my word for it, you are missing a good
affair. Some day those pictures will be worth more than all you have in
your shop. Remember Monet, who could not get anyone to buy his pictures
for a hundred francs. What are they worth now?”

“True. But there were a hundred as good painters as Monet who couldn’t
sell their pictures at that time, and their pictures are worth nothing
still. How can one tell? Is merit enough to bring success? Don’t
believe it. _Du reste_, it has still to be proved that this friend of
yours has merit. No one claims it for him but Monsieur Stroeve.”

“And how, then, will you recognise merit?” asked Dirk, red in the face
with anger.

“There is only one way—by success.”

“Philistine,” cried Dirk.

“But think of the great artists of the past—Raphael, Michael Angelo,
Ingres, Delacroix—they were all successful.”

“Let us go,” said Stroeve to me, “or I shall kill this man.”




Chapter XXIII


I saw Strickland not infrequently, and now and then played chess with
him. He was of uncertain temper. Sometimes he would sit silent and
abstracted, taking no notice of anyone; and at others, when he was in a
good humour, he would talk in his own halting way. He never said a
clever thing, but he had a vein of brutal sarcasm which was not
ineffective, and he always said exactly what he thought. He was
indifferent to the susceptibilities of others, and when he wounded them
was amused. He was constantly offending Dirk Stroeve so bitterly that
he flung away, vowing he would never speak to him again; but there was
a solid force in Strickland that attracted the fat Dutchman against his
will, so that he came back, fawning like a clumsy dog, though he knew
that his only greeting would be the blow he dreaded.

I do not know why Strickland put up with me. Our relations were
peculiar. One day he asked me to lend him fifty francs.

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” I replied.

“Why not?”

“It wouldn’t amuse me.”

“I’m frightfully hard up, you know.”

“I don’t care.”

“You don’t care if I starve?”

“Why on earth should I?” I asked in my turn.

He looked at me for a minute or two, pulling his untidy beard. I smiled
at him.

“What are you amused at?” he said, with a gleam of anger in his eyes.

“You’re so simple. You recognise no obligations. No one is under any
obligation to you.”

“Wouldn’t it make you uncomfortable if I went and hanged myself because
I’d been turned out of my room as I couldn’t pay the rent?”

“Not a bit.”

He chuckled.

“You’re bragging. If I really did you’d be overwhelmed with remorse.”

“Try it, and we’ll see,” I retorted.

A smile flickered in his eyes, and he stirred his absinthe in silence.

“Would you like to play chess?” I asked.

“I don’t mind.”

We set up the pieces, and when the board was ready he considered it
with a comfortable eye. There is a sense of satisfaction in looking at
your men all ready for the fray.

“Did you really think I’d lend you money?” I asked.

“I didn’t see why you shouldn’t.”

“You surprise me.”

“Why?”

“It’s disappointing to find that at heart you are sentimental. I should
have liked you better if you hadn’t made that ingenuous appeal to my
sympathies.”

“I should have despised you if you’d been moved by it,” he answered.

“That’s better,” I laughed.

We began to play. We were both absorbed in the game. When it was
finished I said to him:

“Look here, if you’re hard up, let me see your pictures. If there’s
anything I like I’ll buy it.”

“Go to hell,” he answered.

He got up and was about to go away. I stopped him.

“You haven’t paid for your absinthe,” I said, smiling.

He cursed me, flung down the money and left.

I did not see him for several days after that, but one evening, when I
was sitting in the café, reading a paper, he came up and sat beside me.

“You haven’t hanged yourself after all,” I remarked.

“No. I’ve got a commission. I’m painting the portrait of a retired
plumber for two hundred francs.” [5]

[5] This picture, formerly in the possession of a wealthy manufacturer
at Lille, who fled from that city on the approach of the Germans, is
now in the National Gallery at Stockholm. The Swede is adept at the
gentle pastime of fishing in troubled waters.


“How did you manage that?”

“The woman where I get my bread recommended me. He’d told her he was
looking out for someone to paint him. I’ve got to give her twenty
francs.”

“What’s he like?”

“Splendid. He’s got a great red face like a leg of mutton, and on his
right cheek there’s an enormous mole with long hairs growing out of
it.”

Strickland was in a good humour, and when Dirk Stroeve came up and sat
down with us he attacked him with ferocious banter. He showed a skill I
should never have credited him with in finding the places where the
unhappy Dutchman was most sensitive. Strickland employed not the rapier
of sarcasm but the bludgeon of invective. The attack was so unprovoked
that Stroeve, taken unawares, was defenceless. He reminded you of a
frightened sheep running aimlessly hither and thither. He was startled
and amazed. At last the tears ran from his eyes. And the worst of it
was that, though you hated Strickland, and the exhibition was horrible,
it was impossible not to laugh. Dirk Stroeve was one of those unlucky
persons whose most sincere emotions are ridiculous.

But after all when I look back upon that winter in Paris, my
pleasantest recollection is of Dirk Stroeve. There was something very
charming in his little household. He and his wife made a picture which
the imagination gratefully dwelt upon, and the simplicity of his love
for her had a deliberate grace. He remained absurd, but the sincerity
of his passion excited one’s sympathy. I could understand how his wife
must feel for him, and I was glad that her affection was so tender. If
she had any sense of humour, it must amuse her that he should place her
on a pedestal and worship her with such an honest idolatry, but even
while she laughed she must have been pleased and touched. He was the
constant lover, and though she grew old, losing her rounded lines and
her fair comeliness, to him she would certainly never alter. To him she
would always be the loveliest woman in the world. There was a pleasing
grace in the orderliness of their lives. They had but the studio, a
bedroom, and a tiny kitchen. Mrs. Stroeve did all the housework
herself; and while Dirk painted bad pictures, she went marketing,
cooked the luncheon, sewed, occupied herself like a busy ant all the
day; and in the evening sat in the studio, sewing again, while Dirk
played music which I am sure was far beyond her comprehension. He
played with taste, but with more feeling than was always justified, and
into his music poured all his honest, sentimental, exuberant soul.

Their life in its own way was an idyl, and it managed to achieve a
singular beauty. The absurdity that clung to everything connected with
Dirk Stroeve gave it a curious note, like an unresolved discord, but
made it somehow more modern, more human; like a rough joke thrown into
a serious scene, it heightened the poignancy which all beauty has.




Chapter XXIV


Shortly before Christmas Dirk Stroeve came to ask me to spend the
holiday with him. He had a characteristic sentimentality about the day
and wanted to pass it among his friends with suitable ceremonies.
Neither of us had seen Strickland for two or three weeks—I because I
had been busy with friends who were spending a little while in Paris,
and Stroeve because, having quarreled with him more violently than
usual, he had made up his mind to have nothing more to do with him.
Strickland was impossible, and he swore never to speak to him again.
But the season touched him with gentle feeling, and he hated the
thought of Strickland spending Christmas Day by himself; he ascribed
his own emotions to him, and could not bear that on an occasion given
up to good-fellowship the lonely painter should be abandoned to his own
melancholy. Stroeve had set up a Christmas-tree in his studio, and I
suspected that we should both find absurd little presents hanging on
its festive branches; but he was shy about seeing Strickland again; it
was a little humiliating to forgive so easily insults so outrageous,
and he wished me to be present at the reconciliation on which he was
determined.

We walked together down the Avenue de Clichy, but Strickland was not in
the café. It was too cold to sit outside, and we took our places on
leather benches within. It was hot and stuffy, and the air was gray
with smoke. Strickland did not come, but presently we saw the French
painter who occasionally played chess with him. I had formed a casual
acquaintance with him, and he sat down at our table. Stroeve asked him
if he had seen Strickland.

“He’s ill,” he said. “Didn’t you know?”

“Seriously?”

“Very, I understand.”

Stroeve’s face grew white.

“Why didn’t he write and tell me? How stupid of me to quarrel with him.
We must go to him at once. He can have no one to look after him. Where
does he live?”

“I have no idea,” said the Frenchman.

We discovered that none of us knew how to find him. Stroeve grew more
and more distressed.

“He might die, and not a soul would know anything about it. It’s
dreadful. I can’t bear the thought. We must find him at once.”

I tried to make Stroeve understand that it was absurd to hunt vaguely
about Paris. We must first think of some plan.

“Yes; but all this time he may be dying, and when we get there it may
be too late to do anything.”

“Sit still and let us think,” I said impatiently.

The only address I knew was the Hôtel des Belges, but Strickland had
long left that, and they would have no recollection of him. With that
queer idea of his to keep his whereabouts secret, it was unlikely that,
on leaving, he had said where he was going. Besides, it was more than
five years ago. I felt pretty sure that he had not moved far. If he
continued to frequent the same café as when he had stayed at the hotel,
it was probably because it was the most convenient. Suddenly I
remembered that he had got his commission to paint a portrait through
the baker from whom he bought his bread, and it struck me that there
one might find his address. I called for a directory and looked out the
bakers. There were five in the immediate neighbourhood, and the only
thing was to go to all of them. Stroeve accompanied me unwillingly. His
own plan was to run up and down the streets that led out of the Avenue
de Clichy and ask at every house if Strickland lived there. My
commonplace scheme was, after all, effective, for in the second shop we
asked at the woman behind the counter acknowledged that she knew him.
She was not certain where he lived, but it was in one of the three
houses opposite. Luck favoured us, and in the first we tried the
concierge told us that we should find him on the top floor.

“It appears that he’s ill,” said Stroeve.

“It may be,” answered the concierge indifferently. “_En effet_, I have
not seen him for several days.”

Stroeve ran up the stairs ahead of me, and when I reached the top floor
I found him talking to a workman in his shirt-sleeves who had opened a
door at which Stroeve had knocked. He pointed to another door. He
believed that the person who lived there was a painter. He had not seen
him for a week. Stroeve made as though he were about to knock, and then
turned to me with a gesture of helplessness. I saw that he was
panic-stricken.

“Supposing he’s dead?”

“Not he,” I said.

I knocked. There was no answer. I tried the handle, and found the door
unlocked. I walked in, and Stroeve followed me. The room was in
darkness. I could only see that it was an attic, with a sloping roof;
and a faint glimmer, no more than a less profound obscurity, came from
a skylight.

“Strickland,” I called.

There was no answer. It was really rather mysterious, and it seemed to
me that Stroeve, standing just behind, was trembling in his shoes. For
a moment I hesitated to strike a light. I dimly perceived a bed in the
corner, and I wondered whether the light would disclose lying on it a
dead body.

“Haven’t you got a match, you fool?”

Strickland’s voice, coming out of the darkness, harshly, made me start.

Stroeve cried out.

“Oh, my God, I thought you were dead.”

I struck a match, and looked about for a candle. I had a rapid glimpse
of a tiny apartment, half room, half studio, in which was nothing but a
bed, canvases with their faces to the wall, an easel, a table, and a
chair. There was no carpet on the floor. There was no fireplace. On the
table, crowded with paints, palette-knives, and litter of all kinds,
was the end of a candle. I lit it. Strickland was lying in the bed,
uncomfortably because it was too small for him, and he had put all his
clothes over him for warmth. It was obvious at a glance that he was in
a high fever. Stroeve, his voice cracking with emotion, went up to him.

“Oh, my poor friend, what is the matter with you? I had no idea you
were ill. Why didn’t you let me know? You must know I’d have done
anything in the world for you. Were you thinking of what I said? I
didn’t mean it. I was wrong. It was stupid of me to take offence.”

“Go to hell,” said Strickland.

“Now, be reasonable. Let me make you comfortable. Haven’t you anyone to
look after you?”

He looked round the squalid attic in dismay. He tried to arrange the
bed-clothes. Strickland, breathing laboriously, kept an angry silence.
He gave me a resentful glance. I stood quite quietly, looking at him.

“If you want to do something for me, you can get me some milk,” he said
at last. “I haven’t been able to get out for two days.” There was an
empty bottle by the side of the bed, which had contained milk, and in a
piece of newspaper a few crumbs.

“What have you been having?” I asked.

“Nothing.”

“For how long?” cried Stroeve. “Do you mean to say you’ve had nothing
to eat or drink for two days? It’s horrible.”

“I’ve had water.”

His eyes dwelt for a moment on a large can within reach of an
outstretched arm.

“I’ll go immediately,” said Stroeve. “Is there anything you fancy?”

I suggested that he should get a thermometer, and a few grapes, and
some bread. Stroeve, glad to make himself useful, clattered down the
stairs.

“Damned fool,” muttered Strickland.

I felt his pulse. It was beating quickly and feebly. I asked him one or
two questions, but he would not answer, and when I pressed him he
turned his face irritably to the wall. The only thing was to wait in
silence. In ten minutes Stroeve, panting, came back. Besides what I had
suggested, he brought candles, and meat-juice, and a spirit-lamp. He
was a practical little fellow, and without delay set about making
bread-and-milk. I took Strickland’s temperature. It was a hundred and
four. He was obviously very ill.




Chapter XXV


Presently we left him. Dirk was going home to dinner, and I proposed to
find a doctor and bring him to see Strickland; but when we got down
into the street, fresh after the stuffy attic, the Dutchman begged me
to go immediately to his studio. He had something in mind which he
would not tell me, but he insisted that it was very necessary for me to
accompany him. Since I did not think a doctor could at the moment do
any more than we had done, I consented. We found Blanche Stroeve laying
the table for dinner. Dirk went up to her, and took both her hands.

“Dear one, I want you to do something for me,” he said.

She looked at him with the grave cheerfulness which was one of her
charms. His red face was shining with sweat, and he had a look of comic
agitation, but there was in his round, surprised eyes an eager light.

“Strickland is very ill. He may be dying. He is alone in a filthy
attic, and there is not a soul to look after him. I want you to let me
bring him here.”

She withdrew her hands quickly, I had never seen her make so rapid a
movement; and her cheeks flushed.

“Oh no.”

“Oh, my dear one, don’t refuse. I couldn’t bear to leave him where he
is. I shouldn’t sleep a wink for thinking of him.”

“I have no objection to your nursing him.”

Her voice was cold and distant.

“But he’ll die.”

“Let him.”

Stroeve gave a little gasp. He wiped his face. He turned to me for
support, but I did not know what to say.

“He’s a great artist.”

“What do I care? I hate him.”

“Oh, my love, my precious, you don’t mean that. I beseech you to let me
bring him here. We can make him comfortable. Perhaps we can save him.
He shall be no trouble to you. I will do everything. We’ll make him up
a bed in the studio. We can’t let him die like a dog. It would be
inhuman.”

“Why can’t he go to a hospital?”

“A hospital! He needs the care of loving hands. He must be treated with
infinite tact.”

I was surprised to see how moved she was. She went on laying the table,
but her hands trembled.

“I have no patience with you. Do you think if you were ill he would
stir a finger to help you?”

“But what does that matter? I should have you to nurse me. It wouldn’t
be necessary. And besides, I’m different; I’m not of any importance.”

“You have no more spirit than a mongrel cur. You lie down on the ground
and ask people to trample on you.”

Stroeve gave a little laugh. He thought he understood the reason of his
wife’s attitude.

“Oh, my poor dear, you’re thinking of that day he came here to look at
my pictures. What does it matter if he didn’t think them any good? It
was stupid of me to show them to him. I dare say they’re not very
good.”

He looked round the studio ruefully. On the easel was a half-finished
picture of a smiling Italian peasant, holding a bunch of grapes over
the head of a dark-eyed girl.

“Even if he didn’t like them he should have been civil. He needn’t have
insulted you. He showed that he despised you, and you lick his hand.
Oh, I hate him.”

“Dear child, he has genius. You don’t think I believe that I have it. I
wish I had; but I know it when I see it, and I honour it with all my
heart. It’s the most wonderful thing in the world. It’s a great burden
to its possessors. We should be very tolerant with them, and very
patient.”

I stood apart, somewhat embarrassed by the domestic scene, and wondered
why Stroeve had insisted on my coming with him. I saw that his wife was
on the verge of tears.

“But it’s not only because he’s a genius that I ask you to let me bring
him here; it’s because he’s a human being, and he is ill and poor.”

“I will never have him in my house—never.”

Stroeve turned to me.

“Tell her that it’s a matter of life and death. It’s impossible to
leave him in that wretched hole.”

“It’s quite obvious that it would be much easier to nurse him here,” I
said, “but of course it would be very inconvenient. I have an idea that
someone will have to be with him day and night.”

“My love, it’s not you who would shirk a little trouble.”

“If he comes here, I shall go,” said Mrs. Stroeve violently.

“I don’t recognize you. You’re so good and kind.”

“Oh, for goodness sake, let me be. You drive me to distraction.”

Then at last the tears came. She sank into a chair, and buried her face
in her hands. Her shoulders shook convulsively. In a moment Dirk was on
his knees beside her, with his arms round her, kissing her, calling her
all sorts of pet names, and the facile tears ran down his own cheeks.
Presently she released herself and dried her eyes.

“Leave me alone,” she said, not unkindly; and then to me, trying to
smile: “What must you think of me?”

Stroeve, looking at her with perplexity, hesitated. His forehead was
all puckered, and his red mouth set in a pout. He reminded me oddly of
an agitated guinea-pig.

“Then it’s No, darling?” he said at last.

She gave a gesture of lassitude. She was exhausted.

“The studio is yours. Everything belongs to you. If you want to bring
him here, how can I prevent you?”

A sudden smile flashed across his round face.

“Then you consent? I knew you would. Oh, my precious.”

Suddenly she pulled herself together. She looked at him with haggard
eyes. She clasped her hands over her heart as though its beating were
intolerable.

“Oh, Dirk, I’ve never since we met asked you to do anything for me.”

“You know there’s nothing in the world that I wouldn’t do for you.”

“I beg you not to let Strickland come here. Anyone else you like. Bring
a thief, a drunkard, any outcast off the streets, and I promise you
I’ll do everything I can for them gladly. But I beseech you not to
bring Strickland here.”

“But why?”

“I’m frightened of him. I don’t know why, but there’s something in him
that terrifies me. He’ll do us some great harm. I know it. I feel it.
If you bring him here it can only end badly.”

“But how unreasonable!”

“No, no. I know I’m right. Something terrible will happen to us.”

“Because we do a good action?”

She was panting now, and in her face was a terror which was
inexplicable. I do not know what she thought. I felt that she was
possessed by some shapeless dread which robbed her of all self-control.
As a rule she was so calm; her agitation now was amazing. Stroeve
looked at her for a while with puzzled consternation.

“You are my wife; you are dearer to me than anyone in the world. No one
shall come here without your entire consent.”

She closed her eyes for a moment, and I thought she was going to faint.
I was a little impatient with her; I had not suspected that she was so
neurotic a woman. Then I heard Stroeve’s voice again. It seemed to
break oddly on the silence.

“Haven’t you been in bitter distress once when a helping hand was held
out to you? You know how much it means. Couldn’t you like to do someone
a good turn when you have the chance?”

The words were ordinary enough, and to my mind there was in them
something so hortatory that I almost smiled. I was astonished at the
effect they had on Blanche Stroeve. She started a little, and gave her
husband a long look. His eyes were fixed on the ground. I did not know
why he seemed embarrassed. A faint colour came into her cheeks, and
then her face became white—more than white, ghastly; you felt that the
blood had shrunk away from the whole surface of her body; and even her
hands were pale. A shiver passed through her. The silence of the studio
seemed to gather body, so that it became an almost palpable presence. I
was bewildered.

“Bring Strickland here, Dirk. I’ll do my best for him.”

“My precious,” he smiled.

He wanted to take her in his arms, but she avoided him.

“Don’t be affectionate before strangers, Dirk,” she said. “It makes me
feel such a fool.”

Her manner was quite normal again, and no one could have told that so
shortly before she had been shaken by such a great emotion.




Chapter XXVI


Next day we moved Strickland. It needed a good deal of firmness and
still more patience to induce him to come, but he was really too ill to
offer any effective resistance to Stroeve’s entreaties and to my
determination. We dressed him, while he feebly cursed us, got him
downstairs, into a cab, and eventually to Stroeve’s studio. He was so
exhausted by the time we arrived that he allowed us to put him to bed
without a word. He was ill for six weeks. At one time it looked as
though he could not live more than a few hours, and I am convinced that
it was only through the Dutchman’s doggedness that he pulled through. I
have never known a more difficult patient. It was not that he was
exacting and querulous; on the contrary, he never complained, he asked
for nothing, he was perfectly silent; but he seemed to resent the care
that was taken of him; he received all inquiries about his feelings or
his needs with a jibe, a sneer, or an oath. I found him detestable, and
as soon as he was out of danger I had no hesitation in telling him so.

“Go to hell,” he answered briefly.

Dirk Stroeve, giving up his work entirely, nursed Strickland with
tenderness and sympathy. He was dexterous to make him comfortable, and
he exercised a cunning of which I should never have thought him capable
to induce him to take the medicines prescribed by the doctor. Nothing
was too much trouble for him. Though his means were adequate to the
needs of himself and his wife, he certainly had no money to waste; but
now he was wantonly extravagant in the purchase of delicacies, out of
season and dear, which might tempt Strickland’s capricious appetite. I
shall never forget the tactful patience with which he persuaded him to
take nourishment. He was never put out by Strickland’s rudeness; if it
was merely sullen, he appeared not to notice it; if it was aggressive,
he only chuckled. When Strickland, recovering somewhat, was in a good
humour and amused himself by laughing at him, he deliberately did
absurd things to excite his ridicule. Then he would give me little
happy glances, so that I might notice in how much better form the
patient was. Stroeve was sublime.

But it was Blanche who most surprised me. She proved herself not only a
capable, but a devoted nurse. There was nothing in her to remind you
that she had so vehemently struggled against her husband’s wish to
bring Strickland to the studio. She insisted on doing her share of the
offices needful to the sick. She arranged his bed so that it was
possible to change the sheet without disturbing him. She washed him.
When I remarked on her competence, she told me with that pleasant
little smile of hers that for a while she had worked in a hospital. She
gave no sign that she hated Strickland so desperately. She did not
speak to him much, but she was quick to forestall his wants. For a
fortnight it was necessary that someone should stay with him all night,
and she took turns at watching with her husband. I wondered what she
thought during the long darkness as she sat by the bedside. Strickland
was a weird figure as he lay there, thinner than ever, with his ragged
red beard and his eyes staring feverishly into vacancy; his illness
seemed to have made them larger, and they had an unnatural brightness.

“Does he ever talk to you in the night?” I asked her once.

“Never.”

“Do you dislike him as much as you did?”

“More, if anything.”

She looked at me with her calm gray eyes. Her expression was so placid,
it was hard to believe that she was capable of the violent emotion I
had witnessed.

“Has he ever thanked you for what you do for him?”

“No,” she smiled.

“He’s inhuman.”

“He’s abominable.”

Stroeve was, of course, delighted with her. He could not do enough to
show his gratitude for the whole-hearted devotion with which she had
accepted the burden he laid on her. But he was a little puzzled by the
behaviour of Blanche and Strickland towards one another.

“Do you know, I’ve seen them sit there for hours together without
saying a word?”

On one occasion, when Strickland was so much better that in a day or
two he was to get up, I sat with them in the studio. Dirk and I were
talking. Mrs. Stroeve sewed, and I thought I recognised the shirt she
was mending as Strickland’s. He lay on his back; he did not speak. Once
I saw that his eyes were fixed on Blanche Stroeve, and there was in
them a curious irony. Feeling their gaze, she raised her own, and for a
moment they stared at one another. I could not quite understand her
expression. Her eyes had in them a strange perplexity, and perhaps—but
why?—alarm. In a moment Strickland looked away and idly surveyed the
ceiling, but she continued to stare at him, and now her look was quite
inexplicable.

In a few days Strickland began to get up. He was nothing but skin and
bone. His clothes hung upon him like rags on a scarecrow. With his
untidy beard and long hair, his features, always a little larger than
life, now emphasised by illness, he had an extraordinary aspect; but it
was so odd that it was not quite ugly. There was something monumental
in his ungainliness. I do not know how to express precisely the
impression he made upon me. It was not exactly spirituality that was
obvious, though the screen of the flesh seemed almost transparent,
because there was in his face an outrageous sensuality; but, though it
sounds nonsense, it seemed as though his sensuality were curiously
spiritual. There was in him something primitive. He seemed to partake
of those obscure forces of nature which the Greeks personified in
shapes part human and part beast, the satyr and the faun. I thought of
Marsyas, whom the god flayed because he had dared to rival him in song.
Strickland seemed to bear in his heart strange harmonies and
unadventured patterns, and I foresaw for him an end of torture and
despair. I had again the feeling that he was possessed of a devil; but
you could not say that it was a devil of evil, for it was a primitive
force that existed before good and ill.

He was still too weak to paint, and he sat in the studio, silent,
occupied with God knows what dreams, or reading. The books he liked
were queer; sometimes I would find him poring over the poems of
Mallarme, and he read them as a child reads, forming the words with his
lips, and I wondered what strange emotion he got from those subtle
cadences and obscure phrases; and again I found him absorbed in the
detective novels of Gaboriau. I amused myself by thinking that in his
choice of books he showed pleasantly the irreconcilable sides of his
fantastic nature. It was singular to notice that even in the weak state
of his body he had no thought for its comfort. Stroeve liked his ease,
and in his studio were a couple of heavily upholstered arm-chairs and a
large divan. Strickland would not go near them, not from any
affectation of stoicism, for I found him seated on a three-legged stool
when I went into the studio one day and he was alone, but because he
did not like them. For choice he sat on a kitchen chair without arms.
It often exasperated me to see him. I never knew a man so entirely
indifferent to his surroundings.




Chapter XXVII


Two or three weeks passed. One morning, having come to a pause in my
work, I thought I would give myself a holiday, and I went to the
Louvre. I wandered about looking at the pictures I knew so well, and
let my fancy play idly with the emotions they suggested. I sauntered
into the long gallery, and there suddenly saw Stroeve. I smiled, for
his appearance, so rotund and yet so startled, could never fail to
excite a smile, and then as I came nearer I noticed that he seemed
singularly disconsolate. He looked woebegone and yet ridiculous, like a
man who has fallen into the water with all his clothes on, and, being
rescued from death, frightened still, feels that he only looks a fool.
Turning round, he stared at me, but I perceived that he did not see me.
His round blue eyes looked harassed behind his glasses.

“Stroeve,” I said.

He gave a little start, and then smiled, but his smile was rueful.

“Why are you idling in this disgraceful fashion?” I asked gaily.

“It’s a long time since I was at the Louvre. I thought I’d come and see
if they had anything new.”

“But you told me you had to get a picture finished this week.”

“Strickland’s painting in my studio.”

“Well?”

“I suggested it myself. He’s not strong enough to go back to his own
place yet. I thought we could both paint there. Lots of fellows in the
Quarter share a studio. I thought it would be fun. I’ve always thought
it would be jolly to have someone to talk to when one was tired of
work.”

He said all this slowly, detaching statement from statement with a
little awkward silence, and he kept his kind, foolish eyes fixed on
mine. They were full of tears.

“I don’t think I understand,” I said.

“Strickland can’t work with anyone else in the studio.”

“Damn it all, it’s your studio. That’s his lookout.”

He looked at me pitifully. His lips were trembling.

“What happened?” I asked, rather sharply.

He hesitated and flushed. He glanced unhappily at one of the pictures
on the wall.

“He wouldn’t let me go on painting. He told me to get out.”

“But why didn’t you tell him to go to hell?”

“He turned me out. I couldn’t very well struggle with him. He threw my
hat after me, and locked the door.”

I was furious with Strickland, and was indignant with myself, because
Dirk Stroeve cut such an absurd figure that I felt inclined to laugh.

“But what did your wife say?”

“She’d gone out to do the marketing.”

“Is he going to let her in?”

“I don’t know.”

I gazed at Stroeve with perplexity. He stood like a schoolboy with whom
a master is finding fault.

“Shall I get rid of Strickland for you?” I asked.

He gave a little start, and his shining face grew very red.

“No. You’d better not do anything.”

He nodded to me and walked away. It was clear that for some reason he
did not want to discuss the matter. I did not understand.




Chapter XXVIII


The explanation came a week later. It was about ten o’ clock at night;
I had been dining by myself at a restaurant, and having returned to my
small apartment, was sitting in my parlour, reading I heard the cracked
tinkling of the bell, and, going into the corridor, opened the door.
Stroeve stood before me.

“Can I come in?” he asked.

In the dimness of the landing I could not see him very well, but there
was something in his voice that surprised me. I knew he was of
abstemious habit or I should have thought he had been drinking. I led
the way into my sitting room and asked him to sit down.

“Thank God I’ve found you,” he said.

“What’s the matter?” I asked in astonishment at his vehemence.

I was able now to see him well. As a rule he was neat in his person,
but now his clothes were in disorder. He looked suddenly bedraggled. I
was convinced he had been drinking, and I smiled. I was on the point of
chaffing him on his state.

“I didn’t know where to go,” he burst out. “I came here earlier, but
you weren’t in.”

“I dined late,” I said.

I changed my mind: it was not liquor that had driven him to this
obvious desperation. His face, usually so rosy, was now strangely
mottled. His hands trembled.

“Has anything happened?” I asked.

“My wife has left me.”

He could hardly get the words out. He gave a little gasp, and the tears
began to trickle down his round cheeks. I did not know what to say. My
first thought was that she had come to the end of her forbearance with
his infatuation for Strickland, and, goaded by the latter’s cynical
behaviour, had insisted that he should be turned out. I knew her
capable of temper, for all the calmness of her manner; and if Stroeve
still refused, she might easily have flung out of the studio with vows
never to return. But the little man was so distressed that I could not
smile.

“My dear fellow, don’t be unhappy. She’ll come back. You mustn’t take
very seriously what women say when they’re in a passion.”

“You don’t understand. She’s in love with Strickland.”

“What!” I was startled at this, but the idea had no sooner taken
possession of me than I saw it was absurd. “How can you be so silly?
You don’t mean to say you’re jealous of Strickland?” I almost laughed.
“You know very well that she can’t bear the sight of him.”

“You don’t understand,” he moaned.

“You’re an hysterical ass,” I said a little impatiently. “Let me give
you a whisky-and-soda, and you’ll feel better.”

I supposed that for some reason or other—and Heaven knows what
ingenuity men exercise to torment themselves—Dirk had got it into his
head that his wife cared for Strickland, and with his genius for
blundering he might quite well have offended her so that, to anger him,
perhaps, she had taken pains to foster his suspicion.

“Look here,” I said, “let’s go back to your studio. If you’ve made a
fool of yourself you must eat humble pie. Your wife doesn’t strike me
as the sort of woman to bear malice.”

“How can I go back to the studio?” he said wearily. “They’re there.
I’ve left it to them.”

“Then it’s not your wife who’s left you; it’s you who’ve left your
wife.”

“For God’s sake don’t talk to me like that.”

Still I could not take him seriously. I did not for a moment believe
what he had told me. But he was in very real distress.

“Well, you’ve come here to talk to me about it. You’d better tell me
the whole story.”

“This afternoon I couldn’t stand it any more. I went to Strickland and
told him I thought he was quite well enough to go back to his own
place. I wanted the studio myself.”

“No one but Strickland would have needed telling,” I said. “What did he
say?”

“He laughed a little; you know how he laughs, not as though he were
amused, but as though you were a damned fool, and said he’d go at once.
He began to put his things together. You remember I fetched from his
room what I thought he needed, and he asked Blanche for a piece of
paper and some string to make a parcel.”

Stroeve stopped, gasping, and I thought he was going to faint. This was
not at all the story I had expected him to tell me.

“She was very pale, but she brought the paper and the string. He didn’t
say anything. He made the parcel and he whistled a tune. He took no
notice of either of us. His eyes had an ironic smile in them. My heart
was like lead. I was afraid something was going to happen, and I wished
I hadn’t spoken. He looked round for his hat. Then she spoke:

“‘I’m going with Strickland, Dirk,’ she said. ‘I can’t live with you
any more.’

“I tried to speak, but the words wouldn’t come. Strickland didn’t say
anything. He went on whistling as though it had nothing to do with
him.”

Stroeve stopped again and mopped his face. I kept quite still. I
believed him now, and I was astounded. But all the same I could not
understand.

Then he told me, in a trembling voice, with the tears pouring down his
cheeks, how he had gone up to her, trying to take her in his arms, but
she had drawn away and begged him not to touch her. He implored her not
to leave him. He told her how passionately he loved her, and reminded
her of all the devotion he had lavished upon her. He spoke to her of
the happiness of their life. He was not angry with her. He did not
reproach her.

“Please let me go quietly, Dirk,” she said at last. “Don’t you
understand that I love Strickland? Where he goes I shall go.”

“But you must know that he’ll never make you happy. For your own sake
don’t go. You don’t know what you’ve got to look forward to.”

“It’s your fault. You insisted on his coming here.”

He turned to Strickland.

“Have mercy on her,” he implored him. “You can’t let her do anything so
mad.”

“She can do as she chooses,” said Strickland. “She’s not forced to
come.”

“My choice is made,” she said, in a dull voice.

Strickland’s injurious calm robbed Stroeve of the rest of his
self-control. Blind rage seized him, and without knowing what he was
doing he flung himself on Strickland. Strickland was taken by surprise
and he staggered, but he was very strong, even after his illness, and
in a moment, he did not exactly know how, Stroeve found himself on the
floor.

“You funny little man,” said Strickland.

Stroeve picked himself up. He noticed that his wife had remained
perfectly still, and to be made ridiculous before her increased his
humiliation. His spectacles had tumbled off in the struggle, and he
could not immediately see them. She picked them up and silently handed
them to him. He seemed suddenly to realise his unhappiness, and though
he knew he was making himself still more absurd, he began to cry. He
hid his face in his hands. The others watched him without a word. They
did not move from where they stood.

“Oh, my dear,” he groaned at last, “how can you be so cruel?”

“I can’t help myself, Dirk,” she answered.

“I’ve worshipped you as no woman was ever worshipped before. If in
anything I did I displeased you, why didn’t you tell me, and I’d have
changed. I’ve done everything I could for you.”

She did not answer. Her face was set, and he saw that he was only
boring her. She put on a coat and her hat. She moved towards the door,
and he saw that in a moment she would be gone. He went up to her
quickly and fell on his knees before her, seizing her hands: he
abandoned all self-respect.

“Oh, don’t go, my darling. I can’t live without you; I shall kill
myself. If I’ve done anything to offend you I beg you to forgive me.
Give me another chance. I’ll try harder still to make you happy.”

“Get up, Dirk. You’re making yourself a perfect fool.”

He staggered to his feet, but still he would not let her go.

“Where are you going?” he said hastily. “You don’t know what
Strickland’s place is like. You can’t live there. It would be awful.”

“If I don’t care, I don’t see why you should.”

“Stay a minute longer. I must speak. After all, you can’t grudge me
that.”

“What is the good? I’ve made up my mind. Nothing that you can say will
make me alter it.”

He gulped, and put his hand to his heart to ease its painful beating.

“I’m not going to ask you to change your mind, but I want you to listen
to me for a minute. It’s the last thing I shall ever ask you. Don’t
refuse me that.”

She paused, looking at him with those reflective eyes of hers, which
now were so different to him. She came back into the studio and leaned
against the table.

“Well?”

Stroeve made a great effort to collect himself.

“You must be a little reasonable. You can’t live on air, you know.
Strickland hasn’t got a penny.”

“I know.”

“You’ll suffer the most awful privations. You know why he took so long
to get well. He was half starved.”

“I can earn money for him.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. I shall find a way.”

A horrible thought passed through the Dutchman’s mind, and he
shuddered.

“I think you must be mad. I don’t know what has come over you.”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“Now may I go?”

“Wait one second longer.”

He looked round his studio wearily; he had loved it because her
presence had made it gay and homelike; he shut his eyes for an instant;
then he gave her a long look as though to impress on his mind the
picture of her. He got up and took his hat.

“No; I’ll go.”

“You?”

She was startled. She did not know what he meant.

“I can’t bear to think of you living in that horrible, filthy attic.
After all, this is your home just as much as mine. You’ll be
comfortable here. You’ll be spared at least the worst privations.”

He went to the drawer in which he kept his money and took out several
bank-notes.

“I would like to give you half what I’ve got here.”

He put them on the table. Neither Strickland nor his wife spoke.

Then he recollected something else.

“Will you pack up my clothes and leave them with the concierge? I’ll
come and fetch them to-morrow.” He tried to smile. “Good-bye, my dear.
I’m grateful for all the happiness you gave me in the past.”

He walked out and closed the door behind him. With my mind’s eye I saw
Strickland throw his hat on a table, and, sitting down, begin to smoke
a cigarette.




Chapter XXIX


I kept silence for a little while, thinking of what Stroeve had told
me. I could not stomach his weakness, and he saw my disapproval. “You
know as well as I do how Strickland lived,” he said tremulously. “I
couldn’t let her live in those circumstances—I simply couldn’t.”

“That’s your business,” I answered.

“What would _you_ have done?” he asked.

“She went with her eyes open. If she had to put up with certain
inconveniences it was her own lookout.”

“Yes; but, you see, you don’t love her.”

“Do you love her still?”

“Oh, more than ever. Strickland isn’t the man to make a woman happy. It
can’t last. I want her to know that I shall never fail her.”

“Does that mean that you’re prepared to take her back?”

“I shouldn’t hesitate. Why, she’ll want me more than ever then. When
she’s alone and humiliated and broken it would be dreadful if she had
nowhere to go.”

He seemed to bear no resentment. I suppose it was commonplace in me
that I felt slightly outraged at his lack of spirit. Perhaps he guessed
what was in my mind, for he said:

“I couldn’t expect her to love me as I loved her. I’m a buffoon. I’m
not the sort of man that women love. I’ve always known that. I can’t
blame her if she’s fallen in love with Strickland.”

“You certainly have less vanity than any man I’ve ever known,” I said.

“I love her so much better than myself. It seems to me that when vanity
comes into love it can only be because really you love yourself best.
After all, it constantly happens that a man when he’s married falls in
love with somebody else; when he gets over it he returns to his wife,
and she takes him back, and everyone thinks it very natural. Why should
it be different with women?”

“I dare say that’s logical,” I smiled, “but most men are made
differently, and they can’t.”

But while I talked to Stroeve I was puzzling over the suddenness of the
whole affair. I could not imagine that he had had no warning. I
remembered the curious look I had seen in Blanche Stroeve’s eyes;
perhaps its explanation was that she was growing dimly conscious of a
feeling in her heart that surprised and alarmed her.

“Did you have no suspicion before to-day that there was anything
between them?” I asked.

He did not answer for a while. There was a pencil on the table, and
unconsciously he drew a head on the blotting-paper.

“Please say so, if you hate my asking you questions,” I said.

“It eases me to talk. Oh, if you knew the frightful anguish in my
heart.” He threw the pencil down. “Yes, I’ve known it for a fortnight.
I knew it before she did.”

“Why on earth didn’t you send Strickland packing?”

“I couldn’t believe it. It seemed so improbable. She couldn’t bear the
sight of him. It was more than improbable; it was incredible. I thought
it was merely jealousy. You see, I’ve always been jealous, but I
trained myself never to show it; I was jealous of every man she knew; I
was jealous of you. I knew she didn’t love me as I loved her. That was
only natural, wasn’t it? But she allowed me to love her, and that was
enough to make me happy. I forced myself to go out for hours together
in order to leave them by themselves; I wanted to punish myself for
suspicions which were unworthy of me; and when I came back I found they
didn’t want me—not Strickland, he didn’t care if I was there or not,
but Blanche. She shuddered when I went to kiss her. When at last I was
certain I didn’t know what to do; I knew they’d only laugh at me if I
made a scene. I thought if I held my tongue and pretended not to see,
everything would come right. I made up my mind to get him away quietly,
without quarrelling. Oh, if you only knew what I’ve suffered!”

Then he told me again of his asking Strickland to go. He chose his
moment carefully, and tried to make his request sound casual; but he
could not master the trembling of his voice; and he felt himself that
into words that he wished to seem jovial and friendly there crept the
bitterness of his jealousy. He had not expected Strickland to take him
up on the spot and make his preparations to go there and then; above
all, he had not expected his wife’s decision to go with him. I saw that
now he wished with all his heart that he had held his tongue. He
preferred the anguish of jealousy to the anguish of separation.

“I wanted to kill him, and I only made a fool of myself.”

He was silent for a long time, and then he said what I knew was in his
mind.

“If I’d only waited, perhaps it would have gone all right. I shouldn’t
have been so impatient. Oh, poor child, what have I driven her to?”

I shrugged my shoulders, but did not speak. I had no sympathy for
Blanche Stroeve, but knew that it would only pain poor Dirk if I told
him exactly what I thought of her.

He had reached that stage of exhaustion when he could not stop talking.
He went over again every word of the scene. Now something occurred to
him that he had not told me before; now he discussed what he ought to
have said instead of what he did say; then he lamented his blindness.
He regretted that he had done this, and blamed himself that he had
omitted the other. It grew later and later, and at last I was as tired
as he.

“What are you going to do now?” I said finally.

“What can I do? I shall wait till she sends for me.”

“Why don’t you go away for a bit?”

“No, no; I must be at hand when she wants me.”

For the present he seemed quite lost. He had made no plans. When I
suggested that he should go to bed he said he could not sleep; he
wanted to go out and walk about the streets till day. He was evidently
in no state to be left alone. I persuaded him to stay the night with
me, and I put him into my own bed. I had a divan in my sitting-room,
and could very well sleep on that. He was by now so worn out that he
could not resist my firmness. I gave him a sufficient dose of veronal
to insure his unconsciousness for several hours. I thought that was the
best service I could render him.




Chapter XXX


But the bed I made up for myself was sufficiently uncomfortable to give
me a wakeful night, and I thought a good deal of what the unlucky
Dutchman had told me. I was not so much puzzled by Blanche Stroeve’s
action, for I saw in that merely the result of a physical appeal. I do
not suppose she had ever really cared for her husband, and what I had
taken for love was no more than the feminine response to caresses and
comfort which in the minds of most women passes for it. It is a passive
feeling capable of being roused for any object, as the vine can grow on
any tree; and the wisdom of the world recognises its strength when it
urges a girl to marry the man who wants her with the assurance that
love will follow. It is an emotion made up of the satisfaction in
security, pride of property, the pleasure of being desired, the
gratification of a household, and it is only by an amiable vanity that
women ascribe to it spiritual value. It is an emotion which is
defenceless against passion. I suspected that Blanche Stroeve’s violent
dislike of Strickland had in it from the beginning a vague element of
sexual attraction. Who am I that I should seek to unravel the
mysterious intricacies of sex? Perhaps Stroeve’s passion excited
without satisfying that part of her nature, and she hated Strickland
because she felt in him the power to give her what she needed. I think
she was quite sincere when she struggled against her husband’s desire
to bring him into the studio; I think she was frightened of him, though
she knew not why; and I remembered how she had foreseen disaster. I
think in some curious way the horror which she felt for him was a
transference of the horror which she felt for herself because he so
strangely troubled her. His appearance was wild and uncouth; there was
aloofness in his eyes and sensuality in his mouth; he was big and
strong; he gave the impression of untamed passion; and perhaps she felt
in him, too, that sinister element which had made me think of those
wild beings of the world’s early history when matter, retaining its
early connection with the earth, seemed to possess yet a spirit of its
own. If he affected her at all, it was inevitable that she should love
or hate him. She hated him.

And then I fancy that the daily intimacy with the sick man moved her
strangely. She raised his head to give him food, and it was heavy
against her hand; when she had fed him she wiped his sensual mouth and
his red beard. She washed his limbs; they were covered with thick hair;
and when she dried his hands, even in his weakness they were strong and
sinewy. His fingers were long; they were the capable, fashioning
fingers of the artist; and I know not what troubling 

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/222