The Moon and Sixpence
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