The Moon and Sixpence
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