The Moon and Sixpence
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