The Moon and Sixpence
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