The Moon and Sixpence
“We both loved Blanche. There would have been room for him in my
mother’s house. I think the company of poor, simple people would have
done his soul a great good. I think he might have learnt from them
something that would be very useful to him.”
“What did he say?”
“He smiled a little. I suppose he thought me very silly. He said he had
other fish to fry.”
I could have wished that Strickland had used some other phrase to
indicate his refusal.
“He gave me the picture of Blanche.”
I wondered why Strickland had done that. But I made no remark, and for
some time we kept silence.
“What have you done with all your things?” I said at last.
“I got a Jew in, and he gave me a round sum for the lot. I’m taking my
pictures home with me. Beside them I own nothing in the world now but a
box of clothes and a few books.”
“I’m glad you’re going home,” I said.
I felt that his chance was to put all the past behind him. I hoped that
the grief which now seemed intolerable would be softened by the lapse
of time, and a merciful forgetfulness would help him to take up once
more the burden of life. He was young still, and in a few years he
would look back on all his misery with a sadness in which there would
be something not unpleasurable. Sooner or later he would marry some
honest soul in Holland, and I felt sure he would be happy. I smiled at
the thought of the vast number of bad pictures he would paint before he
died.
Next day I saw him off for Amsterdam.
Chapter XL
For the next month, occupied with my own affairs, I saw no one
connected with this lamentable business, and my mind ceased to be
occupied with it. But one day, when I was walking along, bent on some
errand, I passed Charles Strickland. The sight of him brought back to
me all the horror which I was not unwilling to forget, and I felt in me
a sudden repulsion for the cause of it. Nodding, for it would have been
childish to cut him, I walked on quickly; but in a minute I felt a hand
on my shoulder.
“You’re in a great hurry,” he said cordially.
It was characteristic of him to display geniality with anyone who
showed a disinclination to meet him, and the coolness of my greeting
can have left him in little doubt of that.
“I am,” I answered briefly.
“I’ll walk along with you,” he said.
“Why?” I asked.
“For the pleasure of your society.”
I did not answer, and he walked by my side silently. We continued thus
for perhaps a quarter of a mile. I began to feel a little ridiculous.
At last we passed a stationer’s, and it occurred to me that I might as
well buy some paper. It would be an excuse to be rid of him.
“I’m going in here,” I said. “Good-bye.”
“I’ll wait for you.”
I shrugged my shoulders, and went into the shop. I reflected that
French paper was bad, and that, foiled of my purpose, I need not burden
myself with a purchase that I did not need. I asked for something I
knew could not be provided, and in a minute came out into the street.
“Did you get what you wanted?” he asked.
“No.”
We walked on in silence, and then came to a place where several streets
met. I stopped at the curb.
“Which way do you go?” I enquired.
“Your way,” he smiled.
“I’m going home.”
“I’ll come along with you and smoke a pipe.”
“You might wait for an invitation,” I retorted frigidly.
“I would if I thought there was any chance of getting one.”
“Do you see that wall in front of you?” I said, pointing.
“Yes.”
“In that case I should have thought you could see also that I don’t
want your company.”
“I vaguely suspected it, I confess.”
I could not help a chuckle. It is one of the defects of my character
that I cannot altogether dislike anyone who makes me laugh. But I
pulled myself together.
“I think you’re detestable. You’re the most loathsome beast that it’s
ever been my misfortune to meet. Why do you seek the society of someone
who hates and despises you?”
“My dear fellow, what the hell do you suppose I care what you think of
me?”
“Damn it all,” I said, more violently because I had an inkling my
motive was none too creditable, “I don’t want to know you.”
“Are you afraid I shall corrupt you?”
His tone made me feel not a little ridiculous. I knew that he was
looking at me sideways, with a sardonic smile.
“I suppose you are hard up,” I remarked insolently.
“I should be a damned fool if I thought I had any chance of borrowing
money from you.”
“You’ve come down in the world if you can bring yourself to flatter.”
He grinned.
“You’ll never really dislike me so long as I give you the opportunity
to get off a good thing now and then.”
I had to bite my lip to prevent myself from laughing. What he said had
a hateful truth in it, and another defect of my character is that I
enjoy the company of those, however depraved, who can give me a Roland
for my Oliver. I began to feel that my abhorrence for Strickland could
only be sustained by an effort on my part. I recognised my moral
weakness, but saw that my disapprobation had in it already something of
a pose; and I knew that if I felt it, his own keen instinct had
discovered it, too. He was certainly laughing at me up his sleeve. I
left him the last word, and sought refuge in a shrug of the shoulders
and taciturnity.
Chapter XLI
We arrived at the house in which I lived. I would not ask him to come
in with me, but walked up the stairs without a word. He followed me,
and entered the apartment on my heels. He had not been in it before,
but he never gave a glance at the room I had been at pains to make
pleasing to the eye. There was a tin of tobacco on the table, and,
taking out his pipe, he filled it. He sat down on the only chair that
had no arms and tilted himself on the back legs.
“If you’re going to make yourself at home, why don’t you sit in an
arm-chair?” I asked irritably.
“Why are you concerned about my comfort?”
“I’m not,” I retorted, “but only about my own. It makes me
uncomfortable to see someone sit on an uncomfortable chair.”
He chuckled, but did not move. He smoked on in silence, taking no
further notice of me, and apparently was absorbed in thought. I
wondered why he had come.
Until long habit has blunted the sensibility, there is something
disconcerting to the writer in the instinct which causes him to take an
interest in the singularities of human nature so absorbing that his
moral sense is powerless against it. He recognises in himself an
artistic satisfaction in the contemplation of evil which a little
startles him; but sincerity forces him to confess that the disapproval
he feels for certain actions is not nearly so strong as his curiosity
in their reasons. The character of a scoundrel, logical and complete,
has a fascination for his creator which is an outrage to law and order.
I expect that Shakespeare devised Iago with a gusto which he never knew
when, weaving moonbeams with his fancy, he imagined Desdemona. It may
be that in his rogues the writer gratifies instincts deep-rooted in
him, which the manners and customs of a civilised world have forced
back to the mysterious recesses of the subconscious. In giving to the
character of his invention flesh and bones he is giving life to that
part of himself which finds no other means of expression. His
satisfaction is a sense of liberation.
The writer is more concerned to know than to judge.
There was in my soul a perfectly genuine horror of Strickland, and side
by side with it a cold curiosity to discover his motives. I was puzzled
by him, and I was eager to see how he regarded the tragedy he had
caused in the lives of people who had used him with so much kindness. I
applied the scalpel boldly.
“Stroeve told me that picture you painted of his wife was the best
thing you’ve ever done.”
Strickland took his pipe out of his mouth, and a smile lit up his eyes.
“It was great fun to do.”
“Why did you give it him?”
“I’d finished it. It wasn’t any good to me.”
“Do you know that Stroeve nearly destroyed it?”
“It wasn’t altogether satisfactory.”
He was quiet for a moment or two, then he took his pipe out of his
mouth again, and chuckled.
“Do you know that the little man came to see me?”
“Weren’t you rather touched by what he had to say?”
“No; I thought it damned silly and sentimental.”
“I suppose it escaped your memory that you’d ruined his life?” I
remarked.
He rubbed his bearded chin reflectively.
“He’s a very bad painter.”
“But a very good man.”
“And an excellent cook,” Strickland added derisively.
His callousness was inhuman, and in my indignation I was not inclined
to mince my words.
“As a mere matter of curiosity I wish you’d tell me, have you felt the
smallest twinge of remorse for Blanche Stroeve’s death?”
I watched his face for some change of expression, but it remained
impassive.
“Why should I?” he asked.
“Let me put the facts before you. You were dying, and Dirk Stroeve took
you into his own house. He nursed you like a mother. He sacrificed his
time and his comfort and his money for you. He snatched you from the
jaws of death.”
Strickland shrugged his shoulders.
“The absurd little man enjoys doing things for other people. That’s his
life.”
“Granting that you owed him no gratitude, were you obliged to go out of
your way to take his wife from him? Until you came on the scene they
were happy. Why couldn’t you leave them alone?”
“What makes you think they were happy?”
“It was evident.”
“You are a discerning fellow. Do you think she could ever have forgiven
him for what he did for her?”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Don’t you know why he married her?”
I shook my head.
“She was a governess in the family of some Roman prince, and the son of
the house seduced her. She thought he was going to marry her. They
turned her out into the street neck and crop. She was going to have a
baby, and she tried to commit suicide. Stroeve found her and married
her.”
“It was just like him. I never knew anyone with so compassionate a
heart.”
I had often wondered why that ill-assorted pair had married, but just
that explanation had never occurred to me. That was perhaps the cause
of the peculiar quality of Dirk’s love for his wife. I had noticed in
it something more than passion. I remembered also how I had always
fancied that her reserve concealed I knew not what; but now I saw in it
more than the desire to hide a shameful secret. Her tranquillity was
like the sullen calm that broods over an island which has been swept by
a hurricane. Her cheerfulness was the cheerfulness of despair.
Strickland interrupted my reflections with an observation the profound
cynicism of which startled me.
“A woman can forgive a man for the harm he does her,” he said, “but she
can never forgive him for the sacrifices he makes on her account.”
“It must be reassuring to you to know that you certainly run no risk of
incurring the resentment of the women you come in contact with,” I
retorted.
A slight smile broke on his lips.
“You are always prepared to sacrifice your principles for a repartee,”
he answered.
“What happened to the child?”
“Oh, it was still-born, three or four months after they were married.”
Then I came to the question which had seemed to me most puzzling.
“Will you tell me why you bothered about Blanche Stroeve at all?”
He did not answer for so long that I nearly repeated it.
“How do I know?” he said at last. “She couldn’t bear the sight of me.
It amused me.”
“I see.”
He gave a sudden flash of anger.
“Damn it all, I wanted her.”
But he recovered his temper immediately, and looked at me with a smile.
“At first she was horrified.”
“Did you tell her?”
“There wasn’t any need. She knew. I never said a word. She was
frightened. At last I took her.”