The Moon and Sixpence
Then Ata stood up and faced him.
“Let the others go if they choose, but I will not leave thee. Thou art
my man and I am thy woman. If thou leavest me I shall hang myself on
the tree that is behind the house. I swear it by God.”
There was something immensely forcible in the way she spoke. She was no
longer the meek, soft native girl, but a determined woman. She was
extraordinarily transformed.
“Why shouldst thou stay with me? Thou canst go back to Papeete, and
thou wilt soon find another white man. The old woman can take care of
thy children, and Tiaré will be glad to have thee back.”
“Thou art my man and I am thy woman. Whither thou goest I will go,
too.”
For a moment Strickland’s fortitude was shaken, and a tear filled each
of his eyes and trickled slowly down his cheeks. Then he gave the
sardonic smile which was usual with him.
“Women are strange little beasts,” he said to Dr. Coutras. “You can
treat them like dogs, you can beat them till your arm aches, and still
they love you.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Of course, it is one of the
most absurd illusions of Christianity that they have souls.”
“What is it that thou art saying to the doctor?” asked Ata
suspiciously. “Thou wilt not go?”
“If it please thee I will stay, poor child.”
Ata flung herself on her knees before him, and clasped his legs with
her arms and kissed them. Strickland looked at Dr. Coutras with a faint
smile.
“In the end they get you, and you are helpless in their hands. White or
brown, they are all the same.”
Dr. Coutras felt that it was absurd to offer expressions of regret in
so terrible a disaster, and he took his leave. Strickland told Tané,
the boy, to lead him to the village. Dr. Coutras paused for a moment,
and then he addressed himself to me.
“I did not like him, I have told you he was not sympathetic to me, but
as I walked slowly down to Taravao I could not prevent an unwilling
admiration for the stoical courage which enabled him to bear perhaps
the most dreadful of human afflictions. When Tané left me I told him I
would send some medicine that might be of service; but my hope was
small that Strickland would consent to take it, and even smaller that,
if he did, it would do him good. I gave the boy a message for Ata that
I would come whenever she sent for me. Life is hard, and Nature takes
sometimes a terrible delight in torturing her children. It was with a
heavy heart that I drove back to my comfortable home in Papeete.”
For a long time none of us spoke.
“But Ata did not send for me,” the doctor went on, at last, “and it
chanced that I did not go to that part of the island for a long time. I
had no news of Strickland. Once or twice I heard that Ata had been to
Papeete to buy painting materials, but I did not happen to see her.
More than two years passed before I went to Taravao again, and then it
was once more to see the old chiefess. I asked them whether they had
heard anything of Strickland. By now it was known everywhere that he
had leprosy. First Tané, the boy, had left the house, and then, a
little time afterwards, the old woman and her grandchild. Strickland
and Ata were left alone with their babies. No one went near the
plantation, for, as you know, the natives have a very lively horror of
the disease, and in the old days when it was discovered the sufferer
was killed; but sometimes, when the village boys were scrambling about
the hills, they would catch sight of the white man, with his great red
beard, wandering about. They fled in terror. Sometimes Ata would come
down to the village at night and arouse the trader, so that he might
sell her various things of which she stood in need. She knew that the
natives looked upon her with the same horrified aversion as they looked
upon Strickland, and she kept out of their way. Once some women,
venturing nearer than usual to the plantation, saw her washing clothes
in the brook, and they threw stones at her. After that the trader was
told to give her the message that if she used the brook again men would
come and burn down her house.”
“Brutes,” I said.
“_Mais non, mon cher monsieur_, men are always the same. Fear makes
them cruel.... I decided to see Strickland, and when I had finished
with the chiefess asked for a boy to show me the way. But none would
accompany me, and I was forced to find it alone.”
When Dr. Coutras arrived at the plantation he was seized with a feeling
of uneasiness. Though he was hot from walking, he shivered. There was
something hostile in the air which made him hesitate, and he felt that
invisible forces barred his way. Unseen hands seemed to draw him back.
No one would go near now to gather the cocoa-nuts, and they lay rotting
on the ground. Everywhere was desolation. The bush was encroaching, and
it looked as though very soon the primeval forest would regain
possession of that strip of land which had been snatched from it at the
cost of so much labour. He had the sensation that here was the abode of
pain. As he approached the house he was struck by the unearthly
silence, and at first he thought it was deserted. Then he saw Ata. She
was sitting on her haunches in the lean-to that served her as kitchen,
watching some mess cooking in a pot. Near her a small boy was playing
silently in the dirt. She did not smile when she saw him.
“I have come to see Strickland,” he said.
“I will go and tell him.”
She went to the house, ascended the few steps that led to the verandah,
and entered. Dr. Coutras followed her, but waited outside in obedience
to her gesture. As she opened the door he smelt the sickly sweet smell
which makes the neighbourhood of the leper nauseous. He heard her
speak, and then he heard Strickland’s answer, but he did not recognise
the voice. It had become hoarse and indistinct. Dr. Coutras raised his
eyebrows. He judged that the disease had already attacked the vocal
chords. Then Ata came out again.
“He will not see you. You must go away.”
Dr. Coutras insisted, but she would not let him pass. Dr. Coutras
shrugged his shoulders, and after a moment’s rejection turned away. She
walked with him. He felt that she too wanted to be rid of him.
“Is there nothing I can do at all?” he asked.
“You can send him some paints,” she said. “There is nothing else he
wants.”
“Can he paint still?”
“He is painting the walls of the house.”
“This is a terrible life for you, my poor child.”
Then at last she smiled, and there was in her eyes a look of superhuman
love. Dr. Coutras was startled by it, and amazed. And he was awed. He
found nothing to say.
“He is my man,” she said.
“Where is your other child?” he asked. “When I was here last you had
two.”
“Yes; it died. We buried it under the mango.”
When Ata had gone with him a little way she said she must turn back.
Dr. Coutras surmised she was afraid to go farther in case she met any
of the people from the village. He told her again that if she wanted
him she had only to send and he would come at once.
Chapter LVI
Then two years more went by, or perhaps three, for time passes
imperceptibly in Tahiti, and it is hard to keep count of it; but at
last a message was brought to Dr. Coutras that Strickland was dying.
Ata had waylaid the cart that took the mail into Papeete, and besought
the man who drove it to go at once to the doctor. But the doctor was
out when the summons came, and it was evening when he received it. It
was impossible to start at so late an hour, and so it was not till next
day soon after dawn that he set out. He arrived at Taravao, and for the
last time tramped the seven kilometres that led to Ata’s house. The
path was overgrown, and it was clear that for years now it had remained
all but untrodden. It was not easy to find the way. Sometimes he had to
stumble along the bed of the stream, and sometimes he had to push
through shrubs, dense and thorny; often he was obliged to climb over
rocks in order to avoid the hornet-nests that hung on the trees over
his head. The silence was intense.
It was with a sigh of relief that at last he came upon the little
unpainted house, extraordinarily bedraggled now, and unkempt; but here
too was the same intolerable silence. He walked up, and a little boy,
playing unconcernedly in the sunshine, started at his approach and fled
quickly away: to him the stranger was the enemy. Dr. Coutras had a
sense that the child was stealthily watching him from behind a tree.
The door was wide open. He called out, but no one answered. He stepped
in. He knocked at a door, but again there was no answer. He turned the
handle and entered. The stench that assailed him turned him horribly
sick. He put his handkerchief to his nose and forced himself to go in.
The light was dim, and after the brilliant sunshine for a while he
could see nothing. Then he gave a start. He could not make out where he
was. He seemed on a sudden to have entered a magic world. He had a
vague impression of a great primeval forest and of naked people walking
beneath the trees. Then he saw that there were paintings on the walls.
“_Mon Dieu_, I hope the sun hasn’t affected me,” he muttered.
A slight movement attracted his attention, and he saw that Ata was
lying on the floor, sobbing quietly.
“Ata,” he called. “Ata.”
She took no notice. Again the beastly stench almost made him faint, and
he lit a cheroot. His eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, and now he
was seized by an overwhelming sensation as he stared at the painted
walls. He knew nothing of pictures, but there was something about these
that extraordinarily affected him. From floor to ceiling the walls were
covered with a strange and elaborate composition. It was indescribably
wonderful and mysterious. It took his breath away. It filled him with
an emotion which he could not understand or analyse. He felt the awe
and the delight which a man might feel who watched the beginning of a
world. It was tremendous, sensual, passionate; and yet there was
something horrible there, too, something which made him afraid. It was
the work of a man who had delved into the hidden depths of nature and
had discovered secrets which were beautiful and fearful too. It was the
work of a man who knew things which it is unholy for men to know. There
was something primeval there and terrible. It was not human. It brought
to his mind vague recollections of black magic. It was beautiful and
obscene.
“_Mon Dieu_, this is genius.”
The words were wrung from him, and he did not know he had spoken.
Then his eyes fell on the bed of mats in the corner, and he went up,
and he saw the dreadful, mutilated, ghastly object which had been
Strickland. He was dead. Dr. Coutras made an effort of will and bent
over that battered horror. Then he started violently, and terror blazed
in his heart, for he felt that someone was behind him. It was Ata. He
had not heard her get up. She was standing at his elbow, looking at
what he looked at.
“Good Heavens, my nerves are all distraught,” he said. “You nearly
frightened me out of my wits.”
He looked again at the poor dead thing that had been man, and then he
started back in dismay.
“But he was blind.”
“Yes; he had been blind for nearly a year.”
Chapter LVII
AT that moment we were interrupted by the appearance of Madame Coutras,
who had been paying visits. She came in, like a ship in full sail, an
imposing creature, tall and stout, with an ample bust and an obesity
girthed in alarmingly by straight-fronted corsets. She had a bold
hooked nose and three chins. She held herself upright. She had not
yielded for an instant to the enervating charm of the tropics, but
contrariwise was more active, more worldly, more decided than anyone in
a temperate clime would have thought it possible to be. She was