The Moon and Sixpence
a fool of, and I nearly turned away without making an enquiry. I went
in only to be able to tell Mrs. Strickland that I had done my best.
The door was at the side of a shop. It stood open, and just within was
a sign: _Bureau au premier._ I walked up narrow stairs, and on the
landing found a sort of box, glassed in, within which were a desk and a
couple of chairs. There was a bench outside, on which it might be
presumed the night porter passed uneasy nights. There was no one about,
but under an electric bell was written _Garcon._ I rang, and presently
a waiter appeared. He was a young man with furtive eyes and a sullen
look. He was in shirt-sleeves and carpet slippers.
I do not know why I made my enquiry as casual as possible.
“Does Mr. Strickland live here by any chance?” I asked.
“Number thirty-two. On the sixth floor.”
I was so surprised that for a moment I did not answer.
“Is he in?”
The waiter looked at a board in the _bureau._
“He hasn’t left his key. Go up and you’ll see.”
I thought it as well to put one more question.
_“Madame est là?”_
_“Monsieur est seul.”_
The waiter looked at me suspiciously as I made my way upstairs. They
were dark and airless. There was a foul and musty smell. Three flights
up a Woman in a dressing-gown, with touzled hair, opened a door and
looked at me silently as I passed. At length I reached the sixth floor,
and knocked at the door numbered thirty-two. There was a sound within,
and the door was partly opened. Charles Strickland stood before me. He
uttered not a word. He evidently did not know me.
I told him my name. I tried my best to assume an airy manner.
“You don’t remember me. I had the pleasure of dining with you last
July.”
“Come in,” he said cheerily. “I’m delighted to see you. Take a pew.”
I entered. It was a very small room, overcrowded with furniture of the
style which the French know as Louis Philippe. There was a large wooden
bedstead on which was a billowing red eiderdown, and there was a large
wardrobe, a round table, a very small washstand, and two stuffed chairs
covered with red rep. Everything was dirty and shabby. There was no
sign of the abandoned luxury that Colonel MacAndrew had so confidently
described. Strickland threw on the floor the clothes that burdened one
of the chairs, and I sat down on it.
“What can I do for you?” he asked.
In that small room he seemed even bigger than I remembered him. He wore
an old Norfolk jacket, and he had not shaved for several days. When
last I saw him he was spruce enough, but he looked ill at ease: now,
untidy and ill-kempt, he looked perfectly at home. I did not know how
he would take the remark I had prepared.
“I’ve come to see you on behalf of your wife.”
“I was just going out to have a drink before dinner. You’d better come
too. Do you like absinthe?”
“I can drink it.”
“Come on, then.”
He put on a bowler hat much in need of brushing.
“We might dine together. You owe me a dinner, you know.”
“Certainly. Are you alone?”
I flattered myself that I had got in that important question very
naturally.
“Oh yes. In point of fact I’ve not spoken to a soul for three days. My
French isn’t exactly brilliant.”
I wondered as I preceded him downstairs what had happened to the little
lady in the tea-shop. Had they quarrelled already, or was his
infatuation passed? It seemed hardly likely if, as appeared, he had
been taking steps for a year to make his desperate plunge. We walked to
the Avenue de Clichy, and sat down at one of the tables on the pavement
of a large café.
Chapter XII
The Avenue de Clichy was crowded at that hour, and a lively fancy might
see in the passers-by the personages of many a sordid romance. There
were clerks and shopgirls; old fellows who might have stepped out of
the pages of Honore de Balzac; members, male and female, of the
professions which make their profit of the frailties of mankind. There
is in the streets of the poorer quarters of Paris a thronging vitality
which excites the blood and prepares the soul for the unexpected.
“Do you know Paris well?” I asked.
“No. We came on our honeymoon. I haven’t been since.”
“How on earth did you find out your hotel?”
“It was recommended to me. I wanted something cheap.”
The absinthe came, and with due solemnity we dropped water over the
melting sugar.
“I thought I’d better tell you at once why I had come to see you,” I
said, not without embarrassment.
His eyes twinkled. “I thought somebody would come along sooner or
later. I’ve had a lot of letters from Amy.”
“Then you know pretty well what I’ve got to say.”
“I’ve not read them.”
I lit a cigarette to give myself a moment’s time. I did not quite know
now how to set about my mission. The eloquent phrases I had arranged,
pathetic or indignant, seemed out of place on the Avenue de Clichy.
Suddenly he gave a chuckle.
“Beastly job for you this, isn’t it?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I answered.
“Well, look here, you get it over, and then we’ll have a jolly
evening.”
I hesitated.
“Has it occurred to you that your wife is frightfully unhappy?”
“She’ll get over it.”
I cannot describe the extraordinary callousness with which he made this
reply. It disconcerted me, but I did my best not to show it. I adopted
the tone used by my Uncle Henry, a clergyman, when he was asking one of
his relatives for a subscription to the Additional Curates Society.
“You don’t mind my talking to you frankly?”
He shook his head, smiling.
“Has she deserved that you should treat her like this?”
“No.”
“Have you any complaint to make against her?”
“None.”
“Then, isn’t it monstrous to leave her in this fashion, after seventeen
years of married life, without a fault to find with her?”
“Monstrous.”
I glanced at him with surprise. His cordial agreement with all I said
cut the ground from under my feet. It made my position complicated, not
to say ludicrous. I was prepared to be persuasive, touching, and
hortatory, admonitory and expostulating, if need be vituperative even,
indignant and sarcastic; but what the devil does a mentor do when the
sinner makes no bones about confessing his sin? I had no experience,
since my own practice has always been to deny everything.
“What, then?” asked Strickland.
I tried to curl my lip.
“Well, if you acknowledge that, there doesn’t seem much more to be
said.”
“I don’t think there is.”
I felt that I was not carrying out my embassy with any great skill. I
was distinctly nettled.
“Hang it all, one can’t leave a woman without a bob.”
“Why not?”
“How is she going to live?”
“I’ve supported her for seventeen years. Why shouldn’t she support
herself for a change?”
“She can’t.”
“Let her try.”
Of course there were many things I might have answered to this. I might
have spoken of the economic position of woman, of the contract, tacit
and overt, which a man accepts by his marriage, and of much else; but I
felt that there was only one point which really signified.
“Don’t you care for her any more?”
“Not a bit,” he replied.
The matter was immensely serious for all the parties concerned, but
there was in the manner of his answer such a cheerful effrontery that I
had to bite my lips in order not to laugh. I reminded myself that his
behaviour was abominable. I worked myself up into a state of moral
indignation.
“Damn it all, there are your children to think of. They’ve never done
you any harm. They didn’t ask to be brought into the world. If you
chuck everything like this, they’ll be thrown on the streets.
“They’ve had a good many years of comfort. It’s much more than the
majority of children have. Besides, somebody will look after them. When
it comes to the point, the MacAndrews will pay for their schooling.”
“But aren’t you fond of them? They’re such awfully nice kids. Do you
mean to say you don’t want to have anything more to do with them?”
“I liked them all right when they were kids, but now they’re growing up
I haven’t got any particular feeling for them.”
“It’s just inhuman.”
“I dare say.”
“You don’t seem in the least ashamed.”
“I’m not.”
I tried another tack.
“Everyone will think you a perfect swine.”
“Let them.”
“Won’t it mean anything to you to know that people loathe and despise
you?”
“No.”
His brief answer was so scornful that it made my question, natural
though it was, seem absurd. I reflected for a minute or two.
“I wonder if one can live quite comfortably when one’s conscious of the
disapproval of one’s fellows? Are you sure it won’t begin to worry you?
Everyone has some sort of a conscience, and sooner or later it will
find you out. Supposing your wife died, wouldn’t you be tortured by
remorse?”
He did not answer, and I waited for some time for him to speak. At last
I had to break the silence myself.
“What have you to say to that?”
“Only that you’re a damned fool.”
“At all events, you can be forced to support your wife and children,” I
retorted, somewhat piqued. “I suppose the law has some protection to
offer them.”
“Can the law get blood out of a stone? I haven’t any money. I’ve got
about a hundred pounds.”
I began to be more puzzled than before. It was true that his hotel
pointed to the most straitened circumstances.
“What are you going to do when you’ve spent that?”
“Earn some.”
He was perfectly cool, and his eyes kept that mocking smile which made
all I said seem rather foolish. I paused for a little while to consider
what I had better say next. But it was he who spoke first.
“Why doesn’t Amy marry again? She’s comparatively young, and she’s not
unattractive. I can recommend her as an excellent wife. If she wants to
divorce me I don’t mind giving her the necessary grounds.”
Now it was my turn to smile. He was very cunning, but it was evidently
this that he was aiming at. He had some reason to conceal the fact that
he had run away with a woman, and he was using every precaution to hide
her whereabouts. I answered with decision.
“Your wife says that nothing you can do will ever induce her to divorce
you. She’s quite made up her mind. You can put any possibility of that
definitely out of your head.”
He looked at me with an astonishment that was certainly not feigned.
The smile abandoned his lips, and he spoke quite seriously.
“But, my dear fellow, I don’t care. It doesn’t matter a twopenny damn
to me one way or the other.”
I laughed.
“Oh, come now; you mustn’t think us such fools as all that. We happen
to know that you came away with a woman.”
He gave a little start, and then suddenly burst into a shout of
laughter. He laughed so uproariously that people sitting near us looked
round, and some of them began to laugh too.
“I don’t see anything very amusing in that.”
“Poor Amy,” he grinned.
Then his face grew bitterly scornful.
“What poor minds women have got! Love. It’s always love. They think a
man leaves only because he wants others. Do you think I should be such
a fool as to do what I’ve done for a woman?”
“Do you mean to say you didn’t leave your wife for another woman?”
“Of course not.”
“On your word of honour?”
I don’t know why I asked for that. It was very ingenuous of me.
“On my word of honour.”
“Then, what in God’s name have you left her for?”
“I want to paint.”
I looked at him for quite a long time. I did not understand. I thought
he was mad. It must be remembered that I was very young, and I looked
upon him as a middle-aged man. I forgot everything but my own
amazement.
“But you’re forty.”
“That’s what made me think it was high time to begin.”
“Have you ever painted?”
“I rather wanted to be a painter when I was a boy, but my father made
me go into business because he said there was no money in art. I began