Moon and Sixpence, by Somerset Maugham

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He smiled maliciously at Tiare, and with lamentations she told
us again the story of how at the sale of Strickland's effects
she had neglected the pictures, but bought an American stove
for twenty-seven francs.

"Have you the pictures still?" I asked.

"Yes; I am keeping them till my daughter is of marriageable
age, and then I shall sell them. They will be her ."
Then he went on with the account of his visit to Strickland.

"I shall never forget the evening I spent with him. I had not
intended to stay more than an hour, but he insisted that I
should spend the night. I hesitated, for I confess I did not
much like the look of the mats on which he proposed that I
should sleep; but I shrugged my shoulders. When I was
building my house in the Paumotus I had slept out for weeks on
a harder bed than that, with nothing to shelter me but wild
shrubs; and as for vermin, my tough skin should be proof
against their malice.

"We went down to the stream to bathe while Ata was preparing
the dinner, and after we had eaten it we sat on the verandah.
We smoked and chatted. The young man had a concertina, and he
played the tunes popular on the music-halls a dozen years
before. They sounded strangely in the tropical night
thousands of miles from civilisation. I asked Strickland if
it did not irk him to live in that promiscuity. No, he said;
he liked to have his models under his hand. Presently, after
loud yawning, the natives went away to sleep, and Strickland
and I were left alone. I cannot describe to you the intense
silence of the night. On my island in the Paumotus there is
never at night the complete stillness that there was here.
There is the rustle of the myriad animals on the beach, all
the little shelled things that crawl about ceaselessly, and
there is the noisy scurrying of the land-crabs. Now and then
in the lagoon you hear the leaping of a fish, and sometimes a
hurried noisy splashing as a brown shark sends all the other
fish scampering for their lives. And above all, ceaseless
like time, is the dull roar of the breakers on the reef.
But here there was not a sound, and the air was scented with the
white flowers of the night. It was a night so beautiful that
your soul seemed hardly able to bear the prison of the body.
You felt that it was ready to be wafted away on the immaterial air,
and death bore all the aspect of a beloved friend."

Tiare sighed.

"Ah, I wish I were fifteen again."

Then she caught sight of a cat trying to get at a dish of
prawns on the kitchen table, and with a dexterous gesture and
a lively volley of abuse flung a book at its scampering tail.

"I asked him if he was happy with Ata.

"`She leaves me alone,' he said. 'She cooks my food and looks
after her babies. She does what I tell her. She gives me
what I want from a woman.'

"`And do you never regret Europe? Do you not yearn sometimes
for the light of the streets in Paris or London, the
companionship of your friends, and equals,
for theatres and newspapers, and the rumble of omnibuses on
the cobbled pavements?'

"For a long time he was silent. Then he said:

"`I shall stay here till I die.'

"`But are you never bored or lonely?' I asked.

"He chuckled.

"`,' he said. `It is evident that you do
not know what it is to be an artist.'"

Capitaine Brunot turned to me with a gentle smile, and there
was a wonderful look in his dark, kind eyes.

"He did me an injustice, for I too know what it is to have
dreams. I have my visions too. In my way I also am an artist."

We were all silent for a while, and Tiare fished out of her
capacious pocket a handful of cigarettes. She handed one to
each of us, and we all three smoked. At last she said:

"Since is interested in Strickland, why do you
not take him to see Dr. Coutras? He can tell him something
about his illness and death."

"," said the Captain, looking at me.

I thanked him, and he looked at his watch.

"It is past six o'clock. We should find him at home if you
care to come now."

I got up without further ado, and we walked along the road
that led to the doctor's house. He lived out of the town,
but the Hotel de la Fleur was on the edge of it, and we were
quickly in the country. The broad road was shaded by pepper-trees,
and on each side were the plantations, cocoa-nut and vanilla.
The pirate birds were screeching among the leaves of the palms.
We came to a stone bridge over a shallow river,
and we stopped for a few minutes to see the native boys bathing.
They chased one another with shrill cries and laughter,
and their bodies, brown and wet, gleamed in the sunlight.

Chapter LIV

As we walked along I reflected on a circumstance which all
that I had lately heard about Strickland forced on my attention.
Here, on this remote island, he seemed to have aroused
none of the detestation with which he was regarded at home,
but compassion rather; and his vagaries were accepted
with tolerance. To these people, native and European, he was
a queer fish, but they were used to queer fish, and they took
him for granted; the world was full of odd persons, who did
odd things; and perhaps they knew that a man is not what he
wants to be, but what he must be. In England and France he
was the square peg in the round hole, but here the holes were
any sort of shape, and no sort of peg was quite amiss.
I do not think he was any gentler here, less selfish or less
brutal, but the circumstances were more favourable. If he had
spent his life amid these surroundings he might have passed
for no worse a man than another. He received here what he
neither expected nor wanted among his own people -- sympathy.

I tried to tell Captain Brunot something of the astonishment
with which this filled me, and for a little while he did not
answer.

"It is not strange that I, at all events, should have had
sympathy for him," he said at last, "for, though perhaps
neither of us knew it, we were both aiming at the same thing."

"What on earth can it be that two people so dissimilar as you
and Strickland could aim at?" I asked, smiling.

"Beauty."

"A large order," I murmured.

"Do you know how men can be so obsessed by love that they are
deaf and blind to everything else in the world? They are as
little their own masters as the slaves chained to the benches
of a galley. The passion that held Strickland in bondage was
no less tyrannical than love."

"How strange that you should say that!" I answered. "For long
ago I had the idea that he was possessed of a devil."

"And the passion that held Strickland was a passion to
create beauty. It gave him no peace. It urged him hither
and thither. He was eternally a pilgrim, haunted by a divine
nostalgia, and the demon within him was ruthless. There are
men whose desire for truth is so great that to attain it they
will shatter the very foundation of their world. Of such was
Strickland, only beauty with him took the place of truth.
I could only feel for him a profound compassion."

"That is strange also. A man whom he had deeply wronged told
me that he felt a great pity for him." I was silent for a moment.
"I wonder if there you have found the explanation of
a character which has always seemed to me inexplicable.
How did you hit on it?"

He turned to me with a smile.

"Did I not tell you that I, too, in my way was an artist?
I realised in myself the same desire as animated him.
But whereas his medium was paint, mine has been life."

Then Captain Brunot told me a story which I must repeat,
since, if only by way of contrast, it adds something to my
impression of Strickland. It has also to my mind a beauty of
its own.

Captain Brunot was a Breton, and had been in the French Navy.
He left it on his marriage, and settled down on a small
property he had near Quimper to live for the rest of his days
in peace; but the failure of an attorney left him suddenly
penniless, and neither he nor his wife was willing to live in
penury where they had enjoyed consideration. During his sea
faring days he had cruised the South Seas, and he determined
now to seek his fortune there. He spent some months in Papeete
to make his plans and gain experience; then, on money borrowed
from a friend in France, he bought an island in the Paumotus.
It was a ring of land round a deep lagoon, uninhabited,
and covered only with scrub and wild guava. With the
intrepid woman who was his wife, and a few natives,
he landed there, and set about building a house, and clearing
the scrub so that he could plant cocoa-nuts. That was twenty
years before, and now what had been a barren island was a garden.

"It was hard and anxious work at first, and we worked
strenuously, both of us. Every day I was up at dawn,
clearing, planting, working on my house, and at night when I
threw myself on my bed it was to sleep like a log till
morning. My wife worked as hard as I did. Then children were
born to us, first a son and then a daughter. My wife and I
have taught them all they know. We had a piano sent out from
France, and she has taught them to play and to speak English,
and I have taught them Latin and mathematics, and we read
history together. They can sail a boat. They can swim as
well as the natives. There is nothing about the land of which
they are ignorant. Our trees have prospered, and there is
shell on my reef. I have come to Tahiti now to buy a
schooner. I can get enough shell to make it worth while to
fish for it, and, who knows? I may find pearls. I have made
something where there was nothing. I too have made beauty.
Ah, you do not know what it is to look at those tall, healthy
trees and think that every one I planted myself."

"Let me ask you the question that you asked Strickland.
Do you never regret France and your old home in Brittany?"

"Some day, when my daughter is married and my son has a wife
and is able to take my place on the island, we shall go back
and finish our days in the old house in which I was born."

"You will look back on a happy life," I said.

", it is not exciting on my island, and we are
very far from the world -- imagine, it takes me four days to
come to Tahiti -- but we are happy there. It is given to few
men to attempt a work and to achieve it. Our life is simple
and innocent. We are untouched by ambition, and what pride we
have is due only to our contemplation of the work of our
hands. Malice cannot touch us, nor envy attack. Ah, cher monsieur>, they talk of the blessedness of labour, and it
is a meaningless phrase, but to me it has the most intense
significance. I am a happy man."

"I am sure you deserve to be," I smiled.

"I wish I could think so. I do not know how I have deserved
to have a wife who was the perfect friend and helpmate,
the perfect mistress and the perfect mother."

I reflected for a while on the life that the Captain suggested
to my imagination.

"It is obvious that to lead such an existence and make so
great a success of it, you must both have needed a strong will
and a determined character."

"Perhaps; but without one other factor we could have achieved nothing."

"And what was that?"

He stopped, somewhat dramatically, and stretched out his arm.

"Belief in God. Without that we should have been lost."

Then we arrived at the house of Dr. Coutras.

Chapter LV

Mr. Coutras was an old Frenchman of great stature and
exceeding bulk. His body was shaped like a huge duck's egg;
and his eyes, sharp, blue, and good-natured, rested now and
then with self-satisfaction on his enormous paunch. His
complexion was florid and his hair white. He was a man to
attract immediate sympathy. He received us in a room that
might have been in a house in a provincial town in France, and
the one or two Polynesian curios had an odd look. He took my
hand in both of his -- they were huge -- and gave me a hearty
look, in which, however, was great shrewdness. When he shook
hands with Capitaine Brunot he enquired politely after
. For some minutes there was an
exchange of courtesies and some local gossip about the island,
the prospects of copra and the vanilla crop; then we came to
the object of my visit.

I shall not tell what Dr. Coutras related to me in his words,
but in my own, for I cannot hope to give at second hand any
impression of his vivacious delivery. He had a deep, resonant
voice, fitted to his massive frame, and a keen sense of the
dramatic. To listen to him was, as the phrase goes, as good
as a play; and much better than most.

It appears that Dr. Coutras had gone one day to Taravao in
order to see an old chiefess who was ill, and he gave a vivid
picture of the obese old lady, lying in a huge bed, smoking
cigarettes, and surrounded by a crowd of dark-skinned retainers.
When he had seen her he was taken into another room
and given dinner -- raw fish, fried bananas, and chicken --
, the typical dinner of the --
and while he was eating it he saw a young girl being driven
away from the door in tears. He thought nothing of it, but
when he went out to get into his trap and drive home, he saw
her again, standing a little way off; she looked at him with a
woebegone air, and tears streamed down her cheeks. He asked
someone what was wrong with her, and was told that she had
come down from the hills to ask him to visit a white man who
was sick. They had told her that the doctor could not be
disturbed. He called her, and himself asked what she wanted.
She told him that Ata had sent her, she who used to be at the
Hotel de la Fleur, and that the Red One was ill. She thrust
into his hand a crumpled piece of newspaper, and when he
opened it he found in it a hundred-franc note.

"Who is the Red One?" he asked of one of the bystanders.

He was told that that was what they called the Englishman, a
painter, who lived with Ata up in the valley seven kilometres
from where they were. He recognised Strickland by the
description. But it was necessary to walk. It was impossible
for him to go; that was why they had sent the girl away.

"I confess," said the doctor, turning to me, "that I
hesitated. I did not relish fourteen kilometres over a bad
pathway, and there was no chance that I could get back to
Papeete that night. Besides, Strickland was not sympathetic
to me. He was an idle, useless scoundrel, who preferred to
live with a native woman rather than work for his living like
the rest of us. , how was I to know that one day
the world would come to the conclusion that he had genius?
I asked the girl if he was not well enough to have come down to
see me. I asked her what she thought was the matter with him.
She would not answer. I pressed her, angrily perhaps, but she
looked down on the ground and began to cry. Then I shrugged
my shoulders; after all, perhaps it was my duty to go, and in
a very bad temper I bade her lead the way."

His temper was certainly no better when he arrived, perspiring
freely and thirsty. Ata was on the look-out for him, and came
a little way along the path to meet him.

"Before I see anyone give me something to drink or I shall die
of thirst," he cried out. ", get me a
cocoa-nut."

She called out, and a boy came running along. He swarmed up a
tree, and presently threw down a ripe nut. Ata pierced a hole
in it, and the doctor took a long, refreshing draught.
Then he rolled himself a cigarette and felt in a better humour.

"Now, where is the Red One?" he asked.

"He is in the house, painting. I have not told him you were
coming. Go in and see him."

"But what does he complain of? If he is well enough to paint,
he is well enough to have come down to Taravao and save me
this confounded walk. I presume my time is no less valuable
than his."

Ata did not speak, but with the boy followed him to the house.
The girl who had brought him was by this time sitting on the
verandah, and here was lying an old woman, with her back to
the wall, making native cigarettes. Ata pointed to the door.
The doctor, wondering irritably why they behaved so strangely,
entered, and there found Strickland cleaning his palette.
There was a picture on the easel. Strickland, clad only in a
, was standing with his back to the door, but he
turned round when he heard the sound of boots. He gave the
doctor a look of vexation. He was surprised to see him, and
resented the intrusion. But the doctor gave a gasp, he was
rooted to the floor, and he stared with all his eyes.
This was not what he expected. He was seized with horror.

"You enter without ceremony," said Strickland. "What can I do
for you?"

The doctor recovered himself, but it required quite an effort
for him to find his voice. All his irritation was gone, and
he felt -- -- he felt an
overwhelming pity.

"I am Dr. Coutras. I was down at Taravao to see the chiefess,
and Ata sent for me to see you."

"She's a damned fool. I have had a few aches and pains lately
and a little fever, but that's nothing; it will pass off.
Next time anyone went to Papeete I was going to send for
some quinine."

"Look at yourself in the glass."

Strickland gave him a glance, smiled, and went over to a cheap
mirror in a little wooden frame, that hung on the wall.

"Well?"

"Do you not see a strange change in your face? Do you not see
the thickening of your features and a look -- how shall I
describe it? -- the books call it lion-faced. ,
must I tell you that you have a terrible disease?"

"I?"

"When you look at yourself in the glass you see the typical
appearance of the leper."

"You are jesting," said Strickland.

"I wish to God I were."

"Do you intend to tell me that I have leprosy?"

"Unfortunately, there can be no doubt of it."

Dr. Coutras had delivered sentence of death on many men, and
he could never overcome the horror with which it filled him.
He felt always the furious hatred that must seize a man
condemned when he compared himself with the doctor, sane and
healthy, who had the inestimable privilege of life.
Strickland looked at him in silence. Nothing of emotion could
be seen on his face, disfigured already by the loathsome
disease.

"Do they know?" he asked at last, pointing to the persons on
the verandah, now sitting in unusual, unaccountable silence.

"These natives know the signs so well," said the doctor.
"They were afraid to tell you."

Strickland stepped to the door and looked out. There must
have been something terrible in his face, for suddenly they
all burst out into loud cries and lamentation. They lifted up
their voices and they wept. Strickland did not speak.
After looking at them for a moment, he came back into the room.

"How long do you think I can last?"

"Who knows? Sometimes the disease continues for twenty years.
It is a mercy when it runs its course quickly."

Strickland went to his easel and looked reflectively at the
picture that stood on it.

"You have had a long journey. It is fitting that the bearer
of important tidings should be rewarded. Take this picture.
It means nothing to you now, but it may be that one day you
will be glad to have it."

Dr. Coutras protested that he needed no payment for his
journey; he had already given back to Ata the hundred-franc
note, but Strickland insisted that he should take the picture.
Then together they went out on the verandah. The natives were
sobbing violently. "Be quiet, woman. Dry thy tears," said
Strickland, addressing Ata. "There is no great harm.
I shall leave thee very soon."

"They are not going to take thee away?" she cried.

At that time there was no rigid sequestration on the islands,
and lepers, if they chose, were allowed to go free.

"I shall go up into the mountain," said Strickland.

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 Tiare 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 Tane, 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 Tane 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 Tane, 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.

", 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.

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