Moon and Sixpence, by Somerset Maugham

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I could not help thinking that Colonel MacAndrew might have
some difficulty in doing this, since Strickland had struck me
as a hefty fellow, but I did not say anything. It is always
distressing when outraged morality does not possess the
strength of arm to administer direct chastisement on the sinner.
I was making up my mind to another attempt at going
when Mrs. Strickland came back. She had dried her eyes and
powdered her nose.

"I'm sorry I broke down," she said. "I'm glad you didn't go away."

She sat down. I did not at all know what to say. I felt a
certain shyness at referring to matters which were no concern
of mine. I did not then know the besetting sin of woman,
the passion to discuss her private affairs with anyone who is
willing to listen. Mrs. Strickland seemed to make an effort
over herself.

"Are people talking about it?" she asked.

I was taken aback by her assumption that I knew all about her
domestic misfortune.

"I've only just come back. The only person I've seen is Rose
Waterford."

Mrs. Strickland clasped her hands.

"Tell me exactly what she said." And when I hesitated,
she insisted. "I particularly want to know."

"You know the way people talk. She's not very reliable, is
she? She said your husband had left you."

"Is that all?"

I did not choose to repeat Rose Waterford's parting reference
to a girl from a tea-shop. I lied.

"She didn't say anything about his going with anyone?"

"No."

"That's all I wanted to know."

I was a little puzzled, but at all events I understood that I
might now take my leave. When I shook hands with Mrs.
Strickland I told her that if I could be of any use to her I
should be very glad. She smiled wanly.

"Thank you so much. I don't know that anybody can do anything
for me."

Too shy to express my sympathy, I turned to say good-bye to
the Colonel. He did not take my hand.

"I'm just coming. If you're walking up Victoria Street,
I'll come along with you."

"All right," I said. "Come on."

Chapter IX

"This is a terrible thing," he said, the moment we got out
into the street.

I realised that he had come away with me in order to discuss
once more what he had been already discussing for hours with
his sister-in-law.

"We don't know who the woman is, you know," he said. "All we
know is that the blackguard's gone to Paris."

"I thought they got on so well."

"So they did. Why, just before you came in Amy said they'd
never had a quarrel in the whole of their married life.
You know Amy. There never was a better woman in the world."

Since these confidences were thrust on me, I saw no harm in
asking a few questions.

"But do you mean to say she suspected nothing?"

"Nothing. He spent August with her and the children in Norfolk.
He was just the same as he'd always been. We went
down for two or three days, my wife and I, and I played golf
with him. He came back to town in September to let his
partner go away, and Amy stayed on in the country.
They'd taken a house for six weeks, and at the end of her tenancy
she wrote to tell him on which day she was arriving in London.
He answered from Paris. He said he'd made up his mind not to
live with her any more."

"What explanation did he give?"

"My dear fellow, he gave no explanation. I've seen the
letter. It wasn't more than ten lines."

"But that's extraordinary."

We happened then to cross the street, and the traffic
prevented us from speaking. What Colonel MacAndrew had told
me seemed very improbable, and I suspected that Mrs.
Strickland, for reasons of her own, had concealed from him
some part of the facts. It was clear that a man after
seventeen years of wedlock did not leave his wife without
certain occurrences which must have led her to suspect that
all was not well with their married life. The Colonel caught me up.

"Of course, there was no explanation he could give except that
he'd gone off with a woman. I suppose he thought she could
find that out for herself. That's the sort of chap he was."

"What is Mrs. Strickland going to do?"

"Well, the first thing is to get our proofs. I'm going over
to Paris myself."

"And what about his business?"

"That's where he's been so artful. He's been drawing in his
horns for the last year."

"Did he tell his partner he was leaving?"

"Not a word."

Colonel MacAndrew had a very sketchy knowledge of business
matters, and I had none at all, so I did not quite understand
under what conditions Strickland had left his affairs.
I gathered that the deserted partner was very angry and
threatened proceedings. It appeared that when everything was
settled he would be four or five hundred pounds out of pocket.

"It's lucky the furniture in the flat is in Amy's name.
She'll have that at all events."

"Did you mean it when you said she wouldn't have a bob?"

"Of course I did. She's got two or three hundred pounds and
the furniture."

"But how is she going to live?"

"God knows."

The affair seemed to grow more complicated, and the Colonel,
with his expletives and his indignation, confused rather than
informed me. I was glad that, catching sight of the clock at
the Army and Navy Stores, he remembered an engagement to play
cards at his club, and so left me to cut across St. James Park.

Chapter X

A day or two later Mrs. Strickland sent me round a note asking
if I could go and see her that evening after dinner. I found
her alone. Her black dress, simple to austerity, suggested
her bereaved condition, and I was innocently astonished that
notwithstanding a real emotion she was able to dress the part
she had to play according to her notions of seemliness.

"You said that if I wanted you to do anything you wouldn't
mind doing it," she remarked.

"It was quite true."

"Will you go over to Paris and see Charlie?"

"I?"

I was taken aback. I reflected that I had only seen him once.
I did not know what she wanted me to do.

"Fred is set on going." Fred was Colonel MacAndrew. "But I'm
sure he's not the man to go. He'll only make things worse.
I don't know who else to ask."

Her voice trembled a little, and I felt a brute even to hesitate.

"But I've not spoken ten words to your husband. He doesn't
know me. He'll probably just tell me to go to the devil."

"That wouldn't hurt you," said Mrs. Strickland, smiling.

"What is it exactly you want me to do?"

She did not answer directly.

"I think it's rather an advantage that he doesn't know you.
You see, he never really liked Fred; he thought him a fool; he
didn't understand soldiers. Fred would fly into a passion,
and there'd be a quarrel, and things would be worse instead
of better. If you said you came on my behalf, he couldn't
refuse to listen to you."

"I haven't known you very long," I answered. "I don't see how
anyone can be expected to tackle a case like this unless he
knows all the details. I don't want to pry into what doesn't
concern me. Why don't you go and see him yourself?"

"You forget he isn't alone."

I held my tongue. I saw myself calling on Charles Strickland
and sending in my card; I saw him come into the room,
holding it between finger and thumb:

"To what do I owe this honour?"

"I've come to see you about your wife."

"Really. When you are a little older you will doubtless learn
the advantage of minding your own business. If you will be so
good as to turn your head slightly to the left, you will see
the door. I wish you good-afternoon."

I foresaw that it would be difficult to make my exit with
dignity, and I wished to goodness that I had not returned to
London till Mrs. Strickland had composed her difficulties.
I stole a glance at her. She was immersed in thought.
Presently she looked up at me, sighed deeply, and smiled.

"It was all so unexpected," she said. "We'd been married
seventeen years. I sever dreamed that Charlie was the sort of
man to get infatuated with anyone. We always got on very well
together. Of course, I had a great many interests that he
didn't share."

"Have you found out who" -- I did not quite know how to
express myself -- "who the person, who it is he's gone away
with?"

"No. No one seems to have an idea. It's so strange.
Generally when a man falls in love with someone people see
them about together, lunching or something, and her friends
always come and tell the wife. I had no warning -- nothing.
His letter came like a thunderbolt. I thought he was
perfectly happy."

She began to cry, poor thing, and I felt very sorry for her.
But in a little while she grew calmer.

"It's no good making a fool of myself," she said, drying
her eyes. "The only thing is to decide what is the best
thing to do."

She went on, talking somewhat at random, now of the recent
past, then of their first meeting and their marriage;
but presently I began to form a fairly coherent picture of
their lives; and it seemed to me that my surmises had not
been incorrect. Mrs. Strickland was the daughter of an
Indian civilian, who on his retirement had settled in the depths
of the country, but it was his habit every August to take his
family to Eastbourne for change of air; and it was here,
when she was twenty, that she met Charles Strickland.
He was twenty-three. They played together, walked on the front
together, listened together to the nigger minstrels; and she
had made up her mind to accept him a week before he proposed
to her. They lived in London, first in Hampstead, and then,
as he grew more prosperous, in town. Two children were born
to them.

"He always seemed very fond of them. Even if he was tired of me,
I wonder that he had the heart to leave them. It's all so
incredible. Even now I can hardly believe it's true."

At last she showed me the letter he had written.
I was curious to see it, but had not ventured to ask for it.

"MY DEAR AMY,

I have given Anne your instructions, and dinner will be ready
for you and the children when you come. I shall not be there
to meet you. I have made up my mind to live apart from you,
and I am going to Paris in the morning. I shall post this
letter on my arrival. I shall not come back. My decision is
irrevocable.

"Yours always,>

"CHARLES STRICKLAND."

"Not a word of explanation or regret. Don't you think it's inhuman?"

"It's a very strange letter under the circumstances," I replied.

"There's only one explanation, and that is that he's not himself.
I don't know who this woman is who's got hold of him,
but she's made him into another man. It's evidently been
going on a long time."

"What makes you think that?"

"Fred found that out. My husband said he went to the club
three or four nights a week to play bridge. Fred knows one of
the members, and said something about Charles being a great
bridge-player. The man was surprised. He said he'd never
even seen Charles in the card-room. It's quite clear now that
when I thought Charles was at his club he was with her."

I was silent for a moment. Then I thought of the children.

"It must have been difficult to explain to Robert," I said.

"Oh, I never said a word to either of them. You see, we only
came up to town the day before they had to go back to school.
I had the presence of mind to say that their father had been
called away on business."

It could not have been very easy to be bright and careless
with that sudden secret in her heart, nor to give her
attention to all the things that needed doing to get her
children comfortably packed off. Mrs. Strickland's voice
broke again.

"And what is to happen to them, poor darlings? How are we
going to live?"

She struggled for self-control, and I saw her hands clench and
unclench spasmodically. It was dreadfully painful.

"Of course I'll go over to Paris if you think I can do any good,
but you must tell me exactly what you want me to do."

"I want him to come back."

"I understood from Colonel MacAndrew that you'd made up your
mind to divorce him."

"I'll never divorce him," she answered with a sudden violence.
"Tell him that from me. He'll never be able to marry that woman.
I'm as obstinate as he is, and I'll never divorce him.
I have to think of my children."

I think she added this to explain her attitude to me, but I
thought it was due to a very natural jealousy rather than to
maternal solicitude.

"Are you in love with him still?"

"I don't know. I want him to come back. If he'll do that
we'll let bygones be bygones. After all, we've been married
for seventeen years. I'm a broadminded woman. I wouldn't
have minded what he did as long as I knew nothing about it.
He must know that his infatuation won't last. If he'll come
back now everything can be smoothed over, and no one will know
anything about it."

It chilled me a little that Mrs. Strickland should be
concerned with gossip, for I did not know then how great a
part is played in women's life by the opinion of others.
It throws a shadow of insincerity over their most deeply
felt emotions.

It was known where Strickland was staying. His partner, in a
violent letter, sent to his bank, had taunted him with hiding
his whereabouts: and Strickland, in a cynical and humourous
reply, had told his partner exactly where to find him. He was
apparently living in an Hotel.

"I've never heard of it," said Mrs. Strickland. "But Fred
knows it well. He says it's very expensive."

She flushed darkly. I imagined that she saw her husband
installed in a luxurious suite of rooms, dining at one smart
restaurant after another, and she pictured his days spent at
race-meetings and his evenings at the play.

"It can't go on at his age," she said. "After all, he's forty.
I could understand it in a young man, but I think it's
horrible in a man of his years, with children who are nearly
grown up. His health will never stand it."

Anger struggled in her breast with misery.

"Tell him that our home cries out for him. Everything is just
the same, and yet everything is different. I can't live
without him. I'd sooner kill myself. Talk to him about the past,
and all we've gone through together. What am I to say
to the children when they ask for him? His room is exactly as
it was when he left it. It's waiting for him. We're all
waiting for him."

Now she told me exactly what I should say. She gave me
elaborate answers to every possible observation of his.

"You will do everything you can for me?" she said pitifully.
"Tell him what a state I'm in."

I saw that she wished me to appeal to his sympathies by every
means in my power. She was weeping freely. I was
extraordinarily touched. I felt indignant at Strickland's
cold cruelty, and I promised to do all I could to bring him back.
I agreed to go over on the next day but one, and to
stay in Paris till I had achieved something. Then, as it was
growing late and we were both exhausted by so much emotion,
I left her.

Chapter XI

During the journey I thought over my errand with misgiving.
Now that I was free from the spectacle of Mrs. Strickland's
distress I could consider the matter more calmly. I was
puzzled by the contradictions that I saw in her behaviour.
She was very unhappy, but to excite my sympathy she was able
to make a show of her unhappiness. It was evident that she
had been prepared to weep, for she had provided herself with a
sufficiency of handkerchiefs; I admired her forethought, but
in retrospect it made her tears perhaps less moving. I could
not decide whether she desired the return of her husband
because she loved him, or because she dreaded the tongue of
scandal; and I was perturbed by the suspicion that the anguish
of love contemned was alloyed in her broken heart with the
pangs, sordid to my young mind, of wounded vanity. I had not
yet learnt how contradictory is human nature; I did not know
how much pose there is in the sincere, how much baseness in
the noble, nor how much goodness in the reprobate.

But there was something of an adventure in my trip, and my
spirits rose as I approached Paris. I saw myself, too, from
the dramatic standpoint, and I was pleased with my role of the
trusted friend bringing back the errant husband to his
forgiving wife. I made up my mind to see Strickland the
following evening, for I felt instinctively that the hour must
be chosen with delicacy. An appeal to the emotions is little
likely to be effectual before luncheon. My own thoughts were
then constantly occupied with love, but I never could imagine
connubial bliss till after tea.

I enquired at my hotel for that in which Charles Strickland
was living. It was called the Hotel des Belges. But the
concierge, somewhat to my surprise, had never heard of it.
I had understood from Mrs. Strickland that it was a large and
sumptuous place at the back of the Rue de Rivoli. We looked
it out in the directory. The only hotel of that name was in
the Rue des Moines. The quarter was not fashionable; it was
not even respectable. I shook my head.

"I'm sure that's not it," I said.

The concierge shrugged his shoulders. There was no other
hotel of that name in Paris. It occurred to me that
Strickland had concealed his address, after all. In giving
his partner the one I knew he was perhaps playing a trick on him.
I do not know why I had an inkling that it would appeal
to Strickland's sense of humour to bring a furious stockbroker
over to Paris on a fool's errand to an ill-famed house in a
mean street. Still, I thought I had better go and see.
Next day about six o'clock I took a cab to the Rue des Moines,
but dismissed it at the corner, since I preferred to walk to the
hotel and look at it before I went in. It was a street of
small shops subservient to the needs of poor people, and about
the middle of it, on the left as I walked down, was the Hotel
des Belges. My own hotel was modest enough, but it was
magnificent in comparison with this. It was a tall, shabby
building, that cannot have been painted for years, and it had
so bedraggled an air that the houses on each side of it looked
neat and clean. The dirty windows were all shut. It was not
here that Charles Strickland lived in guilty splendour with
the unknown charmer for whose sake he had abandoned honour and duty.
I was vexed, for I felt that I had been made 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: 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 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

"He hasn't left his key. Go up and you'll see."

I thought it as well to put one more question.

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 cafe.

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.

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