Moon and Sixpence, by Somerset Maugham

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Mrs. MacAndrew shared the common opinion of her sex that a man
is always a brute to leave a woman who is attached to him, but
that a woman is much to blame if he does. raisons que la raison ne connait pas.>

Mrs. Strickland looked slowly from one to another of us.

"He'll never come back," she said.

"Oh, my dear, remember what we've just heard. He's been used
to comfort and to having someone to look after him. How long
do you think it'll be before he gets tired of a scrubby room
in a scrubby hotel? Besides, he hasn't any money. He must
come back."

"As long as I thought he'd run away with some woman I thought
there was a chance. I don't believe that sort of thing ever answers.
He'd have got sick to death of her in three months.
But if he hasn't gone because he's in love, then it's finished."

"Oh, I think that's awfully subtle," said the Colonel,
putting into the word all the contempt he felt for a quality
so alien to the traditions of his calling. "Don't you believe it.
He'll come back, and, as Dorothy says, I dare say he'll be
none the worse for having had a bit of a fling."

"But I don't want him back," she said.

"Amy!"

It was anger that had seized Mrs. Strickland, and her pallor
was the pallor of a cold and sudden rage. She spoke quickly now,
with little gasps.

"I could have forgiven it if he'd fallen desperately in love
with someone and gone off with her. I should have thought
that natural. I shouldn't really have blamed him. I should
have thought he was led away. Men are so weak, and women are
so unscrupulous. But this is different. I hate him.
I'll never forgive him now."

Colonel MacAndrew and his wife began to talk to her together.
They were astonished. They told her she was mad. They could
not understand. Mrs. Strickland turned desperately to me.

"Don't see?" she cried.

"I'm not sure. Do you mean that you could have forgiven him
if he'd left you for a woman, but not if he's left you for an idea?
You think you're a match for the one, but against the
other you're helpless?"

Mrs. Strickland gave mt a look in which I read no great
friendliness, but did not answer. Perhaps I had struck home.
She went on in a low and trembling voice:

"I never knew it was possible to hate anyone as much as I hate him.
Do you know, I've been comforting myself by thinking
that however long it lasted he'd want me at the end? I knew
when he was dying he'd send for me, and I was ready to go;
I'd have nursed him like a mother, and at the last I'd have told
him that it didn't matter, I'd loved him always, and I forgave
him everything."

I have always been a little disconcerted by the passion women
have for behaving beautifully at the death-bed of those they love.
Sometimes it seems as if they grudge the longevity which
postpones their chance of an effective scene.

"But now -- now it's finished. I'm as indifferent to him as
if he were a stranger. I should like him to die miserable,
poor, and starving, without a friend. I hope he'll rot with
some loathsome disease. I've done with him."

I thought it as well then to say what Strickland had suggested.

"If you want to divorce him, he's quite willing to do whatever
is necessary to make it possible."

"Why should I give him his freedom?"

"I don't think he wants it. He merely thought it might be
more convenient to you."

Mrs. Strickland shrugged her shoulders impatiently. I think
I was a little disappointed in her. I expected then people to
be more of a piece than I do now, and I was distressed to find
so much vindictiveness in so charming a creature. I did not
realise how motley are the qualities that go to make up a
human being. Now I am well aware that pettiness and grandeur,
malice and charity, hatred and love, can find place side by
side in the same human heart.

I wondered if there was anything I could say that would ease
the sense of bitter humiliation which at present tormented
Mrs. Strickland. I thought I would try.

"You know, I'm not sure that your husband is quite responsible
for his actions. I do not think he is himself. He seems to
me to be possessed by some power which is using him for its
own ends, and in whose hold he is as helpless as a fly in a
spider's web. It's as though someone had cast a spell over him.
I'm reminded of those strange stories one sometimes
hears of another personality entering into a man and driving
out the old one. The soul lives unstably in the body, and is
capable of mysterious transformations. In the old days they
would say Charles Strickland had a devil."

Mrs. MacAndrew smoothed down the lap of her gown, and gold
bangles fell over her wrists.

"All that seems to me very far-fetched," she said acidly.
"I don't deny that perhaps Amy took her husband a little too much
for granted. If she hadn't been so busy with her own affairs,
I can't believe that she wouldn't have suspected something was
the matter. I don't think that Alec could have something on
his mind for a year or more without my having a pretty shrewd
idea of it."

The Colonel stared into vacancy, and I wondered whether anyone
could be quite so innocent of guile as he looked.

"But that doesn't prevent the fact that Charles Strickland is
a heartless beast." She looked at me severely. "I can tell
you why he left his wife -- from pure selfishness and nothing
else whatever."

"That is certainly the simplest explanation," I said.
But I thought it explained nothing. When, saying I was tired,
I rose to go, Mrs. Strickland made no attempt to detain me.

Chapter XVI

What followed showed that Mrs. Strickland was a woman
of character. Whatever anguish she suffered she concealed.
She saw shrewdly that the world is quickly bored by the
recital of misfortune, and willingly avoids the sight of distress.
Whenever she went out -- and compassion for her misadventure
made her friends eager to entertain her -- she bore a
demeanour that was perfect. She was brave, but not too obviously;
cheerful, but not brazenly; and she seemed more
anxious to listen to the troubles of others than to discuss
her own. Whenever she spoke of her husband it was with pity.
Her attitude towards him at first perplexed me. One day she
said to me:

"You know, I'm convinced you were mistaken about Charles being alone.
From what I've been able to gather from certain
sources that I can't tell you, I know that he didn't leave
England by himself."

"In that case he has a positive genius for covering up his tracks."

She looked away and slightly coloured.

"What I mean is, if anyone talks to you about it, please don't
contradict it if they say he eloped with somebody."

"Of course not."

She changed the conversation as though it were a matter to
which she attached no importance. I discovered presently that
a peculiar story was circulating among her friends. They said
that Charles Strickland had become infatuated with a French
dancer, whom he had first seen in the ballet at the Empire,
and had accompanied her to Paris. I could not find out how
this had arisen, but, singularly enough, it created much
sympathy for Mrs. Strickland, and at the same time gave her
not a little prestige. This was not without its use in the
calling which she had decided to follow. Colonel MacAndrew
had not exaggerated when he said she would be penniless, and
it was necessary for her to earn her own living as quickly as
she could. She made up her mind to profit by her acquaintance
with so many writers, and without loss of time began to learn
shorthand and typewriting. Her education made it likely that
she would be a typist more efficient than the average, and her
story made her claims appealing. Her friends promised to send
her work, and took care to recommend her to all theirs.

The MacAndrews, who were childless and in easy circumstances,
arranged to undertake the care of the children, and Mrs.
Strickland had only herself to provide for. She let her flat
and sold her furniture. She settled in two tiny rooms in
Westminster, and faced the world anew. She was so efficient
that it was certain she would make a success of the adventure.

Chapter XVII

It was about five years after this that I decided to live in
Paris for a while. I was growing stale in London. I was
tired of doing much the same thing every day. My friends
pursued their course with uneventfulness; they had no longer
any surprises for me, and when I met them I knew pretty well
what they would say; even their love-affairs had a tedious banality.
We were like tram-cars running on their lines from terminus
to terminus, and it was possible to calculate within small
limits the number of passengers they would carry. Life was
ordered too pleasantly. I was seized with panic. I gave
up my small apartment, sold my few belongings, and resolved to
start afresh.

I called on Mrs. Strickland before I left. I had not seen her
for some time, and I noticed changes in her; it was not only
that she was older, thinner, and more lined; I think her
character had altered. She had made a success of her
business, and now had an office in Chancery Lane; she did
little typing herself, but spent her time correcting the work
of the four girls she employed. She had had the idea of
giving it a certain daintiness, and she made much use of blue
and red inks; she bound the copy in coarse paper, that looked
vaguely like watered silk, in various pale colours; and she
had acquired a reputation for neatness and accuracy. She was
making money. But she could not get over the idea that to
earn her living was somewhat undignified, and she was inclined
to remind you that she was a lady by birth. She could not
help bringing into her conversation the names of people she
knew which would satisfy you that she had not sunk in the
social scale. She was a little ashamed of her courage and
business capacity, but delighted that she was going to dine
the next night with a K.C. who lived in South Kensington.
She was pleased to be able to tell you that her son was at Cambridge,
and it was with a little laugh that she spoke of the rush
of dances to which her daughter, just out, was invited.
I suppose I said a very stupid thing.

"Is she going into your business?" I asked.

"Oh no; I wouldn't let her do that," Mrs. Strickland answered.
"She's so pretty. I'm sure she'll marry well."

"I should have thought it would be a help to you."

"Several people have suggested that she should go on the
stage, but of course I couldn't consent to that, I know all
the chief dramatists, and I could get her a part to-morrow,
but I shouldn't like her to mix with all sorts of people."

I was a little chilled by Mrs. Strickland's exclusiveness.

"Do you ever hear of your husband?"

"No; I haven't heard a word. He may be dead for all I know."

"I may run across him in Paris. Would you like me to let you
know about him?"

She hesitated a minute.

"If he's in any real want I'm prepared to help him a little.
I'd send you a certain sum of money, and you could give it him
gradually, as he needed it."

"That's very good of you," I said.

But I knew it was not kindness that prompted the offer. It is
not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does
that sometimes, but suffering, for the most part, makes men
petty and vindictive.

Chapter XVIII

In point of fact, I met Strickland before I had been a
fortnight in Paris.

I quickly found myself a tiny apartment on the fifth floor of
a house in the Rue des Dames, and for a couple of hundred
francs bought at a second-hand dealer's enough furniture to
make it habitable. I arranged with the concierge to make my
coffee in the morning and to keep the place clean. Then I
went to see my friend Dirk Stroeve.

Dirk Stroeve was one of those persons whom, according to your
character, you cannot think of without derisive laughter or an
embarrassed shrug of the shoulders. Nature had made him a buffoon.
He was a painter, but a very bad one, whom I had met
in Rome, and I still remembered his pictures. He had a
genuine enthusiasm for the commonplace. His soul palpitating
with love of art, he painted the models who hung about the
stairway of Bernini in the Piazza de Spagna, undaunted by
their obvious picturesqueness; and his studio was full of
canvases on which were portrayed moustachioed, large-eyed
peasants in peaked hats, urchins in becoming rags, and women
in bright petticoats. Sometimes they lounged at the steps of
a church, and sometimes dallied among cypresses against a
cloudless sky; sometimes they made love by a Renaissance well-head,
and sometimes they wandered through the Campagna by the side
of an ox-waggon. They were carefully drawn and carefully painted.
A photograph could not have been more exact. One of
the painters at the Villa Medici had called him de la Boite a Chocoloats.> To look at his pictures you would
have thought that Monet, Manet, and the rest of the
Impressionists had never been.

"I don't pretend to be a great painter," he said, "I'm not a
Michael Angelo, no, but I have something. I sell. I bring
romance into the homes of all sorts of people. Do you know,
they buy my pictures not only in Holland, but in Norway and
Sweden and Denmark? It's mostly merchants who buy them, and
rich tradesmen. You can't imagine what the winters are like
in those countries, so long and dark and cold. They like to
think that Italy is like my pictures. That's what they
expect. That's what I expected Italy to be before I came
here."

And I think that was the vision that had remained with him
always, dazzling his eyes so that he could not see the truth;
and notwithstanding the brutality of fact, he continued to see
with the eyes of the spirit an Italy of romantic brigands and
picturesque ruins. It was an ideal that he painted -- a poor one,
common and shop-soiled, but still it was an ideal; and it
gave his character a peculiar charm.

It was because I felt this that Dirk Stroeve was not to me,
as to others, merely an object of ridicule. His fellow-painters
made no secret of their contempt for his work, but he earned a
fair amount of money, and they did not hesitate to make free
use of his purse. He was generous, and the needy, laughing at
him because he believed so naively their stories of distress,
borrowed from him with effrontery. He was very emotional, yet
his feeling, so easily aroused, had in it something absurd,
so that you accepted his kindness, but felt no gratitude.
To take money from him was like robbing a child, and you despised
him because he was so foolish. I imagine that a pickpocket,
proud of his light fingers, must feel a sort of indignation
with the careless woman who leaves in a cab a vanity-bag with
all her jewels in it. Nature had made him a butt, but had
denied him insensibility. He writhed under the jokes,
practical and otherwise, which were perpetually made at his
expense, and yet never ceased, it seemed wilfully, to expose
himself to them. He was constantly wounded, and yet his good-
nature was such that he could not bear malice: the viper might
sting him, but he never learned by experience, and had no
sooner recovered from his pain than he tenderly placed it once
more in his bosom. His life was a tragedy written in the
terms of knockabout farce. Because I did not laugh at him he
was grateful to me, and he used to pour into my sympathetic
ear the long list of his troubles. The saddest thing about
them was that they were grotesque, and the more pathetic they were,
the more you wanted to laugh.

But though so bad a painter, he had a very delicate feeling
for art, and to go with him to picture-galleries was a rare treat.
His enthusiasm was sincere and his criticism acute.
He was catholic. He had not only a true appreciation of the
old masters, but sympathy with the moderns. He was quick to
discover talent, and his praise was generous. I think I have
never known a man whose judgment was surer. And he was better
educated than most painters. He was not, like most of them,
ignorant of kindred arts, and his taste for music and
literature gave depth and variety to his comprehension of painting.
To a young man like myself his advice and guidance were
of incomparable value.

When I left Rome I corresponded with him, and about once in
two months received from him long letters in queer English,
which brought before me vividly his spluttering, enthusiastic,
gesticulating conversation. Some time before I went to Paris
he had married an Englishwoman, and was now settled in a
studio in Montmartre. I had not seen him for four years,
and had never met his wife.

Chapter XIX

I had not announced my arrival to Stroeve, and when I rang the
bell of his studio, on opening the door himself, for a moment
he did not know me. Then he gave a cry of delighted surprise
and drew me in. It was charming to be welcomed with so much
eagerness. His wife was seated near the stove at her sewing,
and she rose as I came in. He introduced me.

"Don't you remember?" he said to her. "I've talked to you
about him often." And then to me: "But why didn't you let me
know you were coming? How long have you been here? How long
are you going to stay? Why didn't you come an hour earlier,
and we would have dined together?"

He bombarded me with questions. He sat me down in a chair,
patting me as though I were a cushion, pressed cigars upon me,
cakes, wine. He could not let me alone. He was heart-broken
because he had no whisky, wanted to make coffee for me,
racked his brain for something he could possibly do for me,
and beamed and laughed, and in the exuberance of his delight
sweated at every pore.

"You haven't changed," I said, smiling, as I looked at him.

He had the same absurd appearance that I remembered. He was a
fat little man, with short legs, young still -- he could not
have been more than thirty -- but prematurely bald. His face
was perfectly round, and he had a very high colour, a white
skin, red cheeks, and red lips. His eyes were blue and round
too, he wore large gold-rimmed spectacles, and his eyebrows
were so fair that you could not see them. He reminded you of
those jolly, fat merchants that Rubens painted.

When I told him that I meant to live in Paris for a while, and
had taken an apartment, he reproached me bitterly for not
having let him know. He would have found me an apartment
himself, and lent me furniture -- did I really mean that I had
gone to the expense of buying it? -- and he would have helped
me to move in. He really looked upon it as unfriendly that I
had not given him the opportunity of making himself useful to me.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Stroeve sat quietly mending her stockings,
without talking, and she listened to all he said with a quiet
smile on her lips.

"So, you see, I'm married," he said suddenly; "what do you
think of my wife?"

He beamed at her, and settled his spectacles on the bridge of
his nose. The sweat made them constantly slip down.

"What on earth do you expect me to say to that?" I laughed.

"Really, Dirk," put in Mrs. Stroeve, smiling.

"But isn't she wonderful? I tell you, my boy, lose no time;
get married as soon as ever you can. I'm the happiest man alive.
Look at her sitting there. Doesn't she make a picture?
Chardin, eh? I've seen all the most beautiful women
in the world; I've never seen anyone more beautiful than
Madame Dirk Stroeve."

"If you don't be quiet, Dirk, I shall go away."

, he said.

She flushed a little, embarrassed by the passion in his tone.
His letters had told me that he was very much in love with his
wife, and I saw that he could hardly take his eyes off her.
I could not tell if she loved him. Poor pantaloon, he was not
an object to excite love, but the smile in her eyes was
affectionate, and it was possible that her reserve concealed a
very deep feeling. She was not the ravishing creature that
his love-sick fancy saw, but she had a grave comeliness.
She was rather tall, and her gray dress, simple and quite
well-cut, did not hide the fact that her figure was beautiful.
It was a figure that might have appealed more to the sculptor
than to the costumier. Her hair, brown and abundant, was
plainly done, her face was very pale, and her features were
good without being distinguished. She had quiet gray eyes.
She just missed being beautiful, and in missing it was not
even pretty. But when Stroeve spoke of Chardin it was not
without reason, and she reminded me curiously of that pleasant
housewife in her mob-cap and apron whom the great painter has
immortalised. I could imagine her sedately busy among her
pots and pans, making a ritual of her household duties, so
that they acquired a moral significance; I did not suppose
that she was clever or could ever be amusing, but there was
something in her grave intentness which excited my interest.
Her reserve was not without mystery. I wondered why she had
married Dirk Stroeve. Though she was English, I could not
exactly place her, and it was not obvious from what rank in
society she sprang, what had been her upbringing, or how she
had lived before her marriage. She was very silent, but when
she spoke it was with a pleasant voice, and her manners
were natural.

I asked Stroeve if he was working.

"Working? I'm painting better than I've ever painted before."

We sat in the studio, and he waved his hand to an unfinished
picture on an easel. I gave a little start. He was painting
a group of Italian peasants, in the costume of the Campagna,
lounging on the steps of a Roman church.

"Is that what you're doing now?" I asked.

"Yes. I can get my models here just as well as in Rome."

"Don't you think it's very beautiful?" said Mrs. Stroeve.

"This foolish wife of mine thinks I'm a great artist," said he.

His apologetic laugh did not disguise the pleasure that he felt.
His eyes lingered on his picture. It was strange that
his critical sense, so accurate and unconventional when he
dealt with the work of others, should be satisfied in himself
with what was hackneyed and vulgar beyond belief.

"Show him some more of your pictures," she said.

"Shall I?"

Though he had suffered so much from the ridicule of his friends,
Dirk Stroeve, eager for praise and naively self-satisfied,
could never resist displaying his work. He brought out
a picture of two curly-headed Italian urchins playing marbles.

"Aren't they sweet?" said Mrs. Stroeve.

And then he showed me more. I discovered that in Paris he had
been painting just the same stale, obviously picturesque
things that he had painted for years in Rome. It was all
false, insincere, shoddy; and yet no one was more honest,
sincere, and frank than Dirk Stroeve. Who could resolve
the contradiction?

I do not know what put it into my head to ask:

"I say, have you by any chance run across a painter called
Charles Strickland?"

"You don't mean to say you know him?" cried Stroeve.

"Beast," said his wife.

Stroeve laughed.

He went over to her and kissed both
her hands. "She doesn't like him. How strange that you
should know Strickland!"

"I don't like bad manners," said Mrs. Stroeve.

Dirk, laughing still, turned to me to explain.

"You see, I asked him to come here one day and look at my
pictures. Well, he came, and I showed him everything I had."
Stroeve hesitated a moment with embarrassment. I do not know
why he had begun the story against himself; he felt an
awkwardness at finishing it. "He looked at -- at my pictures,
and he didn't say anything. I thought he was reserving his
judgment till the end. And at last I said: `There, that's
the lot!' He said: `I came to ask you to lend me twenty francs.'"

"And Dirk actually gave it him," said his wife indignantly.

"I was so taken aback. I didn't like to refuse. He put the
money in his pocket, just nodded, said 'Thanks,' and walked out."

Dirk Stroeve, telling the story, had such a look of blank
astonishment on his round, foolish face that it was almost
impossible not to laugh.

"I shouldn't have minded if he'd said my pictures were bad,
but he said nothing -- nothing."

"And you tell the story, Dirk," Said his wife.

It was lamentable that one was more amused by the ridiculous
figure cut by the Dutchman than outraged by Strickland's
brutal treatment of him.

"I hope I shall never see him again," said Mrs. Stroeve.

Stroeve smiled and shrugged his shoulders. He had already
recovered his good-humour.

"The fact remains that he's a great artist, a very great artist."

"Strickland?" I exclaimed. "It can't be the same man."

"A big fellow with a red beard. Charles Strickland.
An Englishman."

"He had no beard when I knew him, but if he has grown one it
might well be red. The man I'm thinking of only began
painting five years ago."

"That's it. He's a great artist."

"Impossible."

"Have I ever been mistaken?" Dirk asked me. "I tell you he
has genius. I'm convinced of it. In a hundred years, if you
and I are remembered at all, it will be because we knew
Charles Strickland."

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