The Moon and Sixpence.....................................................................................................................................1

W. Somerset Maugham ............................................................................................................................1

I confess that when first I made acquaintance with Charles Strickland I never for a moment discerned that

there was in him anything out of the ordinary. Yet now few will be found to deny his greatness. I do not

speak of that greatness which is achieved by the fortunate politician or the successful soldier; that is a quality

which belongs to the place he occupies rather than to the man; and a change of circumstances reduces it to

very discreet proportions. The Prime Minister out of office is seen, too often, to have been but a pompous

rhetorician, and the General without an army is but the tame hero of a market town. The greatness of Charles

Strickland was authentic. It may be that you do not like his art, but at all events you can hardly refuse it the

tribute of your interest. He disturbs and arrests. The time has passed when he was an object of ridicule, and it

is no longer a mark of eccentricity to defend or of perversity to extol him. His faults are accepted as the

necessary complement to his merits. It is still possible to discuss his place in art, and the adulation of his

admirers is perhaps no less capricious than the disparagement of his detractors; but one thing can never be

doubtful, and that is that he had genius. To my mind the most interesting thing in art is the personality of the

artist; and if that is singular, I am willing to excuse a thousand faults. I suppose Velasquez was a better

painter than El Greco, but custom stales one's admiration for him: the Cretan, sensual and tragic, proffers the

mystery of his soul like a standing sacrifice. The artist, painter, poet, or musician, by his decoration, sublime

or beautiful, satisfies the aesthetic sense; but that is akin to the sexual instinct, and shares its barbarity: he

lays before you also the greater gift of himself. To pursue his secret has something of the fascination of a

detective story. It is a riddle which shares with the universe the merit of having no answer. The most

insignificant of Strickland's works suggests a personality which is strange, tormented, and complex; and it is

this surely which prevents even those who do not like his pictures from being indifferent to them; it is this

It was not till four years after Strickland's death that Maurice Huret wrote that article in the Mercure de

France which rescued the unknown painter from oblivion and blazed the trail which succeeding writers, with

more or less docility, have followed. For a long time no critic has enjoyed in France a more incontestable

authority, and it was impossible not to be impressed by the claims he made; they seemed extravagant; but

later judgments have confirmed his estimate, and the reputation of Charles Strickland is now firmly

established on the lines which he laid down. The rise of this reputation is one of the most romantic incidents

in the history of art. But I do not propose to deal with Charles Strickland's work except in so far as it touches

upon his character. I cannot agree with the painters who claim superciliously that the layman can understand

nothing of painting, and that he can best show his appreciation of their works by silence and a chequebook.

It is a grotesque misapprehension which sees in art no more than a craft comprehensible perfectly only to the

craftsman: art is a manifestation of emotion, and emotion speaks a language that all may understand. But I

will allow that the critic who has not a practical knowledge of technique is seldom able to say anything on the

subject of real value, and my ignorance of painting is extreme. Fortunately, there is no need for me to risk the

adventure, since my friend, Mr. Edward Leggatt, an able writer as well as an admirable painter, has

exhaustively discussed Charles Strickland's work in a little book[1] which is a charming example of a style,

[1] "A Modern Artist: Notes on the Work of Charles Strickland," by Edward Leggatt, A.R.H.A. Martin

Maurice Huret in his famous article gave an outline of Charles Strickland's life which was well calculated to

whet the appetites of the inquiring. With his disinterested passion for art, he had a real desire to call the

attention of the wise to a talent which was in the highest degree original; but he was too good a journalist to

be unaware that the "human interest" would enable him more easily to effect his purpose. And when such as

had come in contact with Strickland in the past, writers who had known him in London, painters who had met

him in the cafes of Montmartre, discovered to their amazement that where they had seen but an unsuccessful

artist, like another, authentic genius had rubbed shoulders with them there began to appear in the magazines

of France and America a succession of articles, the reminiscences of one, the appreciation of another, which

added to Strickland's notoriety, and fed without satisfying the curiosity of the public. The subject was

grateful, and the industrious WeitbrechtRotholz in his imposing monograph[2] has been able to give a

[2] "Karl Strickland: sein Leben und seine Kunst," by Hugo WeitbrechtRotholz, Ph.D. Schwingel und

The faculty for myth is innate in the human race. It seizes with avidity upon any incidents, surprising or

mysterious, in the career of those who have at all distinguished themselves from their fellows, and invents a

legend to which it then attaches a fanatical belief. It is the protest of romance against the commonplace of

life. The incidents of the legend become the hero's surest passport to immortality. The ironic philosopher

reflects with a smile that Sir Walter Raleigh is more safely inshrined in the memory of mankind because he

set his cloak for the Virgin Queen to walk on than because he carried the English name to undiscovered

countries. Charles Strickland lived obscurely. He made enemies rather than friends. It is not strange, then,

that those who wrote of him should have eked out their scanty recollections with a lively fancy, and it is

evident that there was enough in the little that was known of him to give opportunity to the romantic scribe;

there was much in his life which was strange and terrible, in his character something outrageous, and in his

fate not a little that was pathetic. In due course a legend arose of such circumstantiality that the wise historian

But a wise historian is precisely what the Rev. Robert Strickland is not. He wrote his biography[3] avowedly

to "remove certain misconceptions which had gained currency" in regard to the later part of his father's life,

and which had "caused considerable pain to persons still living." It is obvious that there was much in the

commonly received account of Strickland's life to embarrass a respectable family. I have read this work with

a good deal of amusement, and upon this I congratulate myself, since it is colourless and dull. Mr. Strickland

has drawn the portrait of an excellent husband and father, a man of kindly temper, industrious habits, and

moral disposition. The modern clergyman has acquired in his study of the science which I believe is called

exegesis an astonishing facility for explaining things away, but the subtlety with which the Rev. Robert

Strickland has "interpreted" all the facts in his father's life which a dutiful son might find it inconvenient to

remember must surely lead him in the fullness of time to the highest dignities of the Church. I see already his

muscular calves encased in the gaiters episcopal. It was a hazardous, though maybe a gallant thing to do,

since it is probable that the legend commonly received has had no small share in the growth of Strickland's

reputation; for there are many who have been attracted to his art by the detestation in which they held his

character or the compassion with which they regarded his death; and the son's wellmeaning efforts threw a

singular chill upon the father's admirers. It is due to no accident that when one of his most important works,

The Woman of Samaria,[4] was sold at Christie's shortly after the discussion which followed the publication

of Mr. Strickland's biography, it fetched POUNDS 235 less than it had done nine months before when it was

bought by the distinguished collector whose sudden death had brought it once more under the hammer.

Perhaps Charles Strickland's power and originality would scarcely have sufficed to turn the scale if the

remarkable mythopoeic faculty of mankind had not brushed aside with impatience a story which disappointed

all its craving for the extraordinary. And presently Dr. WeitbrechtRotholz produced the work which finally

[3] "Strickland: The Man and His Work," by his son, Robert Strickland. Wm. Heinemann, 1913.

[4] This was described in Christie's catalogue as follows: "A nude woman, a native of the Society Islands, is

lying on the ground beside a brook. Behind is a tropical Landscape with palmtrees, bananas, etc. 60 in. x 48

Dr. WeitbrechtRotholz belongs to that school of historians which believes that human nature is not only

about as bad as it can be, but a great deal worse; and certainly the reader is safer of entertainment in their

hands than in those of the writers who take a malicious pleasure in representing the great figures of romance

as patterns of the domestic virtues. For my part, I should be sorry to think that there was nothing between

Anthony and Cleopatra but an economic situation; and it will require a great deal more evidence than is ever

likely to be available, thank God, to persuade me that Tiberius was as blameless a monarch as King George

V. Dr. WeitbrechtRotholz has dealt in such terms with the Rev. Robert Strickland's innocent biography that

it is difficult to avoid feeling a certain sympathy for the unlucky parson. His decent reticence is branded as

hypocrisy, his circumlocutions are roundly called lies, and his silence is vilified as treachery. And on the

strength of peccadillos, reprehensible in an author, but excusable in a son, the AngloSaxon race is accused

of prudishness, humbug, pretentiousness, deceit, cunning, and bad cooking. Personally I think it was rash of

Mr. Strickland, in refuting the account which had gained belief of a certain "unpleasantness" between his

father and mother, to state that Charles Strickland in a letter written from Paris had described her as "an

excellent woman," since Dr. WeitbrechtRotholz was able to print the letter in facsimile, and it appears that

the passage referred to ran in fact as follows: God damn my wife. She is an excellent woman. I wish she was

in hell. It is not thus that the Church in its great days dealt with evidence that was unwelcome.

Dr. WeitbrechtRotholz was an enthusiastic admirer of Charles Strickland, and there was no danger that he

would whitewash him. He had an unerring eye for the despicable motive in actions that had all the

appearance of innocence. He was a psychopathologist, as well as a student of art, and the subconscious had

few secrets from him. No mystic ever saw deeper meaning in common things. The mystic sees the ineffable,

and the psychopathologist the unspeakable. There is a singular fascination in watching the eagerness with

which the learned author ferrets out every circumstance which may throw discredit on his hero. His heart

warms to him when he can bring forward some example of cruelty or meanness, and he exults like an

inquisitor at the auto da fe of an heretic when with some forgotten story he can confound the filial piety of the

Rev. Robert Strickland. His industry has been amazing. Nothing has been too small to escape him, and you

may be sure that if Charles Strickland left a laundry bill unpaid it will be given you in extenso, and if he

forebore to return a borrowed halfcrown no detail of the transaction will be omitted.

When so much has been written about Charles Strickland, it may seem unnecessary that I should write more.

A painter's monument is his work. It is true I knew him more intimately than most: I met him first before ever

he became a painter, and I saw him not infrequently during the difficult years he spent in Paris; but I do not

suppose I should ever have set down my recollections if the hazards of the war had not taken me to Tahiti.

There, as is notorious, he spent the last years of his life; and there I came across persons who were familiar

with him. I find myself in a position to throw light on just that part of his tragic career which has remained

most obscure. If they who believe in Strickland's greatness are right, the personal narratives of such as knew

him in the flesh can hardly be superfluous. What would we not give for the reminiscences of someone who

But I seek refuge in no such excuses. I forget who it was that recommended men for their soul's good to do

each day two things they disliked: it was a wise man, and it is a precept that I have followed scrupulously; for

every day I have got up and I have gone to bed. But there is in my nature a strain of asceticism, and I have

subjected my flesh each week to a more severe mortification. I have never failed to read the Literary

Supplement of The Times. It is a salutary discipline to consider the vast number of books that are written, the

fair hopes with which their authors see them published, and the fate which awaits them. What chance is there

that any book will make its way among that multitude? And the successful books are but the successes of a

season. Heaven knows what pains the author has been at, what bitter experiences he has endured and what

heartache suffered, to give some chance reader a few hours' relaxation or to while away the tedium of a

journey. And if I may judge from the reviews, many of these books are well and carefully written; much

thought has gone to their composition; to some even has been given the anxious labour of a lifetime. The

moral I draw is that the writer should seek his reward in the pleasure of his work and in release from the

burden of his thought; and, indifferent to aught else, care nothing for praise or censure, failure or success.

Now the war has come, bringing with it a new attitude. Youth has turned to gods we of an earlier day knew

not, and it is possible to see already the direction in which those who come after us will move. The younger

generation, conscious of strength and tumultuous, have done with knocking at the door; they have burst in

and seated themselves in our seats. The air is noisy with their shouts. Of their elders some, by imitating the

antics of youth, strive to persuade themselves that their day is not yet over; they shout with the lustiest, but

the war cry sounds hollow in their mouth; they are like poor wantons attempting with pencil, paint and

powder, with shrill gaiety, to recover the illusion of their spring. The wiser go their way with a decent grace.

In their chastened smile is an indulgent mockery. They remember that they too trod down a sated generation,

with just such clamor and with just such scorn, and they foresee that these brave torchbearers will presently

yield their place also. There is no last word. The new evangel was old when Nineveh reared her greatness to

the sky. These gallant words which seem so novel to those that speak them were said in accents scarcely

changed a hundred times before. The pendulum swings backwards and forwards. The circle is ever travelled

Sometimes a man survives a considerable time from an era in which he had his place into one which is

strange to him, and then the curious are offered one of the most singular spectacles in the human comedy.

Who now, for example, thinks of George Crabbe? He was a famous poet in his day, and the world recognised

his genius with a unanimity which the greater complexity of modern life has rendered infrequent. He had

learnt his craft at the school of Alexander Pope, and he wrote moral stories in rhymed couplets. Then came

the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, and the poets sang new songs. Mr. Crabbe continued to

write moral stories in rhymed couplets. I think he must have read the verse of these young men who were

making so great a stir in the world, and I fancy he found it poor stuff. Of course, much of it was. But the odes

of Keats and of Wordsworth, a poem or two by Coleridge, a few more by Shelley, discovered vast realms of

the spirit that none had explored before. Mr. Crabbe was as dead as mutton, but Mr. Crabbe continued to

write moral stories in rhymed couplets. I have read desultorily the writings of the younger generation. It may

be that among them a more fervid Keats, a more ethereal Shelley, has already published numbers the world

will willingly remember. I cannot tell. I admire their polish their youth is already so accomplished that it

seems absurd to speak of promise I marvel at the felicity of their style; but with all their copiousness (their

vocabulary suggests that they fingered Roget's Thesaurus in their cradles) they say nothing to me: to my mind

they know too much and feel too obviously; I cannot stomach the heartiness with which they slap me on the

back or the emotion with which they hurl themselves on my bosom; their passion seems to me a little

anaemic and their dreams a trifle dull. I do not like them. I am on the shelf. I will continue to write moral

stories in rhymed couplets. But I should be thrice a fool if I did it for aught but my own entertainment.

I was very young when I wrote my first book. By a lucky chance it excited attention, and various persons

It is not without melancholy that I wander among my recollections of the world of letters in London when

first, bashful but eager, I was introduced to it. It is long since I frequented it, and if the novels that describe its

present singularities are accurate much in it is now changed. The venue is different. Chelsea and Bloomsbury

have taken the place of Hampstead, Notting Hill Gate, and High Street, Kensington. Then it was a distinction

to be under forty, but now to be more than twentyfive is absurd. I think in those days we were a little shy of

our emotions, and the fear of ridicule tempered the more obvious forms of pretentiousness. I do not believe

that there was in that genteel Bohemia an intensive culture of chastity, but I do not remember so crude a

promiscuity as seems to be practised in the present day. We did not think it hypocritical to draw over our

vagaries the curtain of a decent silence. The spade was not invariably called a bloody shovel. Woman had not

I lived near Victoria Station, and I recall long excursions by bus to the hospitable houses of the literary. In my

timidity I wandered up and down the street while I screwed up my courage to ring the bell; and then, sick

with apprehension, was ushered into an airless room full of people. I was introduced to this celebrated person

after that one, and the kind words they said about my book made me excessively uncomfortable. I felt they

expected me to say clever things, and I never could think of any till after the party was over. I tried to conceal

my embarrassment by handing round cups of tea and rather illcut breadandbutter. I wanted no one to take

notice of me, so that I could observe these famous creatures at my ease and listen to the clever things they

I have a recollection of large, unbending women with great noses and rapacious eyes, who wore their clothes

as though they were armour; and of little, mouselike spinsters, with soft voices and a shrewd glance. I never

ceased to be fascinated by their persistence in eating buttered toast with their gloves on, and I observed with

admiration the unconcern with which they wiped their fingers on their chair when they thought no one was

looking. It must have been bad for the furniture, but I suppose the hostess took her revenge on the furniture of

her friends when, in turn, she visited them. Some of them were dressed fashionably, and they said they

couldn't for the life of them see why you should be dowdy just because you had written a novel; if you had a

neat figure you might as well make the most of it, and a smart shoe on a small foot had never prevented an

editor from taking your "stuff." But others thought this frivolous, and they wore "art fabrics" and barbaric

jewelry. The men were seldom eccentric in appearance. They tried to look as little like authors as possible.

They wished to be taken for men of the world, and could have passed anywhere for the managing clerks of a

city firm. They always seemed a little tired. I had never known writers before, and I found them very strange,

I remember that I thought their conversation brilliant, and I used to listen with astonishment to the stinging

humour with which they would tear a brotherauthor to pieces the moment that his back was turned. The

artist has this advantage over the rest of the world, that his friends offer not only their appearance and their

character to his satire, but also their work. I despaired of ever expressing myself with such aptness or with

such fluency. In those days conversation was still cultivated as an art; a neat repartee was more highly valued

than the crackling of thorns under a pot; and the epigram, not yet a mechanical appliance by which the dull

may achieve a semblance of wit, gave sprightliness to the small talk of the urbane. It is sad that I can

remember nothing of all this scintillation. But I think the conversation never settled down so comfortably as

when it turned to the details of the trade which was the other side of the art we practised. When we had done

discussing the merits of the latest book, it was natural to wonder how many copies had been sold, what

advance the author had received, and how much he was likely to make out of it. Then we would speak of this

publisher and of that, comparing the generosity of one with the meanness of another; we would argue

whether it was better to go to one who gave handsome royalties or to another who "pushed" a book for all it

was worth. Some advertised badly and some well. Some were modern and some were oldfashioned. Then

we would talk of agents and the offers they had obtained for us; of editors and the sort of contributions they

welcomed, how much they paid a thousand, and whether they paid promptly or otherwise. To me it was all

very romantic. It gave me an intimate sense of being a member of some mystic brotherhood.

No one was kinder to me at that time than Rose Waterford. She combined a masculine intelligence with a

feminine perversity, and the novels she wrote were original and disconcerting. It was at her house one day

that I met Charles Strickland's wife. Miss Waterford was giving a teaparty, and her small room was more

than usually full. Everyone seemed to be talking, and I, sitting in silence, felt awkward; but I was too shy to

break into any of the groups that seemed absorbed in their own affairs. Miss Waterford was a good hostess,

"I want you to talk to Mrs. Strickland," she said. "She's raving about your book."

I was conscious of my ignorance, and if Mrs. Strickland was a wellknown writer I thought it as well to

"She gives luncheonparties. You've only got to roar a little, and she'll ask you."

Rose Waterford was a cynic. She looked upon life as an opportunity for writing novels and the public as her

raw material. Now and then she invited members of it to her house if they showed an appreciation of her

talent and entertained with proper lavishness. She held their weakness for lions in goodhumoured contempt,

I was led up to Mrs. Strickland, and for ten minutes we talked together. I noticed nothing about her except

that she had a pleasant voice. She had a flat in Westminster, overlooking the unfinished cathedral, and

because we lived in the same neighbourhood we felt friendly disposed to one another. The Army and Navy

Stores are a bond of union between all who dwell between the river and St. James's Park. Mrs. Strickland

asked me for my address, and a few days later I received an invitation to luncheon.

My engagements were few, and I was glad to accept. When I arrived, a little late, because in my fear of being

too early I had walked three times round the cathedral, I found the party already complete. Miss Waterford

was there and Mrs. Jay, Richard Twining and George Road. We were all writers. It was a fine day, early in

spring, and we were in a good humour. We talked about a hundred things. Miss Waterford, torn between the

aestheticism of her early youth, when she used to go to parties in sage green, holding a daffodil, and the

flippancy of her maturer years, which tended to high heels and Paris frocks, wore a new hat. It put her in high

spirits. I had never heard her more malicious about our common friends. Mrs. Jay, aware that impropriety is

the soul of wit, made observations in tones hardly above a whisper that might well have tinged the snowy

tablecloth with a rosy hue. Richard Twining bubbled over with quaint absurdities, and George Road,

conscious that he need not exhibit a brilliancy which was almost a byword, opened his mouth only to put

food into it. Mrs. Strickland did not talk much, but she had a pleasant gift for keeping the conversation

general; and when there was a pause she threw in just the right remark to set it going once more. She was a

woman of thirtyseven, rather tall and plump, without being fat; she was not pretty, but her face was

pleasing, chiefly, perhaps, on account of her kind brown eyes. Her skin was rather sallow. Her dark hair was

elaborately dressed. She was the only woman of the three whose face was free of makeup, and by contrast

The diningroom was in the good taste of the period. It was very severe. There was a high dado of white

wood and a green paper on which were etchings by Whistler in neat black frames. The green curtains with

their peacock design, hung in straight lines, and the green carpet, in the pattern of which pale rabbits frolicked

among leafy trees, suggested the influence of William Morris. There was blue delft on the chimneypiece. At

that time there must have been five hundred diningrooms in London decorated in exactly the same manner.

When we left I walked away with Miss Waterford, and the fine day and her new hat persuaded us to saunter

"Did you think the food was good? I told her that if she wanted writers she must feed them well."

"She finds them amusing. She wants to be in the movement. I fancy she's rather simple, poor dear, and she

thinks we're all wonderful. After all, it pleases her to ask us to luncheon, and it doesn't hurt us. I like her for

Looking back, I think that Mrs. Strickland was the most harmless of all the lionhunters that pursue their

quarry from the rarefied heights of Hampstead to the nethermost studios of Cheyne Walk. She had led a very

quiet youth in the country, and the books that came down from Mudie's Library brought with them not only

their own romance, but the romance of London. She had a real passion for reading (rare in her kind, who for

the most part are more interested in the author than in his book, in the painter than in his pictures), and she

invented a world of the imagination in which she lived with a freedom she never acquired in the world of

every day. When she came to know writers it was like adventuring upon a stage which till then she had

known only from the other side of the footlights. She saw them dramatically, and really seemed herself to live

a larger life because she entertained them and visited them in their fastnesses. She accepted the rules with

which they played the game of life as valid for them, but never for a moment thought of regulating her own

conduct in accordance with them. Their moral eccentricities, like their oddities of dress, their wild theories

and paradoxes, were an entertainment which amused her, but had not the slightest influence on her

"Oh yes; he's something in the city. I believe he's a stockbroker. He's very dull."

"They adore one another. You'll meet him if you dine there. But she doesn't often have people to dinner. He's

I could not think of any retort to this, so I asked if Mrs. Strickland had children.

During the summer I met Mrs. Strickland not infrequently. I went now and then to pleasant little luncheons at

her flat, and to rather more formidable teaparties. We took a fancy to one another. I was very young, and

perhaps she liked the idea of guiding my virgin steps on the hard road of letters; while for me it was pleasant

to have someone I could go to with my small troubles, certain of an attentive ear and reasonable counsel.

Mrs. Strickland had the gift of sympathy. It is a charming faculty, but one often abused by those who are

conscious of its possession: for there is something ghoulish in the avidity with which they will pounce upon

the misfortune of their friends so that they may exercise their dexterity. It gushes forth like an oilwell, and

the sympathetic pour out their sympathy with an abandon that is sometimes embarrassing to their victims.

There are bosoms on which so many tears have been shed that I cannot bedew them with mine. Mrs.

Strickland used her advantage with tact. You felt that you obliged her by accepting her sympathy. When, in

"Milk is very nice, especially with a drop of brandy in it, but the domestic cow is only too glad to be rid of it.

Rose Waterford had a blistering tongue. No one could say such bitter things; on the other hand, no one could

There was another thing I liked in Mrs. Strickland. She managed her surroundings with elegance. Her flat

was always neat and cheerful, gay with flowers, and the chintzes in the drawingroom, notwithstanding their

severe design, were bright and pretty. The meals in the artistic little diningroom were pleasant; the table

looked nice, the two maids were trim and comely; the food was well cooked. It was impossible not to see that

Mrs. Strickland was an excellent housekeeper. And you felt sure that she was an admirable mother. There

were photographs in the drawingroom of her son and daughter. The son his name was Robert was a

boy of sixteen at Rugby; and you saw him in flannels and a cricket cap, and again in a tailcoat and a

standup collar. He had his mother's candid brow and fine, reflective eyes. He looked clean, healthy, and

"I don't know that he's very clever," she said one day, when I was looking at the photograph, "but I know he's

The daughter was fourteen. Her hair, thick and dark like her mother's, fell over her shoulders in fine

She smiled, her smile was really very sweet, and she blushed a little; it was singular that a woman of that age

She said this not disparagingly, but affectionately rather, as though, by acknowledging the worst about him,

"He's on the Stock Exchange, and he's a typical broker. I think he'd bore you to death."

She smiled to cover her shyness, and I fancied she had a fear that I would make the sort of gibe that such a

confession could hardly have failed to elicit from Rose Waterford. She hesitated a little. Her eyes grew

"He doesn't pretend to be a genius. He doesn't even make much money on the Stock Exchange. But he's

"I'll ask you to dine with us quietly some time, but mind, you come at your own risk; don't blame me if you

But when at last I met Charles Strickland, it was under circumstances which allowed me to do no more than

just make his acquaintance. One morning Mrs. Strickland sent me round a note to say that she was giving a

dinnerparty that evening, and one of her guests had failed her. She asked me to stop the gap. She wrote:

"It's only decent to warn you that you will be bored to extinction. It was a thoroughly dull party from the

beginning, but if you will come I shall be uncommonly grateful. And you and I can have a little chat by

When Mrs. Strickland introduced me to her husband, he gave me a rather indifferent hand to shake. Turning

"I asked him to show him that I really had a husband. I think he was beginning to doubt it."

Strickland gave the polite little laugh with which people acknowledge a facetiousness in which they see

nothing funny, but did not speak. New arrivals claimed my host's attention, and I was left to myself. When at

last we were all assembled, waiting for dinner to be announced, I reflected, while I chatted with the woman I

had been asked to "take in," that civilised man practises a strange ingenuity in wasting on tedious exercises

the brief span of his life. It was the kind of party which makes you wonder why the hostess has troubled to

bid her guests, and why the guests have troubled to come. There were ten people. They met with indifference,

and would part with relief. It was, of course, a purely social function. The Stricklands "owed" dinners to a

number of persons, whom they took no interest in, and so had asked them; these persons had accepted. Why?

To avoid the tedium of dining teteatete>, to give their servants a rest, because there was no reason to

The diningroom was inconveniently crowded. There was a K.C. and his wife, a Government official and his

wife, Mrs. Strickland's sister and her husband, Colonel MacAndrew, and the wife of a Member of Parliament.

It was because the Member of Parliament found that he could not leave the House that I had been invited. The

respectability of the party was portentous. The women were too nice to be well dressed, and too sure of their

position to be amusing. The men were solid. There was about all of them an air of wellsatisfied prosperity.

Everyone talked a little louder than natural in an instinctive desire to make the party go, and there was a great

deal of noise in the room. But there was no general conversation. Each one talked to his neighbour; to his

neighbour on the right during the soup, fish, and entree; to his neighbour on the left during the roast, sweet,

and savoury. They talked of the political situation and of golf, of their children and the latest play, of the

pictures at the Royal Academy, of the weather and their plans for the holidays. There was never a pause, and

the noise grew louder. Mrs. Strickland might congratulate herself that her party was a success. Her husband

played his part with decorum. Perhaps he did not talk very much, and I fancied there was towards the end a

look of fatigue in the faces of the women on either side of him. They were finding him heavy. Once or twice

At last she rose and shepherded the ladies out of one room. Strickland shut the door behind her, and, moving

to the other end of the table, took his place between the K.C. and the Government official. He passed round

the port again and handed us cigars. The K.C. remarked on the excellence of the wine, and Strickland told us

where he got it. We began to chat about vintages and tobacco. The K.C. told us of a case he was engaged in,

and the Colonel talked about polo. I had nothing to say and so sat silent, trying politely to show interest in the

conversation; and because I thought no one was in the least concerned with me, examined Strickland at my

ease. He was bigger than I expected: I do not know why I had imagined him slender and of insignificant

appearance; in point of fact he was broad and heavy, with large hands and feet, and he wore his evening

clothes clumsily. He gave you somewhat the idea of a coachman dressed up for the occasion. He was a man

of forty, not goodlooking, and yet not ugly, for his features were rather good; but they were all a little larger

than lifesize, and the effect was ungainly. He was clean shaven, and his large face looked uncomfortably

naked. His hair was reddish, cut very short, and his eyes were small, blue or grey. He looked commonplace. I

no longer wondered that Mrs. Strickland felt a certain embarrassment about him; he was scarcely a credit to a

woman who wanted to make herself a position in the world of art and letters. It was obvious that he had no

social gifts, but these a man can do without; he had no eccentricity even, to take him out of the common run;

he was just a good, dull, honest, plain man. One would admire his excellent qualities, but avoid his company.

He was null. He was probably a worthy member of society, a good husband and father, an honest broker; but

The season was drawing to its dusty end, and everyone I knew was arranging to go away. Mrs. Strickland

was taking her family to the coast of Norfolk, so that the children might have the sea and her husband golf.

We said goodbye to one another, and arranged to meet in the autumn. But on my last day in town, coming

out of the Stores, I met her with her son and daughter; like myself, she had been making her final purchases

before leaving London, and we were both hot and tired. I proposed that we should all go and eat ices in the

I think Mrs. Strickland was glad to show me her children, and she accepted my invitation with alacrity. They

were even more attractive than their photographs had suggested, and she was right to be proud of them. I was

young enough for them not to feel shy, and they chattered merrily about one thing and another. They were

extraordinarily nice, healthy young children. It was very agreeable under the trees.

When in an hour they crowded into a cab to go home, I strolled idly to my club. I was perhaps a little lonely,

and it was with a touch of envy that I thought of the pleasant family life of which I had had a glimpse. They

seemed devoted to one another. They had little private jokes of their own which, unintelligible to the outsider,

amused them enormously. Perhaps Charles Strickland was dull judged by a standard that demanded above all

things verbal scintillation; but his intelligence was adequate to his surroundings, and that is a passport, not

only to reasonable success, but still more to happiness. Mrs. Strickland was a charming woman, and she

loved him. I pictured their lives, troubled by no untoward adventure, honest, decent, and, by reason of those

two upstanding, pleasant children, so obviously destined to carry on the normal traditions of their race and

station, not without significance. They would grow old insensibly; they would see their son and daughter

come to years of reason, marry in due course the one a pretty girl, future mother of healthy children; the

other a handsome, manly fellow, obviously a soldier; and at last, prosperous in their dignified retirement,

beloved by their descendants, after a happy, not unuseful life, in the fullness of their age they would sink into

That must be the story of innumerable couples, and the pattern of life it offers has a homely grace. It reminds

you of a placid rivulet, meandering smoothly through green pastures and shaded by pleasant trees, till at last

it falls into the vasty sea; but the sea is so calm, so silent, so indifferent, that you are troubled suddenly by a

vague uneasiness. Perhaps it is only by a kink in my nature, strong in me even in those days, that I felt in such

an existence, the share of the great majority, something amiss. I recognised its social values, I saw its ordered

happiness, but a fever in my blood asked for a wilder course. There seemed to me something alarming in such

easy delights. In my heart was a desire to live more dangerously. I was not unprepared for jagged rocks and

treacherous shoals if I could only have change change and the excitement of the unforeseen.

On reading over what I have written of the Stricklands, I am conscious that they must seem shadowy. I have

been able to invest them with none of those characteristics which make the persons of a book exist with a real

life of their own; and, wondering if the fault is mine, I rack my brains to remember idiosyncrasies which

might lend them vividness. I feel that by dwelling on some trick of speech or some queer habit I should be

able to give them a significance peculiar to themselves. As they stand they are like the figures in an old

tapestry; they do not separate themselves from the background, and at a distance seem to lose their pattern, so

that you have little but a pleasing piece of colour. My only excuse is that the impression they made on me

was no other. There was just that shadowiness about them which you find in people whose lives are part of

the social organism, so that they exist in it and by it only. They are like cells in the body, essential, but, so

long as they remain healthy, engulfed in the momentous whole. The Stricklands were an average family in

the middle class. A pleasant, hospitable woman, with a harmless craze for the small lions of literary society; a

rather dull man, doing his duty in that state of life in which a merciful Providence had placed him; two

nicelooking, healthy children. Nothing could be more ordinary. I do not know that there was anything about

When I reflect on all that happened later, I ask myself if I was thickwitted not to see that there was in

Charles Strickland at least something out of the common. Perhaps. I think that I have gathered in the years

that intervene between then and now a fair knowledge of mankind, but even if when I first met the

Stricklands I had the experience which I have now, I do not believe that I should have judged them

differently. But because I have learnt that man is incalculable, I should not at this time of day be so surprised

I had not been back twentyfour hours before I ran across Rose Waterford in Jermyn Street.

She smiled, and her eyes shone with a malice I knew already. It meant that she had heard some scandal about

Not only her face, but her whole body, gave a sense of alacrity. I nodded. I wondered if the poor devil had

Miss Waterford certainly felt that she could not do her subject justice on the curb of Jermyn Street, and so,

like an artist, flung the bare fact at me and declared that she knew no details. I could not do her the injustice

of supposing that so trifling a circumstance would have prevented her from giving them, but she was

"I tell you I know nothing," she said, in reply to my agitated questions, and then, with an airy shrug of the

shoulders: "I believe that a young person in a city teashop has left her situation."

She flashed a smile at me, and, protesting an engagement with her dentist, jauntily walked on. I was more

interested than distressed. In those days my experience of life at first hand was small, and it excited me to

come upon an incident among people I knew of the same sort as I had read in books. I confess that time has

now accustomed me to incidents of this character among my acquaintance. But I was a little shocked.

Strickland was certainly forty, and I thought it disgusting that a man of his age should concern himself with

affairs of the heart. With the superciliousness of extreme youth, I put thirtyfive as the utmost limit at which

a man might fall in love without making a fool of himself. And this news was slightly disconcerting to me

personally, because I had written from the country to Mrs. Strickland, announcing my return, and had added

that unless I heard from her to the contrary, I would come on a certain day to drink a dish of tea with her.

This was the very day, and I had received no word from Mrs. Strickland. Did she want to see me or did she

not? It was likely enough that in the agitation of the moment my note had escaped her memory. Perhaps I

should be wiser not to go. On the other hand, she might wish to keep the affair quiet, and it might be highly

indiscreet on my part to give any sign that this strange news had reached me. I was torn between the fear of

hurting a nice woman's feelings and the fear of being in the way. I felt she must be suffering, and I did not

want to see a pain which I could not help; but in my heart was a desire, that I felt a little ashamed of, to see

Finally it occurred to me that I would call as though nothing had happened, and send a message in by the

maid asking Mrs. Strickland if it was convenient for her to see me. This would give her the opportunity to

send me away. But I was overwhelmed with embarrassment when I said to the maid the phrase I had

prepared, and while I waited for the answer in a dark passage I had to call up all my strength of mind not to

bolt. The maid came back. Her manner suggested to my excited fancy a complete knowledge of the domestic

I followed her into the drawingroom. The blinds were partly drawn to darken the room, and Mrs. Strickland

was sitting with her back to the light. Her brotherinlaw, Colonel MacAndrew, stood in front of the

fireplace, warming his back at an unlit fire. To myself my entrance seemed excessively awkward. I imagined

that my arrival had taken them by surprise, and Mrs. Strickland had let me come in only because she had

Even in the darkened room, I could not help seeing that Mrs. Strickland's face was all swollen with tears. Her

"You remember my brotherinlaw, don't you? You met at dinner, just before the holidays."

We shook hands. I felt so shy that I could think of nothing to say, but Mrs. Strickland came to my rescue. She

asked me what I had been doing with myself during the summer, and with this help I managed to make some

This was the first suggestion that anything untoward had happened. I took no notice, and did my best to

engage Mrs. Strickland in talk. The Colonel, still standing in front of the fireplace, uttered no word. I

wondered how soon I could decently take my leave, and I asked myself why on earth Mrs. Strickland had

allowed me to come. There were no flowers, and various knickknacks, put away during the summer, had not

been replaced; there was something cheerless and stiff about the room which had always seemed so friendly;

it gave you an odd feeling, as though someone were lying dead on the other side of the wall. I finished tea.

I was startled. I suppose now that the lack of cigarettes, brought as a rule by her husband, forced him back

upon her recollection, and the new feeling that the small comforts she was used to were missing gave her a

sudden pang. She realised that the old life was gone and done with. It was impossible to keep up our social

"I suppose you've heard that blackguard has deserted her," he cried explosively.

"You know how people gossip," I answered. "I was vaguely told that something was wrong."

"He's bolted. He's gone off to Paris with a woman. He's left Amy without a penny."

The Colonel gulped down his whisky. He was a tall, lean man of fifty, with a drooping moustache and grey

hair. He had pale blue eyes and a weak mouth. I remembered from my previous meeting with him that he had

a foolish face, and was proud of the fact that for the ten years before he left the army he had played polo three

"I don't suppose Mrs. Strickland wants to be bothered with me just now," I said. "Will you tell her how sorry

"I don't know what's to become of her. And then there are the children. Are they going to live on air?

"They've been married," he snapped. "I never liked him. Of course he was my brotherinlaw, and I made

the best of it. Did you think him a gentleman? She ought never to have married him."

"There's only one thing for her to do, and that's to divorce him. That's what I was telling her when you came

in. 'Fire in with your petition, my dear Amy,' I said. `You owe it to yourself and you owe it to the children.'

He'd better not let me catch sight of him. I'd thrash him within an inch of his life."

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

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.

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

"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."

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

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.

Too shy to express my sympathy, I turned to say goodbye 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."

I realised that he had come away with me in order to discuss once more what he had been already discussing

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

"So they did. Why, just before you came in Amy said they'd never had a quarrel in the whole of their married

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

"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

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

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

"Of course, there was no explanation he could give except that he'd gone off with a woman. I suppose he

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

"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

"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

I held my tongue. I saw myself calling on Charles Strickland and sending in my card; I saw him come into

"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

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

"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

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

"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

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 twentythree.

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,

"He always seemed very fond of them. Even if he was tired of me, I wonder that he had the heart to leave

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

"I think you will find everything all right in the flat. 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

"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."

"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 bridgeplayer. The man was

surprised. He said he'd never even seen Charles in the cardroom. It's quite clear now that when I thought

"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

She struggled for selfcontrol, and I saw her hands clench and unclench spasmodically. It was dreadfully

"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

"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

"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

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

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

"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 racemeetings 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."

"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

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

"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.

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

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

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

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 illfamed 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: 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 shirtsleeves and carpet

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 dressinggown, 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

thirtytwo. There was a sound within, and the door was partly opened. Charles Strickland stood before me.

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.

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 illkempt, he looked perfectly at home. I did not know how he would take the remark I had prepared.

"I was just going out to have a drink before dinner. You'd better come too. Do you like absinthe?"

"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 teashop. 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

The Avenue de Clichy was crowded at that hour, and a lively fancy might see in the passersby 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

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

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.

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

"Then, isn't it monstrous to leave her in this fashion, after seventeen years of married life, without a fault to

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

I felt that I was not carrying out my embassy with any great skill. I was distinctly nettled.

"I've supported her for seventeen years. Why shouldn't she support herself for a change?"

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;

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

"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

"I liked them all right when they were kids, but now they're growing up I haven't got any particular feeling

His brief answer was so scornful that it made my question, natural though it was, seem absurd. I reflected for

"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

He did not answer, and I waited for some time for him to speak. At last I had to break the silence myself.

"At all events, you can be forced to support your wife and children," I retorted, somewhat piqued. "I suppose

"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.

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

"Your wife says that nothing you can do will ever induce her to divorce you. She's quite made up her mind.

He looked at me with an astonishment that was certainly not feigned. The smile abandoned his lips, and he

"But, my dear fellow, I don't care. It doesn't matter a twopenny damn to me one way or the other."

"Oh, come now; you mustn't think us such fools as all that. We happen to know that you came away with a

He gave a little start, and then suddenly burst into a shout of laughter. He laughed so uproariously that people

"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?"

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 middleaged man. I forgot everything but my own amazement.

"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 to paint a bit a year ago. For the last year I've been going to some classes

"Was that where you went when Mrs. Strickland thought you were playing bridge at your club?"

"Not yet. But I shall. That's why I've come over here. I couldn't get what I wanted in London. Perhaps I can

"Do you think it's likely that a man will do any good when he starts at your age? Most men begin painting at

He did not answer for a minute. His gaze rested on the passing throng, but I do not think he saw it. His

He looked at me. His eyes had something strange in them, so that I felt rather uncomfortable.

It seemed to me that the question was beside the point. It was natural that I should take chances; but he was a

man whose youth was past, a stockbroker with a position of respectability, a wife and two children. A course

that would have been natural for me was absurd for him. I wished to be quite fair.

"Of course a miracle may happen, and you may be a great painter, but you must confess the chances are a

million to one against it. It'll be an awful sell if at the end you have to acknowledge you've made a hash of it."

"Supposing you're never anything more than thirdrate, do you think it will have been worth while to give up

everything? After all, in any other walk in life it doesn't matter if you're not very good; you can get along

"I tell you I've got to paint. I can't help myself. When a man falls into the water it doesn't matter how he

There was real passion in his voice, and in spite of myself I was impressed. I seemed to feel in him some

vehement power that was struggling within him; it gave me the sensation of something very strong,

overmastering, that held him, as it were, against his will. I could not understand. He seemed really to be

possessed of a devil, and I felt that it might suddenly turn and rend him. Yet he looked ordinary enough. My

eyes, resting on him curiously, caused him no embarrassment. I wondered what a stranger would have taken

him to be, sitting there in his old Norfolk jacket and his unbrushed bowler; his trousers were baggy, his hands

were not clean; and his face, with the red stubble of the unshaved chin, the little eyes, and the large,

aggressive nose, was uncouth and coarse. His mouth was large, his lips were heavy and sensual. No; I could

"She's willing to forget everything that's happened and start afresh. She'll never make you a single reproach."

"You don't care if people think you an utter blackguard? You don't care if she and your children have to beg

I was silent for a moment in order to give greater force to my next remark. I spoke as deliberately as I could.

I dare say it would have been more seemly to decline this proposal. I think perhaps I should have made a

show of the indignation I really felt, and I am sure that Colonel MacAndrew at least would have thought well

of me if I had been able to report my stout refusal to sit at the same table with a man of such character. But

the fear of not being able to carry it through effectively has always made me shy of assuming the moral

attitude; and in this case the certainty that my sentiments would be lost on Strickland made it peculiarly

embarrassing to utter them. Only the poet or the saint can water an asphalt pavement in the confident

I paid for what we had drunk, and we made our way to a cheap restaurant, crowded and gay, where we dined

with pleasure. I had the appetite of youth and he of a hardened conscience. Then we went to a tavern to have

I had said all I had to say on the subject that had brought me to Paris, and though I felt it in a manner

treacherous to Mrs. Strickland not to pursue it, I could not struggle against his indifference. It requires the

feminine temperament to repeat the same thing three times with unabated zest. I solaced myself by thinking

that it would be useful for me to find out what I could about Strickland's state of mind. It also interested me

much more. But this was not an easy thing to do, for Strickland was not a fluent talker. He seemed to express

himself with difficulty, as though words were not the medium with which his mind worked; and you had to

guess the intentions of his soul by hackneyed phrases, slang, and vague, unfinished gestures. But though he

said nothing of any consequence, there was something in his personality which prevented him from being

dull. Perhaps it was sincerity. He did not seem to care much about the Paris he was now seeing for the first

time (I did not count the visit with his wife), and he accepted sights which must have been strange to him

without any sense of astonishment. I have been to Paris a hundred times, and it never fails to give me a thrill

of excitement; I can never walk its streets without feeling myself on the verge of adventure. Strickland

remained placid. Looking back, I think now that he was blind to everything but to some disturbing vision in

One rather absurd incident took place. There were a number of harlots in the tavern: some were sitting with

men, others by themselves; and presently I noticed that one of these was looking at us. When she caught

Strickland's eye she smiled. I do not think he saw her. In a little while she went out, but in a minute returned

and, passing our table, very politely asked us to buy her something to drink. She sat down and I began to chat

with her; but, it was plain that her interest was in Strickland. I explained that he knew no more than two

words of French. She tried to talk to him, partly by signs, partly in pidgin French, which, for some reason, she

thought would be more comprehensible to him, and she had half a dozen phrases of English. She made me

translate what she could only express in her own tongue, and eagerly asked for the meaning of his replies. He

In his place I should have been more embarrassed and less calm. She had laughing eyes and a most charming

mouth. She was young. I wondered what she found so attractive in Strickland. She made no secret of her

I put his answer as pleasantly as I could. It seemed to me a little ungracious to decline an invitation of that

His manner made his answer quite plain, and the girl threw back her head with a sudden gesture. Perhaps she

"There wasn't any need to insult her that I can see," I said. "After all, it was rather a compliment she was

I looked at him curiously. There was a real distaste in his face, and yet it was the face of a coarse and sensual

I could have got all the women I wanted in London. I didn't come here for that."

During the journey back to England I thought much of Strickland. I tried to set in order what I had to tell his

wife. It was unsatisfactory, and I could not imagine that she would be content with me; I was not content with

myself. Strickland perplexed me. I could not understand his motives. When I had asked him what first gave

him the idea of being a painter, he was unable or unwilling to tell me. I could make nothing of it. I tried to

persuade myself than an obscure feeling of revolt had been gradually coming to a head in his slow mind, but

to challenge this was the undoubted fact that he had never shown any impatience with the monotony of his

life. If, seized by an intolerable boredom, he had determined to be a painter merely to break with irksome ties,

it would have been comprehensible, and commonplace; but commonplace is precisely what I felt he was not.

At last, because I was romantic, I devised an explanation which I acknowledged to be farfetched, but which

was the only one that in any way satisfied me. It was this: I asked myself whether there was not in his soul

some deeprooted instinct of creation, which the circumstances of his life had obscured, but which grew

relentlessly, as a cancer may grow in the living tissues, till at last it took possession of his whole being and

forced him irresistibly to action. The cuckoo lays its egg in the strange bird's nest, and when the young one is

hatched it shoulders its fosterbrothers out and breaks at last the nest that has sheltered it.

But how strange it was that the creative instinct should seize upon this dull stockbroker, to his own ruin,

perhaps, and to the misfortune of such as were dependent on him; and yet no stranger than the way in which

the spirit of God has seized men, powerful and rich, pursuing them with stubborn vigilance till at last,

conquered, they have abandoned the joy of the world and the love of women for the painful austerities of the

cloister. Conversion may come under many shapes, and it may be brought about in many ways. With some

men it needs a cataclysm, as a stone may be broken to fragments by the fury of a torrent; but with some it

comes gradually, as a stone may be worn away by the ceaseless fall of a drop of water. Strickland had the

But to my practical mind it remained to be seen whether the passion which obsessed him would be justified

of its works. When I asked him what his brotherstudents at the night classes he had attended in London

"Yes. The blighter came round this morning the master, you know; when he saw my drawing he just

Strickland chuckled. He did not seem discouraged. He was independent of the opinion of his fellows.

And it was just that which had most disconcerted me in my dealings with him. When people say they do not

care what others think of them, for the most part they deceive themselves. Generally they mean only that they

will do as they choose, in the confidence that no one will know their vagaries; and at the utmost only that

they are willing to act contrary to the opinion of the majority because they are supported by the approval of

their neighbours. It is not difficult to be unconventional in the eyes of the world when your unconventionality

is but the convention of your set. It affords you then an inordinate amount of selfesteem. You have the

selfsatisfaction of courage without the inconvenience of danger. But the desire for approbation is perhaps

the most deeply seated instinct of civilised man. No one runs so hurriedly to the cover of respectability as the

unconventional woman who has exposed herself to the slings and arrows of outraged propriety. I do not

believe the people who tell me they do not care a row of pins for the opinion of their fellows. It is the bravado

of ignorance. They mean only that they do not fear reproaches for peccadillos which they are convinced none

But here was a man who sincerely did not mind what people thought of him, and so convention had no hold

on him; he was like a wrestler whose body is oiled; you could not get a grip on him; it gave him a freedom

"That's a damned silly thing to say. Everyone doesn't want to act like me. The great majority are perfectly

"You evidently don't believe in the maxim: Act so that every one of your actions is capable of being made

Nor with such a man could you expect the appeal to conscience to be effective. You might as well ask for a

rejection without a mirror. I take it that conscience is the guardian in the individual of the rules which the

community has evolved for its own preservation. It is the policeman in all our hearts, set there to watch that

we do not break its laws. It is the spy seated in the central stronghold of the ego. Man's desire for the approval

of his fellows is so strong, his dread of their censure so violent, that he himself has brought his enemy within

his gates; and it keeps watch over him, vigilant always in the interests of its master to crush any halfformed

desire to break away from the herd. It will force him to place the good of society before his own. It is the very

strong link that attaches the individual to the whole. And man, subservient to interests he has persuaded

himself are greater than his own, makes himself a slave to his taskmaster. He sits him in a seat of honour. At

last, like a courtier fawning on the royal stick that is laid about his shoulders, he prides himself on the

sensitiveness of his conscience. Then he has no words hard enough for the man who does not recognise its

sway; for, a member of society now, he realises accurately enough that against him he is powerless. When I

saw that Strickland was really indifferent to the blame his conduct must excite, I could only draw back in

"Tell Amy it's no good coming after me. Anyhow, I shall change my hotel, so she wouldn't be able to find

"My dear fellow, I only hope you'll be able to make her see it. But women are very unintelligent."

When I reached London I found waiting for me an urgent request that I should go to Mrs. Strickland's as soon

after dinner as I could. I found her with Colonel MacAndrew and his wife. Mrs. Strickland's sister was older

than she, not unlike her, but more faded; and she had the efficient air, as though she carried the British

Empire in her pocket, which the wives of senior officers acquire from the consciousness of belonging to a

superior caste. Her manner was brisk, and her goodbreeding scarcely concealed her conviction that if you

were not a soldier you might as well be a counterjumper. She hated the Guards, whom she thought

conceited, and she could not trust herself to speak of their ladies, who were so remiss in calling. Her gown

"I saw your husband. I'm afraid he's quite made up his mind not to return." I paused a little. "He wants to

"I remember before we were married he used to potter about with a paintbox. But you never saw such

Mrs. Strickland pondered deeply for some time. It was quite clear that she could not make head or tail of my

announcement. She had put some order into the drawingroom by now, her housewifely instincts having got

the better of her dismay; and it no longer bore that deserted look, like a furnished house long to let, which I

had noticed on my first visit after the catastrophe. But now that I had seen Strickland in Paris it was difficult

to imagine him in those surroundings. I thought it could hardly have failed to strike them that there was

"But if he wanted to be an artist, why didn't he say so?" asked Mrs. Strickland at last. "I should have thought I

Mrs. MacAndrew tightened her lips. I imagine that she had never looked with approval on her sister's leaning

"After all, if he had any talent I should be the first to encourage it. I wouldn't have minded sacrifices. I'd

much rather be married to a painter than to a stockbroker. If it weren't for the children, I wouldn't mind

anything. I could be just as happy in a shabby studio in Chelsea as in this flat."

"My dear, I have no patience with you," cried Mrs. MacAndrew. "You don't mean to say you believe a word

"A man doesn't throw up his business and leave his wife and children at the age of forty to become a painter

unless there's a woman in it. I suppose he met one of your artistic friends, and she's turned his head."

Colonel MacAndrew and his wife uttered expressions of incredulity, and Mrs. Strickland sprang to her feet.

"I knew I ought to have gone over myself," said the Colonel. "You can bet your boots I'd have routed her out

"I wish you had gone over," I replied, somewhat tartly. "You'd have seen that every one of your suppositions

was wrong. He's not at a smart hotel. He's living in one tiny room in the most squalid way. If he's left his

"Do you think he's done something that we don't know about, and is lying doggo on account of the police?"

The suggestion sent a ray of hope in all their breasts, but I would have nothing to do with it.

"If that were so, he would hardly have been such a fool as to give his partner his address," I retorted acidly.

"Anyhow, there's one thing I'm positive of, he didn't go away with anyone. He's not in love. Nothing is

"Well, if what you say is true," said Mrs. MacAndrew at last, "things aren't so bad as I thought."

She was very pale now, and her fine brow was dark and lowering. I could not understand the expression of

"Why don't you go over to him, Amy?" hazarded the Colonel. "There's no reason why you shouldn't live with

him in Paris for a year. We'll look after the children. I dare say he'd got stale. Sooner or later he'll be quite

"I wouldn't do that," said Mrs. MacAndrew. "I'd give him all the rope he wants. He'll come back with his tail

between his legs and settle down again quite comfortably." Mrs. MacAndrew looked at her sister coolly.

"Perhaps you weren't very wise with him sometimes. Men are queer creatures, and one has to know how to

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. Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne

"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,

"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

"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

It was anger that had seized Mrs. Strickland, and her pallor was the pallor of a cold and sudden rage. She

"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

"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

"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

I have always been a little disconcerted by the passion women have for behaving beautifully at the deathbed

of those they love. Sometimes it seems as if they grudge the longevity which postpones their chance of an

"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

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

"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

I wondered if there was anything I could say that would ease the sense of bitter humiliation which at present

"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

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

"All that seems to me very farfetched," 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

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

"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

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

"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."

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

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

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

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

loveaffairs had a tedious banality. We were like tramcars 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

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.

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

"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 tomorrow, but I shouldn't like her to mix with all

"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

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.

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 secondhand 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

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, largeeyed 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

wellhead, and sometimes they wandered through the Campagna by the side of an oxwaggon. 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 Le Maitre de la Boite a Chocoloats.> To look at his pictures you would have

"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

shopsoiled, 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

fellowpainters 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 vanitybag 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 picturegalleries 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

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

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

"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

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 heartbroken 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

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

goldrimmed spectacles, and his eyebrows were so fair that you could not see them. He reminded you of

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

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

"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."

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 lovesick fancy

saw, but she had a grave comeliness. She was rather tall, and her gray dress, simple and quite wellcut, 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 mobcap 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

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

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

Though he had suffered so much from the ridicule of his friends, Dirk Stroeve, eager for praise and naively

selfsatisfied, could never resist displaying his work. He brought out a picture of two curlyheaded Italian

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?

"Ma pauvre cherie."> He went over to her and kissed both her hands. "She doesn't like him. How strange that

"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

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

Dirk Stroeve, telling the story, had such a look of blank astonishment on his round, foolish face that it was

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

It was lamentable that one was more amused by the ridiculous figure cut by the Dutchman than outraged by

Stroeve smiled and shrugged his shoulders. He had already recovered his goodhumour.

"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

"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."

I was astonished, and at the same time I was very much excited. I remembered suddenly my last talk with

"Where can one see his work?" I asked. "Is he having any success? Where is he living?"

"No; he has no success. I don't think he's ever sold a picture. When you speak to men about him they only

laugh. But I know> he's a great artist. After all, they laughed at Manet. Corot never sold a picture. I don't

know where he lives, but I can take you to see him. He goes to a cafe in the Avenue de Clichy at seven

"I'm not sure if he'll wish to see me. I think I may remind him of a time he prefers to forget. But I'll come all

"Not from him. He won't show you a thing. There's a little dealer I know who has two or three. But you

mustn't go without me; you wouldn't understand. I must show them to you myself."

"Dirk, you make me impatient," said Mrs. Stroeve. "How can you talk like that about his pictures when he

treated you as he did?" She turned to me. "Do you know, when some Dutch people came here to buy Dirk's

pictures he tried to persuade them to buy Strickland's? He insisted on bringing them here to show."

"Well, your Dutch people were furious with you. They thought you were having a joke with them."

Dirk Stroeve took off his spectacles and wiped them. His flushed face was shining with excitement.

"Why should you think that beauty, which is the most precious thing in the world, lies like a stone on the

beach for the careless passerby to pick up idly? Beauty is something wonderful and strange that the artist

fashions out of the chaos of the world in the torment of his soul. And when he has made it, it is not given to

all to know it. To recognize it you must repeat the adventure of the artist. It is a melody that he sings to you,

and to hear it again in your own heart you want knowledge and sensitiveness and imagination."

"Why did I always think your pictures beautiful, Dirk? I admired them the very first time I saw them."

"Go to bed, my precious. I will walk a few steps with our friend, and then I will come back."

Dirk Stroeve agreed to fetch me on the following evening and take me to the cafe at which Strickland was

most likely to be found. I was interested to learn that it was the same as that at which Strickland and I had

drunk absinthe when I had gone over to Paris to see him. The fact that he had never changed suggested a

Though it was October, the evening was warm, and the tables on the pavement were crowded. I ran my eyes

I noticed a man bending over a chessboard, but could see only a large felt hat and a red beard. We threaded

Strickland gave me a glance, and evidently did not recognise me. He resumed his scrutiny of the chessboard.

He moved a piece and straightway became absorbed in the game. Poor Stroeve gave me a troubled look, but I

was not disconcerted by so little. I ordered something to drink, and waited quietly till Strickland had finished.

I welcomed the opportunity to examine him at my ease. I certainly should never have known him. In the first

place his red beard, ragged and untrimmed, hid much of his face, and his hair was long; but the most

surprising change in him was his extreme thinness. It made his great nose protrude more arrogantly; it

emphasized his cheekbones; it made his eyes seem larger. There were deep hollows at his temples. His body

was cadaverous. He wore the same suit that I had seen him in five years before; it was torn and stained,

threadbare, and it hung upon him loosely, as though it had been made for someone else. I noticed his hands,

dirty, with long nails; they were merely bone and sinew, large and strong; but I had forgotten that they were

so shapely. He gave me an extraordinary impression as he sat there, his attention riveted on his game an

impression of great strength; and I could not understand why it was that his emaciation somehow made it

Presently, after moving, he leaned back and gazed with a curious abstraction at his antagonist. This was a fat,

bearded Frenchman. The Frenchman considered the position, then broke suddenly into jovial expletives, and

with an impatient gesture, gathering up the pieces, flung them into their box. He cursed Strickland freely,

then, calling for the waiter, paid for the drinks, and left. Stroeve drew his chair closer to the table.

Strickland's eyes rested on him, and there was in them a malicious expression. I felt sure he was seeking for

I do not know why he said this, for I felt certain I had caught a gleam of recognition in his eyes. I was not so

"I saw your wife the other day," I said. "I felt sure you'd like to have the latest news of her."

He called for another absinthe. Stroeve, with voluble tongue, explained how he and I had met, and by what an

accident we discovered that we both knew Strickland. I do not know if Strickland listened. He glanced at me

once or twice reflectively, but for the most part seemed occupied with his own thoughts; and certainly

without Stroeve's babble the conversation would have been difficult. In half an hour the Dutchman, looking at

his watch, announced that he must go. He asked whether I would come too. I thought, alone, I might get

"Not out of charity," I answered coolly. "I don't really care a twopenny damn if you starve or not."

I let him take me to a restaurant of his choice, but on the way I bought a paper. When we had ordered our

dinner, I propped it against a bottle of St. Galmier and began to read. We ate in silence. I felt him looking at

"Is there anything in the paper?" he said, as we approached the end of our silent meal.

We lit our cigars. I smoked in silence. I noticed that now and then his eyes rested on me with a faint smile of

I had not very much to say. It was a record of hard work and of little adventure; of experiments in this

direction and in that; of the gradual acquisition of the knowledge of books and of men. I took care to ask

Strickland nothing about his own doings. I showed not the least interest in him, and at last I was rewarded.

He began to talk of himself. But with his poor gift of expression he gave but indications of what he had gone

through, and I had to fill up the gaps with my own imagination. It was tantalising to get no more than hints

into a character that interested me so much. It was like making one's way through a mutilated manuscript. I

received the impression of a life which was a bitter struggle against every sort of difficulty; but I realised that

much which would have seemed horrible to most people did not in the least affect him. Strickland was

distinguished from most Englishmen by his perfect indifference to comfort; it did not irk him to live always

in one shabby room; he had no need to be surrounded by beautiful things. I do not suppose he had ever

noticed how dingy was the paper on the wall of the room in which on my first visit I found him. He did not

want armchairs to sit in; he really felt more at his ease on a kitchen chair. He ate with appetite, but was

indifferent to what he ate; to him it was only food that he devoured to still the pangs of hunger; and when no

food was to be had he seemed capable of doing without. I learned that for six months he had lived on a loaf of

bread and a bottle of milk a day. He was a sensual man, and yet was indifferent to sensual things. He looked

upon privation as no hardship. There was something impressive in the manner in which he lived a life wholly

When the small sum of money which he brought with him from London came to an end he suffered from no

dismay. He sold no pictures; I think he made little attempt to sell any; he set about finding some way to make

a bit of money. He told me with grim humour of the time he had spent acting as guide to Cockneys who

wanted to see the night side of life in Paris; it was an occupation that appealed to his sardonic temper and

somehow or other he had acquired a wide acquaintance with the more disreputable quarters of the city. He

told me of the long hours he spent walking about the Boulevard de la Madeleine on the lookout for

Englishmen, preferably the worse for liquor, who desired to see things which the law forbade. When in luck

he was able to make a tidy sum; but the shabbiness of his clothes at last frightened the sightseers, and he

could not find people adventurous enough to trust themselves to him. Then he happened on a job to translate

the advertisements of patent medicines which were sent broadcast to the medical profession in England.

Meanwhile he had never ceased to work at his art; but, soon tiring of the studios, entirely by himself. He had

never been so poor that he could not buy canvas and paint, and really he needed nothing else. So far as I

could make out, he painted with great difficulty, and in his unwillingness to accept help from anyone lost

much time in finding out for himself the solution of technical problems which preceding generations had

already worked out one by one. He was aiming at something, I knew not what, and perhaps he hardly knew

himself; and I got again more strongly the impression of a man possessed. He did not seem quite sane. It

seemed to me that he would not show his pictures because he was really not interested in them. He lived in a

dream, and the reality meant nothing to him. I had the feeling that he worked on a canvas with all the force of

his violent personality, oblivious of everything in his effort to get what he saw with the mind's eye; and then,

having finished, not the picture perhaps, for I had an idea that he seldom brought anything to completion, but

the passion that fired him, he lost all care for it. He was never satisfied with what he had done; it seemed to

"Why don't you ever send your work to exhibitions?" I asked. "I should have thought you'd like to know what

"Don't you want fame? It's something that most artists haven't been indifferent to."

"Children. How can you care for the opinion of the crowd, when you don't care twopence for the opinion of

"Wouldn't it give you a rather pleasing sensation to think of people you didn't know and had never seen

receiving emotions, subtle and passionate, from the work of your hands? Everyone likes power. I can't

imagine a more wonderful exercise of it than to move the souls of men to pity or terror."

"I wonder if I could write on a desert island, with the certainty that no eyes but mine would ever see what I

Strickland did not speak for a long time, but his eyes shone strangely, as though he saw something that

"Sometimes I've thought of an island lost in a boundless sea, where I could live in some hidden valley, among

He did not express himself quite like this. He used gestures instead of adjectives, and he halted. I have put

"You gave up a comfortable home and a life as happy as the average. You were fairly prosperous. You seem

to have had a rotten time in Paris. If you had your time over again would you do what you did?"

"Do you know that you haven't asked anything about your wife and children? Do you never think of them?"

"I wish you weren't so damned monosyllabic. Have you never had a moment's regret for all the unhappiness

"I should have thought sometimes you couldn't help thinking of the past. I don't mean the past of seven or

eight years ago, but further back still, when you first met your wife, and loved her, and married her. Don't

"I don't think of the past. The only thing that matters is the everlasting present."

I thought for a moment over this reply. It was obscure, perhaps, but I thought that I saw dimly his meaning.

I was silent. I looked at him reflectively. He held my stare, and presently a sardonic twinkle lit up his eyes.

"Nonsense," I answered promptly; "I don't disapprove of the boaconstrictor; on the contrary, I'm interested

"It's only right that you shouldn't disapprove of me. You have a despicable character."

He smiled dryly, but said nothing. I wish I knew how to describe his smile. I do not know that it was

attractive, but it lit up his face, changing the expression, which was generally sombre, and gave it a look of

not illnatured malice. It was a slow smile, starting and sometimes ending in the eyes; it was very sensual,

neither cruel nor kindly, but suggested rather the inhuman glee of the satyr. It was his smile that made me ask

"I haven't got time for that sort of nonsense. Life isn't long enough for love and art."

"Let me tell you. I imagine that for months the matter never comes into your head, and you're able to

persuade yourself that you've finished with it for good and all. You rejoice in your freedom, and you feel that

at last you can call your soul your own. You seem to walk with your head among the stars. And then, all of a

sudden you can't stand it any more, and you notice that all the time your feet have been walking in the mud.

And you want to roll yourself in it. And you find some woman, coarse and low and vulgar, some beastly

creature in whom all the horror of sex is blatant, and you fall upon her like a wild animal. You drink till

He stared at me without the slightest movement. I held his eyes with mine. I spoke very slowly.

"I'll tell you what must seem strange, that when it's over you feel so extraordinarily pure. You feel like a

disembodied spirit, immaterial; and you seem to be able to touch beauty as though it were a palpable thing;

and you feel an intimate communion with the breeze, and with the trees breaking into leaf, and with the

He kept his eyes fixed on mine till I had finished, and then he turned away. There was on his face a strange

look, and I thought that so might a man look when he had died under the torture. He was silent. I knew that

I settled down in Paris and began to write a play. I led a very regular life, working in the morning, and in the

afternoon lounging about the gardens of the Luxembourg or sauntering through the streets. I spent long hours

in the Louvre, the most friendly of all galleries and the most convenient for meditation; or idled on the quays,

fingering secondhand books that I never meant to buy. I read a page here and there, and made acquaintance

with a great many authors whom I was content to know thus desultorily. In the evenings I went to see my

friends. I looked in often on the Stroeves, and sometimes shared their modest fare. Dirk Stroeve flattered

himself on his skill in cooking Italian dishes, and I confess that his spaghetti> were very much better than his

pictures. It was a dinner for a King when he brought in a huge dish of it, succulent with tomatoes, and we ate

it together with the good household bread and a bottle of red wine. I grew more intimate with Blanche

Stroeve, and I think, because I was English and she knew few English people, she was glad to see me. She

was pleasant and simple, but she remained always rather silent, and I knew not why, gave me the impression

that she was concealing something. But I thought that was perhaps no more than a natural reserve accentuated

by the verbose frankness of her husband. Dirk never concealed anything. He discussed the most intimate

matters with a complete lack of selfconsciousness. Sometimes he embarrassed his wife, and the only time I

saw her put out of countenance was when he insisted on telling me that he had taken a purge, and went into

somewhat realistic details on the subject. The perfect seriousness with which he narrated his misfortunes

His round eyes grew rounder still, and his brow puckered in dismay as he saw that she was angry.

"Sweetheart, have I vexed you? I'll never take another. It was only because I was bilious. I lead a sedentary

"For goodness sake, hold your tongue," she interrupted, tears of annoyance in her eyes.

His face fell, and he pouted his lips like a scolded child. He gave me a look of appeal, so that I might put

We went one day to the picturedealer in whose shop Stroeve thought he could show me at least two or three

of Strickland's pictures, but when we arrived were told that Strickland himself had taken them away. The

"But don't imagine to yourself that I make myself bad blood on that account. I took them to oblige Monsieur

Stroeve, and I said I would sell them if I could. But really " He shrugged his shoulders. "I'm interested in

the young men, but voyons>, you yourself, Monsieur Stroeve, you don't think there's any talent there."

"I give you my word of honour, there's no one painting today in whose talent I am more convinced. Take

my word for it, you are missing a good affair. Some day those pictures will be worth more than all you have

in your shop. Remember Monet, who could not get anyone to buy his pictures for a hundred francs. What are

"True. But there were a hundred as good painters as Monet who couldn't sell their pictures at that time, and

their pictures are worth nothing still. How can one tell? Is merit enough to bring success? Don't believe it. Du

reste>, it has still to be proved that this friend of yours has merit. No one claims it for him but Monsieur

"And how, then, will you recognise merit?" asked Dirk, red in the face with anger.

"But think of the great artists of the past Raphael, Michael Angelo, Ingres, Delacroix they were all

I saw Strickland not infrequently, and now and then played chess with him. He was of uncertain temper.

Sometimes he would sit silent and abstracted, taking no notice of anyone; and at others, when he was in a

good humour, he would talk in his own halting way. He never said a clever thing, but he had a vein of brutal

sarcasm which was not ineffective, and he always said exactly what he thought. He was indifferent to the

susceptibilities of others, and when he wounded them was amused. He was constantly offending Dirk Stroeve

so bitterly that he flung away, vowing he would never speak to him again; but there was a solid force in

Strickland that attracted the fat Dutchman against his will, so that he came back, fawning like a clumsy dog,

I do not know why Strickland put up with me. Our relations were peculiar. One day he asked me to lend him

"You're so simple. You recognise no obligations. No one is under any obligation to you."

"Wouldn't it make you uncomfortable if I went and hanged myself because I'd been turned out of my room as

We set up the pieces, and when the board was ready he considered it with a comfortable eye. There is a sense

"It's disappointing to find that at heart you are sentimental. I should have liked you better if you hadn't made

We began to play. We were both absorbed in the game. When it was finished I said to him:

"Look here, if you're hard up, let me see your pictures. If there's anything I like I'll buy it."

I did not see him for several days after that, but one evening, when I was sitting in the cafe, reading a paper,

"No. I've got a commission. I'm painting the portrait of a retired plumber for two hundred francs."[5]

[5] This picture, formerly in the possession of a wealthy manufacturer at Lille, who fled from that city on the

approach of the Germans, is now in the National Gallery at Stockholm. The Swede is adept at the gentle

"The woman where I get my bread recommended me. He'd told her he was looking out for someone to paint

"Splendid. He's got a great red face like a leg of mutton, and on his right cheek there's an enormous mole with

Strickland was in a good humour, and when Dirk Stroeve came up and sat down with us he attacked him with

ferocious banter. He showed a skill I should never have credited him with in finding the places where the

unhappy Dutchman was most sensitive. Strickland employed not the rapier of sarcasm but the bludgeon of

invective. The attack was so unprovoked that Stroeve, taken unawares, was defenceless. He reminded you of

a frightened sheep running aimlessly hither and thither. He was startled and amazed. At last the tears ran from

his eyes. And the worst of it was that, though you hated Strickland, and the exhibition was horrible, it was

impossible not to laugh. Dirk Stroeve was one of those unlucky persons whose most sincere emotions are

But after all when I look back upon that winter in Paris, my pleasantest recollection is of Dirk Stroeve. There

was something very charming in his little household. He and his wife made a picture which the imagination

gratefully dwelt upon, and the simplicity of his love for her had a deliberate grace. He remained absurd, but

the sincerity of his passion excited one's sympathy. I could understand how his wife must feel for him, and I

was glad that her affection was so tender. If she had any sense of humour, it must amuse her that he should

place her on a pedestal and worship her with such an honest idolatry, but even while she laughed she must

have been pleased and touched. He was the constant lover, and though she grew old, losing her rounded lines

and her fair comeliness, to him she would certainly never alter. To him she would always be the loveliest

woman in the world. There was a pleasing grace in the orderliness of their lives. They had but the studio, a

bedroom, and a tiny kitchen. Mrs. Stroeve did all the housework herself; and while Dirk painted bad pictures,

she went marketing, cooked the luncheon, sewed, occupied herself like a busy ant all the day; and in the

evening sat in the studio, sewing again, while Dirk played music which I am sure was far beyond her

comprehension. He played with taste, but with more feeling than was always justified, and into his music

Their life in its own way was an idyl, and it managed to achieve a singular beauty. The absurdity that clung to

everything connected with Dirk Stroeve gave it a curious note, like an unresolved discord, but made it

somehow more modern, more human; like a rough joke thrown into a serious scene, it heightened the

Shortly before Christmas Dirk Stroeve came to ask me to spend the holiday with him. He had a characteristic

sentimentality about the day and wanted to pass it among his friends with suitable ceremonies. Neither of us

had seen Strickland for two or three weeks I because I had been busy with friends who were spending a

little while in Paris, and Stroeve because, having quarreled with him more violently than usual, he had made

up his mind to have nothing more to do with him. Strickland was impossible, and he swore never to speak to

him again. But the season touched him with gentle feeling, and he hated the thought of Strickland spending

Christmas Day by himself; he ascribed his own emotions to him, and could not bear that on an occasion given

up to goodfellowship the lonely painter should be abandoned to his own melancholy. Stroeve had set up a

Christmastree in his studio, and I suspected that we should both find absurd little presents hanging on its

festive branches; but he was shy about seeing Strickland again; it was a little humiliating to forgive so easily

insults so outrageous, and he wished me to be present at the reconciliation on which he was determined.

We walked together down the Avenue de Clichy, but Strickland was not in the cafe. It was too cold to sit

outside, and we took our places on leather benches within. It was hot and stuffy, and the air was gray with

smoke. Strickland did not come, but presently we saw the French painter who occasionally played chess with

him. I had formed a casual acquaintance with him, and he sat down at our table. Stroeve asked him if he had

"Why didn't he write and tell me? How stupid of me to quarrel with him. We must go to him at once. He can

We discovered that none of us knew how to find him. Stroeve grew more and more distressed.

"He might die, and not a soul would know anything about it. It's dreadful. I can't bear the thought. We must

I tried to make Stroeve understand that it was absurd to hunt vaguely about Paris. We must first think of some

"Yes; but all this time he may be dying, and when we get there it may be too late to do anything."

The only address I knew was the Hotel des Belges, but Strickland had long left that, and they would have no

recollection of him. With that queer idea of his to keep his whereabouts secret, it was unlikely that, on

leaving, he had said where he was going. Besides, it was more than five years ago. I felt pretty sure that he

had not moved far. If he continued to frequent the same cafe as when he had stayed at the hotel, it was

probably because it was the most convenient. Suddenly I remembered that he had got his commission to paint

a portrait through the baker from whom he bought his bread, and it struck me that there one might find his

address. I called for a directory and looked out the bakers. There were five in the immediate neighbourhood,

and the only thing was to go to all of them. Stroeve accompanied me unwillingly. His own plan was to run up

and down the streets that led out of the Avenue de Clichy and ask at every house if Strickland lived there. My

commonplace scheme was, after all, effective, for in the second shop we asked at the woman behind the

counter acknowledged that she knew him. She was not certain where he lived, but it was in one of the three

houses opposite. Luck favoured us, and in the first we tried the concierge told us that we should find him on

"It may be," answered the concierge indifferently. " En effet>, I have not seen him for several days."

Stroeve ran up the stairs ahead of me, and when I reached the top floor I found him talking to a workman in

his shirtsleeves who had opened a door at which Stroeve had knocked. He pointed to another door. He

believed that the person who lived there was a painter. He had not seen him for a week. Stroeve made as

though he were about to knock, and then turned to me with a gesture of helplessness. I saw that he was

I knocked. There was no answer. I tried the handle, and found the door unlocked. I walked in, and Stroeve

followed me. The room was in darkness. I could only see that it was an attic, with a sloping roof; and a faint

There was no answer. It was really rather mysterious, and it seemed to me that Stroeve, standing just behind,

was trembling in his shoes. For a moment I hesitated to strike a light. I dimly perceived a bed in the corner,

I struck a match, and looked about for a candle. I had a rapid glimpse of a tiny apartment, half room, half

studio, in which was nothing but a bed, canvases with their faces to the wall, an easel, a table, and a chair.

There was no carpet on the floor. There was no fireplace. On the table, crowded with paints, paletteknives,

and litter of all kinds, was the end of a candle. I lit it. Strickland was lying in the bed, uncomfortably because

it was too small for him, and he had put all his clothes over him for warmth. It was obvious at a glance that he

"Oh, my poor friend, what is the matter with you? I had no idea you were ill. Why didn't you let me know?

You must know I'd have done anything in the world for you. Were you thinking of what I said? I didn't mean

"Now, be reasonable. Let me make you comfortable. Haven't you anyone to look after you?"

He looked round the squalid attic in dismay. He tried to arrange the bedclothes. Strickland, breathing

laboriously, kept an angry silence. He gave me a resentful glance. I stood quite quietly, looking at him.

"If you want to do something for me, you can get me some milk," he said at last. "I haven't been able to get

out for two days." There was an empty bottle by the side of the bed, which had contained milk, and in a piece

"For how long?" cried Stroeve. "Do you mean to say you've had nothing to eat or drink for two days? It's

I suggested that he should get a thermometer, and a few grapes, and some bread. Stroeve, glad to make

I felt his pulse. It was beating quickly and feebly. I asked him one or two questions, but he would not answer,

and when I pressed him he turned his face irritably to the wall. The only thing was to wait in silence. In ten

minutes Stroeve, panting, came back. Besides what I had suggested, he brought candles, and meatjuice, and

a spiritlamp. He was a practical little fellow, and without delay set about making breadandmilk. I took

Presently we left him. Dirk was going home to dinner, and I proposed to find a doctor and bring him to see

Strickland; but when we got down into the street, fresh after the stuffy attic, the Dutchman begged me to go

immediately to his studio. He had something in mind which he would not tell me, but he insisted that it was

very necessary for me to accompany him. Since I did not think a doctor could at the moment do any more

than we had done, I consented. We found Blanche Stroeve laying the table for dinner. Dirk went up to her,

She looked at him with the grave cheerfulness which was one of her charms. His red face was shining with

sweat, and he had a look of comic agitation, but there was in his round, surprised eyes an eager light.

"Strickland is very ill. He may be dying. He is alone in a filthy attic, and there is not a soul to look after him.

She withdrew her hands quickly, I had never seen her make so rapid a movement; and her cheeks flushed.

"Oh, my dear one, don't refuse. I couldn't bear to leave him where he is. I shouldn't sleep a wink for thinking

Stroeve gave a little gasp. He wiped his face. He turned to me for support, but I did not know what to say.

"Oh, my love, my precious, you don't mean that. I beseech you to let me bring him here. We can make him

comfortable. Perhaps we can save him. He shall be no trouble to you. I will do everything. We'll make him up

"A hospital! He needs the care of loving hands. He must be treated with infinite tact."

I was surprised to see how moved she was. She went on laying the table, but her hands trembled.

"I have no patience with you. Do you think if you were ill he would stir a finger to help you?"

"But what does that matter? I should have you to nurse me. It wouldn't be necessary. And besides, I'm

"You have no more spirit than a mongrel cur. You lie down on the ground and ask people to trample on you."

Stroeve gave a little laugh. He thought he understood the reason of his wife's attitude.

"Oh, my poor dear, you're thinking of that day he came here to look at my pictures. What does it matter if he

didn't think them any good? It was stupid of me to show them to him. I dare say they're not very good."

He looked round the studio ruefully. On the easel was a halffinished picture of a smiling Italian peasant,

"Even if he didn't like them he should have been civil. He needn't have insulted you. He showed that he

"Dear child, he has genius. You don't think I believe that I have it. I wish I had; but I know it when I see it,

and I honour it with all my heart. It's the most wonderful thing in the world. It's a great burden to its

I stood apart, somewhat embarrassed by the domestic scene, and wondered why Stroeve had insisted on my

"But it's not only because he's a genius that I ask you to let me bring him here; it's because he's a human

"Tell her that it's a matter of life and death. It's impossible to leave him in that wretched hole."

"It's quite obvious that it would be much easier to nurse him here," I said, "but of course it would be very

inconvenient. I have an idea that someone will have to be with him day and night."

Then at last the tears came. She sank into a chair, and buried her face in her hands. Her shoulders shook

convulsively. In a moment Dirk was on his knees beside her, with his arms round her, kissing her, calling her

all sorts of pet names, and the facile tears ran down his own cheeks. Presently she released herself and dried

"Leave me alone," she said, not unkindly; and then to me, trying to smile: "What must you think of me?"

Stroeve, looking at her with perplexity, hesitated. His forehead was all puckered, and his red mouth set in a

"The studio is yours. Everything belongs to you. If you want to bring him here, how can I prevent you?"

Suddenly she pulled herself together. She looked at him with haggard eyes. She clasped her hands over her

"I beg you not to let Strickland come here. Anyone else you like. Bring a thief, a drunkard, any outcast off the

streets, and I promise you I'll do everything I can for them gladly. But I beseech you not to bring Strickland

"I'm frightened of him. I don't know why, but there's something in him that terrifies me. He'll do us some

She was panting now, and in her face was a terror which was inexplicable. I do not know what she thought. I

felt that she was possessed by some shapeless dread which robbed her of all selfcontrol. As a rule she was

so calm; her agitation now was amazing. Stroeve looked at her for a while with puzzled consternation.

"You are my wife; you are dearer to me than anyone in the world. No one shall come here without your entire

She closed her eyes for a moment, and I thought she was going to faint. I was a little impatient with her; I had

not suspected that she was so neurotic a woman. Then I heard Stroeve's voice again. It seemed to break oddly

"Haven't you been in bitter distress once when a helping hand was held out to you? You know how much it

The words were ordinary enough, and to my mind there was in them something so hortatory that I almost

smiled. I was astonished at the effect they had on Blanche Stroeve. She started a little, and gave her husband

a long look. His eyes were fixed on the ground. I did not know why he seemed embarrassed. A faint colour

came into her cheeks, and then her face became white more than white, ghastly; you felt that the blood

had shrunk away from the whole surface of her body; and even her hands were pale. A shiver passed through

her. The silence of the studio seemed to gather body, so that it became an almost palpable presence. I was

"Don't be affectionate before strangers, Dirk," she said. "It makes me feel such a fool."

Her manner was quite normal again, and no one could have told that so shortly before she had been shaken by

Next day we moved Strickland. It needed a good deal of firmness and still more patience to induce him to

come, but he was really too ill to offer any effective resistance to Stroeve's entreaties and to my

determination. We dressed him, while he feebly cursed us, got him downstairs, into a cab, and eventually to

Stroeve's studio. He was so exhausted by the time we arrived that he allowed us to put him to bed without a

word. He was ill for six weeks. At one time it looked as though he could not live more than a few hours, and I

am convinced that it was only through the Dutchman's doggedness that he pulled through. I have never

known a more difficult patient. It was not that he was exacting and querulous; on the contrary, he never

complained, he asked for nothing, he was perfectly silent; but he seemed to resent the care that was taken of

him; he received all inquiries about his feelings or his needs with a jibe, a sneer, or an oath. I found him

detestable, and as soon as he was out of danger I had no hesitation in telling him so.

Dirk Stroeve, giving up his work entirely, nursed Strickland with tenderness and sympathy. He was dexterous

to make him comfortable, and he exercised a cunning of which I should never have thought him capable to

induce him to take the medicines prescribed by the doctor. Nothing was too much trouble for him. Though

his means were adequate to the needs of himself and his wife, he certainly had no money to waste; but now

he was wantonly extravagant in the purchase of delicacies, out of season and dear, which might tempt

Strickland's capricious appetite. I shall never forget the tactful patience with which he persuaded him to take

nourishment. He was never put out by Strickland's rudeness; if it was merely sullen, he appeared not to notice

it; if it was aggressive, he only chuckled. When Strickland, recovering somewhat, was in a good humour and

amused himself by laughing at him, he deliberately did absurd things to excite his ridicule. Then he would

give me little happy glances, so that I might notice in how much better form the patient was. Stroeve was

But it was Blanche who most surprised me. She proved herself not only a capable, but a devoted nurse. There

was nothing in her to remind you that she had so vehemently struggled against her husband's wish to bring

Strickland to the studio. She insisted on doing her share of the offices needful to the sick. She arranged his

bed so that it was possible to change the sheet without disturbing him. She washed him. When I remarked on

her competence, she told me with that pleasant little smile of hers that for a while she had worked in a

hospital. She gave no sign that she hated Strickland so desperately. She did not speak to him much, but she

was quick to forestall his wants. For a fortnight it was necessary that someone should stay with him all night,

and she took turns at watching with her husband. I wondered what she thought during the long darkness as

she sat by the bedside. Strickland was a weird figure as he lay there, thinner than ever, with his ragged red

beard and his eyes staring feverishly into vacancy; his illness seemed to have made them larger, and they had

She looked at me with her calm gray eyes. Her expression was so placid, it was hard to believe that she was

Stroeve was, of course, delighted with her. He could not do enough to show his gratitude for the

wholehearted devotion with which she had accepted the burden he laid on her. But he was a little puzzled by

"Do you know, I've seen them sit there for hours together without saying a word?"

On one occasion, when Strickland was so much better that in a day or two he was to get up, I sat with them in

the studio. Dirk and I were talking. Mrs. Stroeve sewed, and I thought I recognised the shirt she was mending

as Strickland's. He lay on his back; he did not speak. Once I saw that his eyes were fixed on Blanche Stroeve,

and there was in them a curious irony. Feeling their gaze, she raised her own, and for a moment they stared at

one another. I could not quite understand her expression. Her eyes had in them a strange perplexity, and

perhaps but why? alarm. In a moment Strickland looked away and idly surveyed the ceiling, but she

In a few days Strickland began to get up. He was nothing but skin and bone. His clothes hung upon him like

rags on a scarecrow. With his untidy beard and long hair, his features, always a little larger than life, now

emphasised by illness, he had an extraordinary aspect; but it was so odd that it was not quite ugly. There was

something monumental in his ungainliness. I do not know how to express precisely the impression he made

upon me. It was not exactly spirituality that was obvious, though the screen of the flesh seemed almost

transparent, because there was in his face an outrageous sensuality; but, though it sounds nonsense, it seemed

as though his sensuality were curiously spiritual. There was in him something primitive. He seemed to

partake of those obscure forces of nature which the Greeks personified in shapes part human and part beast,

the satyr and the faun. I thought of Marsyas, whom the god flayed because he had dared to rival him in song.

Strickland seemed to bear in his heart strange harmonies and unadventured patterns, and I foresaw for him an

end of torture and despair. I had again the feeling that he was possessed of a devil; but you could not say that

it was a devil of evil, for it was a primitive force that existed before good and ill.

He was still too weak to paint, and he sat in the studio, silent, occupied with God knows what dreams, or

reading. The books he liked were queer; sometimes I would find him poring over the poems of Mallarme, and

he read them as a child reads, forming the words with his lips, and I wondered what strange emotion he got

from those subtle cadences and obscure phrases; and again I found him absorbed in the detective novels of

Gaboriau. I amused myself by thinking that in his choice of books he showed pleasantly the irreconcilable

sides of his fantastic nature. It was singular to notice that even in the weak state of his body he had no thought

for its comfort. Stroeve liked his ease, and in his studio were a couple of heavily upholstered armchairs and

a large divan. Strickland would not go near them, not from any affectation of stoicism, for I found him seated

on a threelegged stool when I went into the studio one day and he was alone, but because he did not like

them. For choice he sat on a kitchen chair without arms. It often exasperated me to see him. I never knew a

Two or three weeks passed. One morning, having come to a pause in my work, I thought I would give myself

a holiday, and I went to the Louvre. I wandered about looking at the pictures I knew so well, and let my fancy

play idly with the emotions they suggested. I sauntered into the long gallery, and there suddenly saw Stroeve.

I smiled, for his appearance, so rotund and yet so startled, could never fail to excite a smile, and then as I

came nearer I noticed that he seemed singularly disconsolate. He looked woebegone and yet ridiculous, like a

man who has fallen into the water with all his clothes on, and, being rescued from death, frightened still, feels

that he only looks a fool. Turning round, he stared at me, but I perceived that he did not see me. His round

"It's a long time since I was at the Louvre. I thought I'd come and see if they had anything new."

"I suggested it myself. He's not strong enough to go back to his own place yet. I thought we could both paint

there. Lots of fellows in the Quarter share a studio. I thought it would be fun. I've always thought it would be

He said all this slowly, detaching statement from statement with a little awkward silence, and he kept his

He hesitated and flushed. He glanced unhappily at one of the pictures on the wall.

"He turned me out. I couldn't very well struggle with him. He threw my hat after me, and locked the door."

I was furious with Strickland, and was indignant with myself, because Dirk Stroeve cut such an absurd figure

I gazed at Stroeve with perplexity. He stood like a schoolboy with whom a master is finding fault.

He nodded to me and walked away. It was clear that for some reason he did not want to discuss the matter. I

The explanation came a week later. It was about ten o' clock at night; I had been dining by myself at a

restaurant, and having returned to my small apartment, was sitting in my parlour, reading I heard the cracked

tinkling of the bell, and, going into the corridor, opened the door. Stroeve stood before me.

In the dimness of the landing I could not see him very well, but there was something in his voice that

surprised me. I knew he was of abstemious habit or I should have thought he had been drinking. I led the way

I was able now to see him well. As a rule he was neat in his person, but now his clothes were in disorder. He

looked suddenly bedraggled. I was convinced he had been drinking, and I smiled. I was on the point of

"I didn't know where to go," he burst out. "I came here earlier, but you weren't in."

I changed my mind: it was not liquor that had driven him to this obvious desperation. His face, usually so

He could hardly get the words out. He gave a little gasp, and the tears began to trickle down his round cheeks.

I did not know what to say. My first thought was that she had come to the end of her forbearance with his

infatuation for Strickland, and, goaded by the latter's cynical behaviour, had insisted that he should be turned

out. I knew her capable of temper, for all the calmness of her manner; and if Stroeve still refused, she might

easily have flung out of the studio with vows never to return. But the little man was so distressed that I could

"My dear fellow, don't be unhappy. She'll come back. You mustn't take very seriously what women say when

"What!" I was startled at this, but the idea had no sooner taken possession of me than I saw it was absurd.

"How can you be so silly? You don't mean to say you're jealous of Strickland?" I almost laughed. "You know

"You're an hysterical ass," I said a little impatiently. "Let me give you a whiskyandsoda, and you'll feel

I supposed that for some reason or other and Heaven knows what ingenuity men exercise to torment

themselves Dirk had got it into his head that his wife cared for Strickland, and with his genius for

blundering he might quite well have offended her so that, to anger him, perhaps, she had taken pains to foster

"Look here," I said, "let's go back to your studio. If you've made a fool of yourself you must eat humble pie.

"How can I go back to the studio?" he said wearily. "They're there. I've left it to them."

Still I could not take him seriously. I did not for a moment believe what he had told me. But he was in very

"Well, you've come here to talk to me about it. You'd better tell me the whole story."

"This afternoon I couldn't stand it any more. I went to Strickland and told him I thought he was quite well

"He laughed a little; you know how he laughs, not as though he were amused, but as though you were a

damned fool, and said he'd go at once. He began to put his things together. You remember I fetched from his

room what I thought he needed, and he asked Blanche for a piece of paper and some string to make a parcel."

Stroeve stopped, gasping, and I thought he was going to faint. This was not at all the story I had expected him

"She was very pale, but she brought the paper and the string. He didn't say anything. He made the parcel and

he whistled a tune. He took no notice of either of us. His eyes had an ironic smile in them. My heart was like

lead. I was afraid something was going to happen, and I wished I hadn't spoken. He looked round for his hat.

"I tried to speak, but the words wouldn't come. Strickland didn't say anything. He went on whistling as

Stroeve stopped again and mopped his face. I kept quite still. I believed him now, and I was astounded. But

Then he told me, in a trembling voice, with the tears pouring down his cheeks, how he had gone up to her,

trying to take her in his arms, but she had drawn away and begged him not to touch her. He implored her not

to leave him. He told her how passionately he loved her, and reminded her of all the devotion he had lavished

upon her. He spoke to her of the happiness of their life. He was not angry with her. He did not reproach her.

"Please let me go quietly, Dirk," she said at last. "Don't you understand that I love Strickland? Where he goes

"But you must know that he'll never make you happy. For your own sake don't go. You don't know what

Strickland's injurious calm robbed Stroeve of the rest of his selfcontrol. Blind rage seized him, and without

knowing what he was doing he flung himself on Strickland. Strickland was taken by surprise and he

staggered, but he was very strong, even after his illness, and in a moment, he did not exactly know how,

Stroeve picked himself up. He noticed that his wife had remained perfectly still, and to be made ridiculous

before her increased his humiliation. His spectacles had tumbled off in the struggle, and he could not

immediately see them. She picked them up and silently handed them to him. He seemed suddenly to realise

his unhappiness, and though he knew he was making himself still more absurd, he began to cry. He hid his

face in his hands. The others watched him without a word. They did not move from where they stood.

"I've worshipped you as no woman was ever worshipped before. If in anything I did I displeased you, why

didn't you tell me, and I'd have changed. I've done everything I could for you."

She did not answer. Her face was set, and he saw that he was only boring her. She put on a coat and her hat.

She moved towards the door, and he saw that in a moment she would be gone. He went up to her quickly and

"Oh, don't go, my darling. I can't live without you; I shall kill myself. If I've done anything to offend you I

beg you to forgive me. Give me another chance. I'll try harder still to make you happy."

"Where are you going?" he said hastily. "You don't know what Strickland's place is like. You can't live there.

"What is the good? I've made up my mind. Nothing that you can say will make me alter it."

"I'm not going to ask you to change your mind, but I want you to listen to me for a minute. It's the last thing I

She paused, looking at him with those reflective eyes of hers, which now were so different to him. She came

"You must be a little reasonable. You can't live on air, you know. Strickland hasn't got a penny."

"You'll suffer the most awful privations. You know why he took so long to get well. He was half starved."

He looked round his studio wearily; he had loved it because her presence had made it gay and homelike; he

shut his eyes for an instant; then he gave her a long look as though to impress on his mind the picture of her.

"I can't bear to think of you living in that horrible, filthy attic. After all, this is your home just as much as

mine. You'll be comfortable here. You'll be spared at least the worst privations."

He went to the drawer in which he kept his money and took out several banknotes.

"Will you pack up my clothes and leave them with the concierge? I'll come and fetch them tomorrow." He

tried to smile." Goodbye, my dear. I'm grateful for all the happiness you gave me in the past."

He walked out and closed the door behind him. With my mind's eye I saw Strickland throw his hat on a table,

I kept silence for a little while, thinking of what Stroeve had told me. I could not stomach his weakness, and

he saw my disapproval. "You know as well as I do how Strickland lived," he said tremulously. "I couldn't let

"She went with her eyes open. If she had to put up with certain inconveniences it was her own lookout."

"Oh, more than ever. Strickland isn't the man to make a woman happy. It can't last. I want her to know that I

"I shouldn't hesitate. Why, she'll want me more than ever then. When she's alone and humiliated and broken

He seemed to bear no resentment. I suppose it was commonplace in me that I felt slightly outraged at his lack

"I couldn't expect her to love me as I loved her. I'm a buffoon. I'm not the sort of man that women love. I've

"I love her so much better than myself. It seems to me that when vanity comes into love it can only be

because really you love yourself best. After all, it constantly happens that a man when he's married falls in

love with somebody else; when he gets over it he returns to his wife, and she takes him back, and everyone

"I dare say that's logical," I smiled, "but most men are made differently, and they can't."

But while I talked to Stroeve I was puzzling over the suddenness of the whole affair. I could not imagine that

he had had no warning. I remembered the curious look I had seen in Blanche Stroeve's eyes; perhaps its

explanation was that she was growing dimly conscious of a feeling in her heart that surprised and alarmed

"Did you have no suspicion before today that there was anything between them?" I asked.

He did not answer for a while. There was a pencil on the table, and unconsciously he drew a head on the

"It eases me to talk. Oh, if you knew the frightful anguish in my heart." He threw the pencil down. "Yes, I've

"I couldn't believe it. It seemed so improbable. She couldn't bear the sight of him. It was more than

improbable; it was incredible. I thought it was merely jealousy. You see, I've always been jealous, but I

trained myself never to show it; I was jealous of every man she knew; I was jealous of you. I knew she didn't

love me as I loved her. That was only natural, wasn't it? But she allowed me to love her, and that was enough

to make me happy. I forced myself to go out for hours together in order to leave them by themselves; I

wanted to punish myself for suspicions which were unworthy of me; and when I came back I found they

didn't want me not Strickland, he didn't care if I was there or not, but Blanche. She shuddered when I went

to kiss her. When at last I was certain I didn't know what to do; I knew they'd only laugh at me if I made a

scene. I thought if I held my tongue and pretended not to see, everything would come right. I made up my

mind to get him away quietly, without quarrelling. Oh, if you only knew what I've suffered!"

Then he told me again of his asking Strickland to go. He chose his moment carefully, and tried to make his

request sound casual; but he could not master the trembling of his voice; and he felt himself that into words

that he wished to seem jovial and friendly there crept the bitterness of his jealousy. He had not expected

Strickland to take him up on the spot and make his preparations to go there and then; above all, he had not

expected his wife's decision to go with him. I saw that now he wished with all his heart that he had held his

"If I'd only waited, perhaps it would have gone all right. I shouldn't have been so impatient. Oh, poor child,

I shrugged my shoulders, but did not speak. I had no sympathy for Blanche Stroeve, but knew that it would

He had reached that stage of exhaustion when he could not stop talking. He went over again every word of

the scene. Now something occurred to him that he had not told me before; now he discussed what he ought to

have said instead of what he did say; then he lamented his blindness. He regretted that he had done this, and

blamed himself that he had omitted the other. It grew later and later, and at last I was as tired as he.

For the present he seemed quite lost. He had made no plans. When I suggested that he should go to bed he

said he could not sleep; he wanted to go out and walk about the streets till day. He was evidently in no state

to be left alone. I persuaded him to stay the night with me, and I put him into my own bed. I had a divan in

my sittingroom, and could very well sleep on that. He was by now so worn out that he could not resist my

firmness. I gave him a sufficient dose of veronal to insure his unconsciousness for several hours. I thought

But the bed I made up for myself was sufficiently uncomfortable to give me a wakeful night, and I thought a

good deal of what the unlucky Dutchman had told me. I was not so much puzzled by Blanche Stroeve's

action, for I saw in that merely the result of a physical appeal. I do not suppose she had ever really cared for

her husband, and what I had taken for love was no more than the feminine response to caresses and comfort

which in the minds of most women passes for it. It is a passive feeling capable of being roused for any object,

as the vine can grow on any tree; and the wisdom of the world recognises its strength when it urges a girl to

marry the man who wants her with the assurance that love will follow. It is an emotion made up of the

satisfaction in security, pride of property, the pleasure of being desired, the gratification of a household, and it

is only by an amiable vanity that women ascribe to it spiritual value. It is an emotion which is defenceless

against passion. I suspected that Blanche Stroeve's violent dislike of Strickland had in it from the beginning a

vague element of sexual attraction. Who am I that I should seek to unravel the mysterious intricacies of sex?

Perhaps Stroeve's passion excited without satisfying that part of her nature, and she hated Strickland because

she felt in him the power to give her what she needed. I think she was quite sincere when she struggled

against her husband's desire to bring him into the studio; I think she was frightened of him, though she knew

not why; and I remembered how she had foreseen disaster. I think in some curious way the horror which she

felt for him was a transference of the horror which she felt for herself because he so strangely troubled her.

His appearance was wild and uncouth; there was aloofness in his eyes and sensuality in his mouth; he was big

and strong; he gave the impression of untamed passion; and perhaps she felt in him, too, that sinister element

which had made me think of those wild beings of the world's early history when matter, retaining its early

connection with the earth, seemed to possess yet a spirit of its own. If he affected her at all, it was inevitable

And then I fancy that the daily intimacy with the sick man moved her strangely. She raised his head to give

him food, and it was heavy against her hand; when she had fed him she wiped his sensual mouth and his red

beard. She washed his limbs; they were covered with thick hair; and when she dried his hands, even in his

weakness they were strong and sinewy. His fingers were long; they were the capable, fashioning fingers of

the artist; and I know not what troubling thoughts they excited in her. He slept very quietly, without a

movement, so that he might have been dead, and he was like some wild creature of the woods, resting after a

long chase; and she wondered what fancies passed through his dreams. Did he dream of the nymph flying

through the woods of Greece with the satyr in hot pursuit? She fled, swift of foot and desperate, but he gained

on her step by step, till she felt his hot breath on her neck; and still she fled silently, and silently he pursued,

and when at last he seized her was it terror that thrilled her heart or was it ecstasy?

Blanche Stroeve was in the cruel grip of appetite. Perhaps she hated Strickland still, but she hungered for

him, and everything that had made up her life till then became of no account. She ceased to be a woman,

complex, kind and petulant, considerate and thoughtless; she was a Maenad. She was desire.

But perhaps this is very fanciful; and it may be that she was merely bored with her husband and went to

Strickland out of a callous curiosity. She may have had no particular feeling for him, but succumbed to his

wish from propinquity or idleness, to find then that she was powerless in a snare of her own contriving. How

did I know what were the thoughts and emotions behind that placid brow and those cool gray eyes?

But if one could be certain of nothing in dealing with creatures so incalculable as human beings, there were

explanations of Blanche Stroeve's behaviour which were at all events plausible. On the other hand, I did not

understand Strickland at all. I racked my brain, but could in no way account for an action so contrary to my

conception of him. It was not strange that he should so heartlessly have betrayed his friends' confidence, nor

that he hesitated not at all to gratify a whim at the cost of another's misery. That was in his character. He was

a man without any conception of gratitude. He had no compassion. The emotions common to most of us

simply did not exist in him, and it was as absurd to blame him for not feeling them as for blaming the tiger

I could not believe that Strickland had fallen in love with Blanche Stroeve. I did not believe him capable of

love. That is an emotion in which tenderness is an essential part, but Strickland had no tenderness either for

himself or for others; there is in love a sense of weakness, a desire to protect, an eagerness to do good and to

give pleasure if not unselfishness, at all events a selfishness which marvellously conceals itself; it has in it

a certain diffidence. These were not traits which I could imagine in Strickland. Love is absorbing; it takes the

lover out of himself; the most clearsighted, though he may know, cannot realise that his love will cease; it

gives body to what he knows is illusion, and, knowing it is nothing else, he loves it better than reality. It

makes a man a little more than himself, and at the same time a little less. He ceases to be himself. He is no

longer an individual, but a thing, an instrument to some purpose foreign to his ego. Love is never quite

devoid of sentimentality, and Strickland was the least inclined to that infirmity of any man I have known. I

could not believe that he would ever suffer that possession of himself which love is; he could never endure a

foreign yoke. I believed him capable of uprooting from his heart, though it might be with agony, so that he

was left battered and ensanguined, anything that came between himself and that uncomprehended craving

that urged him constantly to he knew not what. If I have succeeded at all in giving the complicated

impression that Strickland made on me, it will not seem outrageous to say that I felt he was at once too great

But I suppose that everyone's conception of the passion is formed on his own idiosyncrasies, and it is

different with every different person. A man like Strickland would love in a manner peculiar to himself. It

Next day, though I pressed him to remain, Stroeve left me. I offered to fetch his things from the studio, but he

insisted on going himself; I think he hoped they had not thought of getting them together, so that he would

have an opportunity of seeing his wife again and perhaps inducing her to come back to him. But he found his

traps waiting for him in the porter's lodge, and the concierge told him that Blanche had gone out. I do not

think he resisted the temptation of giving her an account of his troubles. I found that he was telling them to

He bore himself most unbecomingly. Knowing at what time his wife did her shopping, one day, unable any

longer to bear not seeing her, he waylaid her in the street. She would not speak to him, but he insisted on

speaking to her. He spluttered out words of apology for any wrong he had committed towards her; he told her

he loved her devotedly and begged her to return to him. She would not answer; she walked hurriedly, with

averted face. I imagined him with his fat little legs trying to keep up with her. Panting a little in his haste, he

told her how miserable he was; he besought her to have mercy on him; he promised, if she would forgive

him, to do everything she wanted. He offered to take her for a journey. He told her that Strickland would soon

tire of her. When he repeated to me the whole sordid little scene I was outraged. He had shown neither sense

nor dignity. He had omitted nothing that could make his wife despise him. There is no cruelty greater than a

woman's to a man who loves her and whom she does not love; she has no kindness then, no tolerance even,

she has only an insane irritation. Blanche Stroeve stopped suddenly, and as hard as she could slapped her

husband's face. She took advantage of his confusion to escape, and ran up the stairs to the studio. No word

When he told me this he put his hand to his cheek as though he still felt the smart of the blow, and in his eyes

was a pain that was heartrending and an amazement that was ludicrous. He looked like an overblown

Then he took to walking along the street which she must pass through to get to the shops, and he would stand

at the corner, on the other side, as she went along. He dared not speak to her again, but sought to put into his

round eyes the appeal that was in his heart. I suppose he had some idea that the sight of his misery would

touch her. She never made the smallest sign that she saw him. She never even changed the hour of her

errands or sought an alternative route. I have an idea that there was some cruelty in her indifference. Perhaps

she got enjoyment out of the torture she inflicted. I wondered why she hated him so much.

"You're doing no good at all by going on like this," I said. "I think you'd have been wiser if you'd hit her over

I suggested that he should go home for a while. He had often spoken to me of the silent town, somewhere up

in the north of Holland, where his parents still lived. They were poor people. His father was a carpenter, and

they dwelt in a little old redbrick house, neat and clean, by the side of a sluggish canal. The streets were

wide and empty; for two hundred years the place had been dying, but the houses had the homely stateliness of

their time. Rich merchants, sending their wares to the distant Indies, had lived in them calm and prosperous

lives, and in their decent decay they kept still an aroma of their splendid past. You could wander along the

canal till you came to broad green fields, with windmills here and there, in which cattle, black and white,

grazed lazily. I thought that among those surroundings, with their recollections of his boyhood, Dirk Stroeve

"I must be here when she needs me," he repeated. "It would be dreadful if something terrible happened and I

For all his pain, Dirk Stroeve remained a ridiculous object. He might have excited sympathy if he had grown

worn and thin. He did nothing of the kind. He remained fat, and his round, red cheeks shone like ripe apples.

He had great neatness of person, and he continued to wear his spruce black coat and his bowler hat, always a

little too small for him, in a dapper, jaunty manner. He was getting something of a paunch, and sorrow had no

effect on it. He looked more than ever like a prosperous bagman. It is hard that a man's exterior should tally

so little sometimes with his soul. Dirk Stroeve had the passion of Romeo in the body of Sir Toby Belch. He

had a sweet and generous nature, and yet was always blundering; a real feeling for what was beautiful and the

capacity to create only what was commonplace; a peculiar delicacy of sentiment and gross manners. He could

exercise tact when dealing with the affairs of others, but none when dealing with his own. What a cruel

practical joke old Nature played when she flung so many contradictory elements together, and left the man

I did not see Strickland for several weeks. I was disgusted with him, and if I had had an opportunity should

have been glad to tell him so, but I saw no object in seeking him out for the purpose. I am a little shy of any

assumption of moral indignation; there is always in it an element of selfsatisfaction which makes it

awkward to anyone who has a sense of humour. It requires a very lively passion to steel me to my own

ridicule. There was a sardonic sincerity in Strickland which made me sensitive to anything that might suggest

But one evening when I was passing along the Avenue de Clichy in front of the cafe which Strickland

frequented and which I now avoided, I ran straight into him. He was accompanied by Blanche Stroeve, and

"Where the devil have you been all this time?" said he. "I thought you must be away."

His cordiality was proof that he knew I had no wish to speak to him. He was not a man with whom it was

Blanche then held out her hand and bade me goodevening. I do not know why I had expected her to be

somehow changed; she wore the same gray dress that she wore so often, neat and becoming, and her brow

was as candid, her eyes as untroubled, as when I had been used to see her occupied with her household duties

I do not know why at the moment I could think of no excuse. I followed them rather sulkily to the table at

which Strickland always sat, and he called for the board and the chessmen. They both took the situation so

much as a matter of course that I felt it absurd to do otherwise. Mrs. Stroeve watched the game with

inscrutable face. She was silent, but she had always been silent. I looked at her mouth for an expression that

could give me a clue to what she felt; I watched her eyes for some telltale flash, some hint of dismay or

bitterness; I scanned her brow for any passing line that might indicate a settling emotion. Her face was a

mask that told nothing. Her hands lay on her lap motionless, one in the other loosely clasped. I knew from

what I had heard that she was a woman of violent passions; and that injurious blow that she had given Dirk,

the man who had loved her so devotedly, betrayed a sudden temper and a horrid cruelty. She had abandoned

the safe shelter of her husband's protection and the comfortable ease of a wellprovided establishment for

what she could not but see was an extreme hazard. It showed an eagerness for adventure, a readiness for the

handtomouth, which the care she took of her home and her love of good housewifery made not a little

remarkable. She must be a woman of complicated character, and there was something dramatic in the contrast

I was excited by the encounter, and my fancy worked busily while I sought to concentrate myself on the

game I was playing. I always tried my best to beat Strickland, because he was a player who despised the

opponent he vanquished; his exultation in victory made defeat more difficult to bear. On the other hand, if he

was beaten he took it with complete goodhumour. He was a bad winner and a good loser. Those who think

that a man betrays his character nowhere more clearly than when he is playing a game might on this draw

When he had finished I called the waiter to pay for the drinks, and left them. The meeting had been devoid of

incident. No word had been said to give me anything to think about, and any surmises I might make were

unwarranted. I was intrigued. I could not tell how they were getting on. I would have given much to be a

disembodied spirit so that I could see them in the privacy of the studio and hear what they talked about. I had

"What do I care if it does? You must know that I want to hear the smallest thing about her."

"How can I tell? We were in a cafe; we were playing chess; I had no opportunity to speak to her."

I shook my head. I could only repeat that by no word, by no hinted gesture, had she given an indication of her

feelings. He must know better than I how great were her powers of selfcontrol. He clasped his hands

"Oh, I'm so frightened. I know something is going to happen, something terrible, and I can do nothing to stop

"Oh, I don't know," he moaned, seizing his head with his hands. "I foresee some terrible catastrophe."

Stroeve had always been excitable, but now he was beside himself; there was no reasoning with him. I

thought it probable enough that Blanche Stroeve would not continue to find life with Strickland tolerable, but

one of the falsest of proverbs is that you must lie on the bed that you have made. The experience of life shows

that people are constantly doing things which must lead to disaster, and yet by some chance manage to evade

the result of their folly. When Blanche quarrelled with Strickland she had only to leave him, and her husband

was waiting humbly to forgive and forget. I was not prepared to feel any great sympathy for her.

"After all, there's nothing to prove that she is unhappy. For all we know they may have settled down into a

"Of course it doesn't much matter to you, but to me it's so serious, so intensely serious."

"I've written over and over again. I didn't expect her to answer. I don't think she reads the letters."

I looked at him quickly. He lowered his eyes. That answer of his seemed to me strangely humiliating. He was

conscious that she regarded him with an indifference so profound that the sight of his handwriting would

"I want her to know that if the worst comes to the worst she can count on me. That's what I want you to tell

DEAR MRS. STROEVE, Dirk wishes me to tell you that if at any time you want him he will be grateful for

the opportunity of being of service to you. He has no illfeeling towards you on account of anything that has

happened. His love for you is unaltered. You will always find him at the following address:>

But though I was no less convinced than Stroeve that the connection between Strickland and Blanche would

end disastrously, I did not expect the issue to take the tragic form it did. The summer came, breathless and

sultry, and even at night there was no coolness to rest one's jaded nerves. The sunbaked streets seemed to

give back the heat that had beat down on them during the day, and the passersby dragged their feet along

them wearily. I had not seen Strickland for weeks. Occupied with other things, I had ceased to think of him

and his affairs. Dirk, with his vain lamentations, had begun to bore me, and I avoided his society. It was a

One morning I was working. I sat in my Pyjamas. My thoughts wandered, and I thought of the sunny beaches

of Brittany and the freshness of the sea. By my side was the empty bowl in which the concierge had brought

me my cafe au lait> and the fragment of croissant which I had not had appetite enough to eat. I heard the

concierge in the next room emptying my bath. There was a tinkle at my bell, and I left her to open the door.

In a moment I heard Stroeve's voice asking if I was in. Without moving, I shouted to him to come. He entered

He made movements with his lips as though he were speaking, but no sound issued from them. He gibbered

like an idiot. My heart thumped against my ribs, and, I do not know why, I flew into a temper.

"For God's sake, collect yourself, man," I said. "What on earth are you talking about?"

He made despairing gestures with his hands, but still no words came from his mouth. He might have been

struck dumb. I do not know what came over me; I took him by the shoulders and shook him. Looking back, I

am vexed that I made such a fool of myself; I suppose the last restless nights had shaken my nerves more than

I filled a glass with St. Galmier, and gave it to him to drink. I held it to his mouth as though he were a child.

I do not know why I asked, for I knew whom he meant. He made an effort to collect himself.

"Then what are you talking about?" I cried impatiently. "Why did you say she'd killed herself?"

"Don't be cross with me. I can't tell you anything if you talk to me like that."

His round blue eyes behind the spectacles were ghastly with terror. The magnifyingglasses he wore

"When the concierge went up this morning to take a letter she could get no answer to her ring. She heard

someone groaning. The door wasn't locked, and she went in. Blanche was lying on the bed. She'd been

"Damn it all, you haven't got to bear it," I cried impatiently. "She's got to bear it."

"They sent for a doctor and for me, and they told the police. I'd given the concierge twenty francs, and told

"When I went she wouldn't speak to me. She told them to send me away. I swore that I forgave her

everything, but she wouldn't listen. She tried to beat her head against the wall. The doctor told me that I

mustn't remain with her. She kept on saying, `Send him away!' I went, and waited in the studio. And when the

ambulance came and they put her on a stretcher, they made me go in the kitchen so that she shouldn't know I

While I dressed for Stroeve wished me to go at once with him to the hospital he told me that he had

arranged for his wife to have a private room, so that she might at least be spared the sordid promiscuity of a

ward. On our way he explained to me why he desired my presence; if she still refused to see him, perhaps she

would see me. He begged me to repeat to her that he loved her still; he would reproach her for nothing, but

desired only to help her; he made no claim on her, and on her recovery would not seek to induce her to return

But when we arrived at the hospital, a gaunt, cheerless building, the mere sight of which was enough to make

one's heart sick, and after being directed from this official to that, up endless stairs and through long, bare

corridors, found the doctor in charge of the case, we were told that the patient was too ill to see anyone that

day. The doctor was a little bearded man in white, with an offhand manner. He evidently looked upon a case

as a case, and anxious relatives as a nuisance which must be treated with firmness. Moreover, to him the

affair was commonplace; it was just an hysterical woman who had quarrelled with her lover and taken

poison; it was constantly happening. At first he thought that Dirk was the cause of the disaster, and he was

needlessly brusque with him. When I explained that he was the husband, anxious to forgive, the doctor

looked at him suddenly, with curious, searching eyes. I seemed to see in them a hint of mockery; it was true

that Stroeve had the head of the husband who is deceived. The doctor faintly shrugged his shoulders.

"There is no immediate danger," he said, in answer to our questioning. "One doesn't know how much she

took. It may be that she will get off with a fright. Women are constantly trying to commit suicide for love, but

generally they take care not to succeed. It's generally a gesture to arouse pity or terror in their lover."

There was in his tone a frigid contempt. It was obvious that to him Blanche Stroeve was only a unit to be

added to the statistical list of attempted suicides in the city of Paris during the current year. He was busy, and

could waste no more time on us. He told us that if we came at a certain hour next day, should Blanche be

I scarcely know how we got through that day. Stroeve could not bear to be alone, and I exhausted myself in

efforts to distract him. I took him to the Louvre, and he pretended to look at pictures, but I saw that his

thoughts were constantly with his wife. I forced him to eat, and after luncheon I induced him to lie down, but

he could not sleep. He accepted willingly my invitation to remain for a few days in my apartment. I gave him

books to read, but after a page or two he would put the book down and stare miserably into space. During the

evening we played innumerable games of piquet, and bravely, not to disappoint my efforts, he tried to appear

When we went again to the hospital we saw a nursing sister. She told us that Blanche seemed a little better,

and she went in to ask if she would see her husband. We heard voices in the room in which she lay, and

presently the nurse returned to say that the patient refused to see anyone. We had told her that if she refused

to see Dirk the nurse was to ask if she would see me, but this she refused also. Dirk's lips trembled.

"I dare not insist," said the nurse. "She is too ill. Perhaps in a day or two she may change her mind."

"Is there anyone else she wants to see?" asked Dirk, in a voice so low it was almost a whisper.

Dirk's hands moved strangely, as though they had nothing to do with his body, with a movement of their own.

"Will you tell her that if there is anyone else she wishes to see I will bring him? I only want her to be happy."

The nurse looked at him with her calm, kind eyes, which had seen all the horror and pain of the world, and

With a faint smile of pity, the nurse went back into the room. We heard her low voice, and then, in a voice I

Dirk gave a low cry of distress. I asked him to go on and wait for me at the entrance, for I wanted to say

something to the nurse. He did not ask what it was, but went silently. He seemed to have lost all power of

"No. She won't speak. She lies on her back quite quietly. She doesn't move for hours at a time. But she cries

always. Her pillow is all wet. She's too weak to use a handkerchief, and the tears just run down her face."

It gave me a sudden wrench of the heartstrings. I could have killed Strickland then, and I knew that my

I found Dirk waiting for me on the steps. He seemed to see nothing, and did not notice that I had joined him

till I touched him on the arm. We walked along in silence. I tried to imagine what had happened to drive the

poor creature to that dreadful step. I presumed that Strickland knew what had happened, for someone must

have been to see him from the police, and he must have made his statement. I did not know where he was. I

supposed he had gone back to the shabby attic which served him as a studio. It was curious that she should

not wish to see him. Perhaps she refused to have him sent for because she knew he would refuse to come. I

wondered what an abyss of cruelty she must have looked into that in horror she refused to live.

The next week was dreadful. Stroeve went twice a day to the hospital to enquire after his wife, who still

declined to see him; and came away at first relieved and hopeful because he was told that she seemed to be

growing better, and then in despair because, the complication which the doctor had feared having ensued,

recovery was impossible. The nurse was pitiful to his distress, but she had little to say that could console him.

The poor woman lay quite still, refusing to speak, with her eyes intent, as though she watched for the coming

of death. It could now be only the question of a day or two; and when, late one evening, Stroeve came to see

me I knew it was to tell me she was dead. He was absolutely exhausted. His volubility had left him at last,

and he sank down wearily on my sofa. I felt that no words of condolence availed, and I let him lie there

quietly. I feared he would think it heartless if I read, so I sat by the window, smoking a pipe, till he felt

"At the hospital they told me I might wait. They gave me a chair, and I sat outside the door. When she

became unconscious they said I might go in. Her mouth and chin were all burnt by the acid. It was awful to

see her lovely skin all wounded. She died very peacefully, so that I didn't know she was dead till the sister

He was too tired to weep. He lay on his back limply, as though all the strength had gone out of his limbs, and

presently I saw that he had fallen asleep. It was the first natural sleep he had had for a week. Nature,

sometimes so cruel, is sometimes merciful. I covered him and turned down the light. In the morning when I

awoke he was still asleep. He had not moved. His goldrimmed spectacles were still on his nose.

The circumstances of Blanche Stroeve's death necessitated all manner of dreadful formalities, but at last we

were allowed to bury her. Dirk and I alone followed the hearse to the cemetery. We went at a footpace, but

on the way back we trotted, and there was something to my mind singularly horrible in the way the driver of

the hearse whipped up his horses. It seemed to dismiss the dead with a shrug of the shoulders. Now and then I

caught sight of the swaying hearse in front of us, and our own driver urged his pair so that we might not

remain behind. I felt in myself, too, the desire to get the whole thing out of my mind. I was beginning to be

bored with a tragedy that did not really concern me, and pretending to myself that I spoke in order to distract

"Don't you think you'd better go away for a bit?" I said. "There can be no object in your staying in Paris

"You must try and gather together the threads again. Why don't you go down to Italy and start working?"

Again he made no reply, but the driver of our carriage came to my rescue. Slackening his pace for a moment,

he leaned over and spoke. I could not hear what he said, so I put my head out of the window. he wanted to

"You'd better come and have lunch with me," I said to Dirk. "I'll tell him to drop us in the Place Pigalle."

I gave the driver the necessary direction, and in renewed silence we drove on. Dirk had not been to the studio

since the wretched morning on which they had taken Blanche to the hospital. I was glad he did not want me

to accompany him, and when I left him at the door I walked away with relief. I took a new pleasure in the

streets of Paris, and I looked with smiling eyes at the people who hurried to and fro. The day was fine and

sunny, and I felt in myself a more acute delight in life. I could not help it; I put Stroeve and his sorrows out of

I did not see him again for nearly a week. Then he fetched me soon after seven one evening and took me out

to dinner. He was dressed in the deepest mourning, and on his bowler was a broad black band. He had even a

black border to his handkerchief. His garb of woe suggested that he had lost in one catastrophe every relation

he had in the world, even to cousins by marriage twice removed. His plumpness and his red, fat cheeks made

his mourning not a little incongruous. It was cruel that his extreme unhappiness should have in it something

He told me he had made up his mind to go away, though not to Italy, as I had suggested, but to Holland.

"I haven't been home for five years. I think I'd forgotten it all; I seemed to have come so far away from my

father's house that I was shy at the idea of revisiting it; but now I feel it's my only refuge."

He was sore and bruised, and his thoughts went back to the tenderness of his mother's love. The ridicule he

had endured for years seemed now to weigh him down, and the final blow of Blanche's treachery had robbed

him of the resiliency which had made him take it so gaily. He could no longer laugh with those who laughed

at him. He was an outcast. He told me of his childhood in the tidy brick house, and of his mother's passionate

orderliness. Her kitchen was a miracle of clean brightness. Everything was always in its place, and no where

could you see a speck of dust. Cleanliness, indeed, was a mania with her. I saw a neat little old woman, with

cheeks like apples, toiling away from morning to night, through the long years, to keep her house trim and

spruce. His father was a spare old man, his hands gnarled after the work of a lifetime, silent and upright; in

the evening he read the paper aloud, while his wife and daughter (now married to the captain of a fishing

smack), unwilling to lose a moment, bent over their sewing. Nothing ever happened in that little town, left

behind by the advance of civilisation, and one year followed the next till death came, like a friend, to give rest

"My father wished me to become a carpenter like himself. For five generations we've carried on the same

trade, from father to son. Perhaps that is the wisdom of life, to tread in your father's steps, and look neither to

the right nor to the left. When I was a little boy I said I would marry the daughter of the harnessmaker who

lived next door. She was a little girl with blue eyes and a flaxen pigtail. She would have kept my house like a

Stroeve sighed a little and was silent. His thoughts dwelt among pictures of what might have been, and the

"The world is hard and cruel. We are here none knows why, and we go none knows whither. We must be

very humble. We must see the beauty of quietness. We must go through life so inconspicuously that Fate

does not notice us. And let us seek the love of simple, ignorant people. Their ignorance is better than all our

knowledge. Let us be silent, content in our little corner, meek and gentle like them. That is the wisdom of

To me it was his broken spirit that expressed itself, and I rebelled against his renunciation. But I kept my own

"It happened that I had a knack for drawing. I got prizes for it at school. My poor mother was very proud of

my gift, and she gave me a box of watercolours as a present. She showed my sketches to the pastor and the

doctor and the judge. And they sent me to Amsterdam to try for a scholarship, and I won it. Poor soul, she

was so proud; and though it nearly broke her heart to part from me, she smiled, and would not show me her

grief. She was pleased that her son should be an artist. They pinched and saved so that I should have enough

to live on, and when my first picture was exhibited they came to Amsterdam to see it, my father and mother

and my sister, and my mother cried when she looked at it." His kind eyes glistened. "And now on every wall

He glowed with happy pride. I thought of those cold scenes of his, with their picturesque peasants and

cypresses and olivetrees. They must look queer in their garish frames on the walls of the peasant house.

"The dear soul thought she was doing a wonderful thing for me when she made me an artist, but perhaps,

after all, it would have been better for me if my father's will had prevailed and I were now but an honest

"Now that you know what art can offer, would you change your life? Would you have missed all the delight

I was astonished. I should have thought he could not bear to set eyes on him. Stroeve smiled faintly.

When I left him, after we had buried poor Blanche, Stroeve walked into the house with a heavy heart.

Something impelled him to go to the studio, some obscure desire for selftorture, and yet he dreaded the

anguish that he foresaw. He dragged himself up the stairs; his feet seemed unwilling to carry him; and outside

the door he lingered for a long time, trying to summon up courage to go in. He felt horribly sick. He had an

impulse to run down the stairs after me and beg me to go in with him; he had a feeling that there was

somebody in the studio. He remembered how often he had waited for a minute or two on the landing to get

his breath after the ascent, and how absurdly his impatience to see Blanche had taken it away again. To see

her was a delight that never staled, and even though he had not been out an hour he was as excited at the

prospect as if they had been parted for a month. Suddenly he could not believe that she was dead. What had

happened could only be a dream, a frightful dream; and when he turned the key and opened the door, he

would see her bending slightly over the table in the gracious attitude of the woman in Chardin's Benedicite>,

which always seemed to him so exquisite. Hurriedly he took the key out of his pocket, opened, and walked in.

The apartment had no look of desertion. His wife's tidiness was one of the traits which had so much pleased

him; his own upbringing had given him a tender sympathy for the delight in orderliness; and when he had

seen her instinctive desire to put each thing in its appointed place it had given him a little warm feeling in his

heart. The bedroom looked as though she had just left it: the brushes were neatly placed on the toilettable,

one on each side of the comb; someone had smoothed down the bed on which she had spent her last night in

the studio; and her nightdress in a little case lay on the pillow. It was impossible to believe that she would

But he felt thirsty, and went into the kitchen to get himself some water. Here, too, was order. On a rack were

the plates that she had used for dinner on the night of her quarrel with Strickland, and they had been carefully

washed. The knives and forks were put away in a drawer. Under a cover were the remains of a piece of

cheese, and in a tin box was a crust of bread. She had done her marketing from day to day, buying only what

was strictly needful, so that nothing was left over from one day to the next. Stroeve knew from the enquiries

made by the police that Strickland had walked out of the house immediately after dinner, and the fact that

Blanche had washed up the things as usual gave him a little thrill of horror. Her methodicalness made her

suicide more deliberate. Her selfpossession was frightening. A sudden pang seized him, and his knees felt

so weak that he almost fell. He went back into the bedroom and threw himself on the bed. He cried out her

The thought of her suffering was intolerable. He had a sudden vision of her standing in the kitchen it was

hardly larger than a cupboard washing the plates and glasses, the forks and spoons, giving the knives a

rapid polish on the knifeboard; and then putting everything away, giving the sink a scrub, and hanging the

dishcloth up to dry it was there still, a gray torn rag; then looking round to see that everything was clean

and nice. He saw her roll down her sleeves and remove her apron the apron hung on a peg behind the door

The agony of it drove him up from the bed and out of the room. He went into the studio. It was dark, for the

curtains had been drawn over the great window, and he pulled them quickly back; but a sob broke from him

as with a rapid glance he took in the place where he had been so happy. Nothing was changed here, either.

Strickland was indifferent to his surroundings, and he had lived in the other's studio without thinking of

altering a thing. It was deliberately artistic. It represented Stroeve's idea of the proper environment for an

artist. There were bits of old brocade on the walls, and the piano was covered with a piece of silk, beautiful

and tarnished; in one corner was a copy of the Venus of Milo, and in another of the Venus of the Medici.

Here and there was an Italian cabinet surmounted with Delft, and here and there a basrelief. In a handsome

gold frame was a copy of Velasquez' Innocent X., that Stroeve had made in Rome, and placed so as to make

the most of their decorative effect were a number of Stroeve's pictures, all in splendid frames. Stroeve had

always been very proud of his taste. He had never lost his appreciation for the romantic atmosphere of a

studio, and though now the sight of it was like a stab in his heart, without thinking what he was at, he

changed slightly the position of a Louis XV. table which was one of his treasures. Suddenly he caught sight

of a canvas with its face to the wall. It was a much larger one than he himself was in the habit of using, and

he wondered what it did there. He went over to it and leaned it towards him so that he could see the painting.

It was a nude. His heart began to beat quickly, for he guessed at once that it was one of Strickland's pictures.

He flung it back against the wall angrily what did he mean by leaving it there? but his movement

caused it to fall, face downwards, on the ground. No mater whose the picture, he could not leave it there in

the dust, and he raised it; but then curiosity got the better of him. He thought he would like to have a proper

look at it, so he brought it along and set it on the easel. Then he stood back in order to see it at his ease.

He gave a gasp. It was the picture of a woman lying on a sofa, with one arm beneath her head and the other

along her body; one knee was raised, and the other leg was stretched out. The pose was classic. Stroeve's

head swam. It was Blanche. Grief and jealousy and rage seized him, and he cried out hoarsely; he was

inarticulate; he clenched his fists and raised them threateningly at an invisible enemy. He screamed at the top

of his voice. He was beside himself. He could not bear it. That was too much. He looked round wildly for

some instrument; he wanted to hack the picture to pieces; it should not exist another minute. He could see

nothing that would serve his purpose; he rummaged about his painting things; somehow he could not find a

thing; he was frantic. At last he came upon what he sought, a large scraper, and he pounced on it with a cry of

As Stroeve told me this he became as excited as when the incident occurred, and he took hold of a

dinnerknife on the table between us, and brandished it. He lifted his arm as though to strike, and then,

opening his hand, let it fall with a clatter to the ground. He looked at me with a tremulous smile. He did not

"I don't know what happened to me. I was just going to make a great hole in the picture, I had my arm all

Stroeve was silent again, and he stared at me with his mouth open and his round blue eyes starting out of his

"It was a great, a wonderful picture. I was seized with awe. I had nearly committed a dreadful crime. I moved

a little to see it better, and my foot knocked against the scraper. I shuddered."

I really felt something of the emotion that had caught him. I was strangely impressed. It was as though I were

suddenly transported into a world in which the values were changed. I stood by, at a loss, like a stranger in a

land where the reactions of man to familiar things are all different from those he has known. Stroeve tried to

talk to me about the picture, but he was incoherent, and I had to guess at what he meant. Strickland had burst

the bonds that hitherto had held him. He had found, not himself, as the phrase goes, but a new soul with

unsuspected powers. It was not only the bold simplification of the drawing which showed so rich and so

singular a personality; it was not only the painting, though the flesh was painted with a passionate sensuality

which had in it something miraculous; it was not only the solidity, so that you felt extraordinarily the weight

of the body; there was also a spirituality, troubling and new, which led the imagination along unsuspected

ways, and suggested dim empty spaces, lit only by the eternal stars, where the soul, all naked, adventured

If I am rhetorical it is because Stroeve was rhetorical. (Do we not know that man in moments of emotion

expresses himself naturally in the terms of a novelette?) Stroeve was trying to express a feeling which he had

never known before, and he did not know how to put it into common terms. He was like the mystic seeking to

describe the ineffable. But one fact he made clear to me; people talk of beauty lightly, and having no feeling

for words, they use that one carelessly, so that it loses its force; and the thing it stands for, sharing its name

with a hundred trivial objects, is deprived of dignity. They call beautiful a dress, a dog, a sermon; and when

they are face to face with Beauty cannot recognise it. The false emphasis with which they try to deck their

worthless thoughts blunts their susceptibilities. Like the charlatan who counterfeits a spiritual force he has

sometimes felt, they lose the power they have abused. But Stroeve, the unconquerable buffoon, had a love

and an understanding of beauty which were as honest and sincere as was his own sincere and honest soul. It

"We both loved Blanche. There would have been room for him in my mother's house. I think the company of

poor, simple people would have done his soul a great good. I think he might have learnt from them something

"He smiled a little. I suppose he thought me very silly. He said he had other fish to fry."

I could have wished that Strickland had used some other phrase to indicate his refusal.

I wondered why Strickland had done that. But I made no remark, and for some time we kept silence.

"I got a Jew in, and he gave me a round sum for the lot. I'm taking my pictures home with me. Beside them I

I felt that his chance was to put all the past behind him. I hoped that the grief which now seemed intolerable

would be softened by the lapse of time, and a merciful forgetfulness would help him to take up once more the

burden of life. He was young still, and in a few years he would look back on all his misery with a sadness in

which there would be something not unpleasurable. Sooner or later he would marry some honest soul in

Holland, and I felt sure he would be happy. I smiled at the thought of the vast number of bad pictures he

For the next month, occupied with my own affairs, I saw no one connected with this lamentable business, and

my mind ceased to be occupied with it. But one day, when I was walking along, bent on some errand, I

passed Charles Strickland. The sight of him brought back to me all the horror which I was not unwilling to

forget, and I felt in me a sudden repulsion for the cause of it. Nodding, for it would have been childish to cut

It was characteristic of him to display geniality with anyone who showed a disinclination to meet him, and

I did not answer, and he walked by my side silently. We continued thus for perhaps a quarter of a mile. I

began to feel a little ridiculous. At last we passed a stationer's, and it occurred to me that I might as well buy

I shrugged my shoulders, and went into the shop. I reflected that French paper was bad, and that, foiled of my

purpose, I need not burden myself with a purchase that I did not need. I asked for something I knew could not

We walked on in silence, and then came to a place where several streets met. I stopped at the curb.

"In that case I should have thought you could see also that I don't want your company."

I could not help a chuckle. It is one of the defects of my character that I cannot altogether dislike anyone who

"I think you're detestable. You're the most loathsome beast that it's ever been my misfortune to meet. Why do

"Damn it all," I said, more violently because I had an inkling my motive was none too creditable, "I don't

His tone made me feel not a little ridiculous. I knew that he was looking at me sideways, with a sardonic

"I should be a damned fool if I thought I had any chance of borrowing money from you."

"You'll never really dislike me so long as I give you the opportunity to get off a good thing now and then."

I had to bite my lip to prevent myself from laughing. What he said had a hateful truth in it, and another defect

of my character is that I enjoy the company of those, however depraved, who can give me a Roland for my

Oliver. I began to feel that my abhorrence for Strickland could only be sustained by an effort on my part. I

recognised my moral weakness, but saw that my disapprobation had in it already something of a pose; and I

knew that if I felt it, his own keen instinct had discovered it, too. He was certainly laughing at me up his

sleeve. I left him the last word, and sought refuge in a shrug of the shoulders and taciturnity.

We arrived at the house in which I lived. I would not ask him to come in with me, but walked up the stairs

without a word. He followed me, and entered the apartment on my heels. He had not been in it before, but he

never gave a glance at the room I had been at pains to make pleasing to the eye. There was a tin of tobacco on

the table, and, taking out his pipe, he filled it. He sat down on the only chair that had no arms and tilted

"If you're going to make yourself at home, why don't you sit in an armchair?" I asked irritably.

"I'm not," I retorted, "but only about my own. It makes me uncomfortable to see someone sit on an

He chuckled, but did not move. He smoked on in silence, taking no further notice of me, and apparently was

Until long habit has blunted the sensibility, there is something disconcerting to the writer in the instinct which

causes him to take an interest in the singularities of human nature so absorbing that his moral sense is

powerless against it. He recognises in himself an artistic satisfaction in the contemplation of evil which a

little startles him; but sincerity forces him to confess that the disapproval he feels for certain actions is not

nearly so strong as his curiosity in their reasons. The character of a scoundrel, logical and complete, has a

fascination for his creator which is an outrage to law and order. I expect that Shakespeare devised Iago with a

gusto which he never knew when, weaving moonbeams with his fancy, he imagined Desdemona. It may be

that in his rogues the writer gratifies instincts deeprooted in him, which the manners and customs of a

civilised world have forced back to the mysterious recesses of the subconscious. In giving to the character of

his invention flesh and bones he is giving life to that part of himself which finds no other means of

There was in my soul a perfectly genuine horror of Strickland, and side by side with it a cold curiosity to

discover his motives. I was puzzled by him, and I was eager to see how he regarded the tragedy he had

caused in the lives of people who had used him with so much kindness. I applied the scalpel boldly.

"Stroeve told me that picture you painted of his wife was the best thing you've ever done."

He was quiet for a moment or two, then he took his pipe out of his mouth again, and chuckled.

His callousness was inhuman, and in my indignation I was not inclined to mince my words.

"As a mere matter of curiosity I wish you'd tell me, have you felt the smallest twinge of remorse for Blanche

"Let me put the facts before you. You were dying, and Dirk Stroeve took you into his own house. He nursed

you like a mother. He sacrificed his time and his comfort and his money for you. He snatched you from the

"Granting that you owed him no gratitude, were you obliged to go out of your way to take his wife from him?

Until you came on the scene they were happy. Why couldn't you leave them alone?"

"You are a discerning fellow. Do you think she could ever have forgiven him for what he did for her?"

"She was a governess in the family of some Roman prince, and the son of the house seduced her. She thought

he was going to marry her. They turned her out into the street neck and crop. She was going to have a baby,

I had often wondered why that illassorted pair had married, but just that explanation had never occurred to

me. That was perhaps the cause of the peculiar quality of Dirk's love for his wife. I had noticed in it

something more than passion. I remembered also how I had always fancied that her reserve concealed I knew

not what; but now I saw in it more than the desire to hide a shameful secret. Her tranquillity was like the

sullen calm that broods over an island which has been swept by a hurricane. Her cheerfulness was the

cheerfulness of despair. Strickland interrupted my reflections with an observation the profound cynicism of

"A woman can forgive a man for the harm he does her," he said, "but she can never forgive him for the

"It must be reassuring to you to know that you certainly run no risk of incurring the resentment of the women

"You are always prepared to sacrifice your principles for a repartee," he answered.

"How do I know?" he said at last. "She couldn't bear the sight of me. It amused me."

"There wasn't any need. She knew. I never said a word. She was frightened. At last I took her."

I do not know what there was in the way he told me this that extraordinarily suggested the violence of his

desire. It was disconcerting and rather horrible. His life was strangely divorced from material things, and it

was as though his body at times wreaked a fearful revenge on his spirit. The satyr in him suddenly took

possession, and he was powerless in the grip of an instinct which had all the strength of the primitive forces

of nature. It was an obsession so complete that there was no room in his soul for prudence or gratitude.

"I didn't," he answered, frowning. "When she said she was coming I was nearly as surprised as Stroeve. I told

her that when I'd had enough of her she'd have to go, and she said she'd risk that." He paused a little. "She had

a wonderful body, and I wanted to paint a nude. When I'd finished my picture I took no more interest in her."

"I don't want love. I haven't time for it. It's weakness. I am a man, and sometimes I want a woman. When I've

satisfied my passion I'm ready for other things. I can't overcome my desire, but I hate it; it imprisons my

spirit; I look forward to the time when I shall be free from all desire and can give myself without hindrance to

my work. Because women can do nothing except love, they've given it a ridiculous importance. They want to

persuade us that it's the whole of life. It's an insignificant part. I know lust. That's normal and healthy. Love is

a disease. Women are the instruments of my pleasure; I have no patience with their claim to be helpmates,

I had never heard Strickland speak so much at one time. He spoke with a passion of indignation. But neither

here nor elsewhere do I pretend to give his exact words; his vocabulary was small, and he had no gift for

framing sentences, so that one had to piece his meaning together out of interjections, the expression of his

"You should have lived at a time when women were chattels and men the masters of slaves," I said.

I could not help laughing at this remark, made in all seriousness; but he went on, walking up and down the

room like a caged beast, intent on expressing what he felt, but found such difficulty in putting coherently.

"When a woman loves you she's not satisfied until she possesses your soul. Because she's weak, she has a

rage for domination, and nothing less will satisfy her. She has a small mind, and she resents the abstract

which she is unable to grasp. She is occupied with material things, and she is jealous of the ideal. The soul of

man wanders through the uttermost regions of the universe, and she seeks to imprison it in the circle of her

accountbook. Do you remember my wife? I saw Blanche little by little trying all her tricks. With infinite

patience she prepared to snare me and bind me. She wanted to bring me down to her level; she cared nothing

for me, she only wanted me to be hers. She was willing to do everything in the world for me except the one

"She could have gone back to Stroeve," he said irritably. "He was ready to take her."

"You're inhuman," I answered. "It's as useless to talk to you about these things as to describe colours to a man

He stopped in front of my chair, and stood looking down at me with an expression in which I read a

I thought over his question, for I wanted to answer it truthfully, at all events to my soul.

"It may be a lack of sympathy in myself if it does not make any great difference to me that she is dead. Life

had a great deal to offer her. I think it's terrible that she should have been deprived of it in that cruel way, and

"You have not the courage of your convictions. Life has no value. Blanche Stroeve didn't commit suicide

because I left her, but because she was a foolish and unbalanced woman. But we've talked about her quite

enough; she was an entirely unimportant person. Come, and I'll show you my pictures."

He spoke as though I were a child that needed to be distracted. I was sore, but not with him so much as with

myself. I thought of the happy life that pair had led in the cosy studio in Montmartre, Stroeve and his wife,

their simplicity, kindness, and hospitality; it seemed to me cruel that it should have been broken to pieces by

a ruthless chance; but the cruellest thing of all was that in fact it made no great difference. The world went

on, and no one was a penny the worse for all that wretchedness. I had an idea that Dirk, a man of greater

emotional reactions than depth of feeling, would soon forget; and Blanche's life, begun with who knows what

bright hopes and what dreams, might just as well have never been lived. It all seemed useless and inane.

"Why do you seek my acquaintance?" I asked him. "You know that I hate and despise you."

"Your only quarrel with me really is that I don't care a twopenny damn what you think about me."

I felt my cheeks grow red with sudden anger. It was impossible to make him understand that one might be

outraged by his callous selfishness. I longed to pierce his armour of complete indifference. I knew also that in

the end there was truth in what he said. Unconsciously, perhaps, we treasure the power we have over people

by their regard for our opinion of them, and we hate those upon whom we have no such influence. I suppose

it is the bitterest wound to human pride. But I would not let him see that I was put out.

"Is it possible for any man to disregard others entirely?" I said, though more to myself than to him. "You're

dependent on others for everything in existence. It's a preposterous attempt to try to live only for yourself and

by yourself. Sooner or later you'll be ill and tired and old, and then you'll crawl back into the herd. Won't you

be ashamed when you feel in your heart the desire for comfort and sympathy? You're trying an impossible

thing. Sooner or later the human being in you will yearn for the common bonds of humanity."

I stared at him. He stood before me, motionless, with a mocking smile in his eyes; but for all that, for a

moment I had an inkling of a fiery, tortured spirit, aiming at something greater than could be conceived by

anything that was bound up with the flesh. I had a fleeting glimpse of a pursuit of the ineffable. I looked at

the man before me in his shabby clothes, with his great nose and shining eyes, his red beard and untidy hair;

and I had a strange sensation that it was only an envelope, and I was in the presence of a disembodied spirit.

I did not know why Strickland had suddenly offered to show them to me. I welcomed the opportunity. A

man's work reveals him. In social intercourse he gives you the surface that he wishes the world to accept, and

you can only gain a true knowledge of him by inferences from little actions, of which he is unconscious, and

from fleeting expressions, which cross his face unknown to him. Sometimes people carry to such perfection

the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem. But in his book or

his picture the real man delivers himself defenceless. His pretentiousness will only expose his vacuity. The

lathe painted to look like iron is seen to be but a lathe. No affectation of peculiarity can conceal a

commonplace mind. To the acute observer no one can produce the most casual work without disclosing the

As I walked up the endless stairs of the house in which Strickland lived, I confess that I was a little excited. It

seemed to me that I was on the threshold of a surprising adventure. I looked about the room with curiosity. It

was even smaller and more bare than I remembered it. I wondered what those friends of mine would say who

demanded vast studios, and vowed they could not work unless all the conditions were to their liking.

"You'd better stand there," he said, pointing to a spot from which, presumably, he fancied I could see to best

He placed a picture on the easel, and let me look at it for a minute or two; then took it down and put another

in its place. I think he showed me about thirty canvases. It was the result of the six years during which he had

been painting. He had never sold a picture. The canvases were of different sizes. The smaller were pictures of

stilllife and the largest were landscapes. There were about half a dozen portraits.

I wish I could say that I recognised at once their beauty and their great originality. Now that I have seen many

of them again and the rest are familiar to me in reproductions, I am astonished that at first sight I was bitterly

disappointed. I felt nothing of the peculiar thrill which it is the property of art to give. The impression that

Strickland's pictures gave me was disconcerting; and the fact remains, always to reproach me, that I never

even thought of buying any. I missed a wonderful chance. Most of them have found their way into museums,

and the rest are the treasured possessions of wealthy amateurs. I try to find excuses for myself. I think that my

taste is good, but I am conscious that it has no originality. I know very little about painting, and I wander

along trails that others have blazed for me. At that time I had the greatest admiration for the impressionists. I

longed to possess a Sisley and a Degas, and I worshipped Manet. His Olympia> seemed to me the greatest

picture of modern times, and Le Dejeuner sur l'Herbe> moved me profoundly. These works seemed to me the

I will not describe the pictures that Strickland showed me. Descriptions of pictures are always dull, and these,

besides, are familiar to all who take an interest in such things. Now that his influence has so enormously

affected modern painting, now that others have charted the country which he was among the first to explore,

Strickland's pictures, seen for the first time, would find the mind more prepared for them; but it must be

remembered that I had never seen anything of the sort. First of all I was taken aback by what seemed to me

the clumsiness of his technique. Accustomed to the drawing of the old masters, and convinced that Ingres was

the greatest draughtsman of recent times, I thought that Strickland drew very badly. I knew nothing of the

simplification at which he aimed. I remember a stilllife of oranges on a plate, and I was bothered because

the plate was not round and the oranges were lopsided. The portraits were a little larger than lifesize, and

this gave them an ungainly look. To my eyes the faces looked like caricatures. They were painted in a way

that was entirely new to me. The landscapes puzzled me even more. There were two or three pictures of the

forest at Fontainebleau and several of streets in Paris: my first feeling was that they might have been painted

by a drunken cabdriver. I was perfectly bewildered. The colour seemed to me extraordinarily crude. It passed

through my mind that the whole thing was a stupendous, incomprehensible farce. Now that I look back I am

more than ever impressed by Stroeve's acuteness. He saw from the first that here was a revolution in art, and

But if I was puzzled and disconcerted, I was not unimpressed. Even I, in my colossal ignorance, could not but

feel that here, trying to express itself, was real power. I was excited and interested. I felt that these pictures

had something to say to me that was very important for me to know, but I could not tell what it was. They

seemed to me ugly, but they suggested without disclosing a secret of momentous significance. They were

strangely tantalising. They gave me an emotion that I could not analyse. They said something that words were

powerless to utter. I fancy that Strickland saw vaguely some spiritual meaning in material things that was so

strange that he could only suggest it with halting symbols. It was as though he found in the chaos of the

universe a new pattern, and were attempting clumsily, with anguish of soul, to set it down. I saw a tormented

"I think you're trying to say something, I don't quite know what it is, but I'm not sure that the best way of

When I imagined that on seeing his pictures I should get a clue to the understanding of his strange character I

was mistaken. They merely increased the astonishment with which he filled me. I was more at sea than ever.

The only thing that seemed clear to me and perhaps even this was fanciful was that he was

passionately striving for liberation from some power that held him. But what the power was and what line the

liberation would take remained obscure. Each one of us is alone in the world. He is shut in a tower of brass,

and can communicate with his fellows only by signs, and the signs have no common value, so that their sense

is vague and uncertain. We seek pitifully to convey to others the treasures of our heart, but they have not the

power to accept them, and so we go lonely, side by side but not together, unable to know our fellows and

unknown by them. We are like people living in a country whose language they know so little that, with all

manner of beautiful and profound things to say, they are condemned to the banalities of the conversation

manual. Their brain is seething with ideas, and they can only tell you that the umbrella of the gardener's aunt

The final impression I received was of a prodigious effort to express some state of the soul, and in this effort,

I fancied, must be sought the explanation of what so utterly perplexed me. It was evident that colours and

forms had a significance for Strickland that was peculiar to himself. He was under an intolerable necessity to

convey something that he felt, and he created them with that intention alone. He did not hesitate to simplify

or to distort if he could get nearer to that unknown thing he sought. Facts were nothing to him, for beneath

the mass of irrelevant incidents he looked for something significant to himself. It was as though he had

Though these pictures confused and puzzled me, I could not be unmoved by the emotion that was patent in

them; and, I knew not why, I felt in myself a feeling that with regard to Strickland was the last I had ever

"I think I know now why you surrendered to your feeling for Blanche Stroeve," I said to him.

"I think your courage failed. The weakness of your body communicated itself to your soul. I do not know

what infinite yearning possesses you, so that you are driven to a perilous, lonely search for some goal where

you expect to find a final release from the spirit that torments you. I see you as the eternal pilgrim to some

shrine that perhaps does not exist. I do not know to what inscrutable Nirvana you aim. Do you know

yourself? Perhaps it is Truth and Freedom that you seek, and for a moment you thought that you might find

release in Love. I think your tired soul sought rest in a woman's arms, and when you found no rest there you

hated her. You had no pity for her, because you have no pity for yourself. And you killed her out of fear,

A week later I heard by chance that Strickland had gone to Marseilles. I never saw him again.

Looking back, I realise that what I have written about Charles Strickland must seem very unsatisfactory. I

have given incidents that came to my knowledge, but they remain obscure because I do not know the reasons

that led to them. The strangest, Strickland's determination to become a painter, seems to be arbitrary; and

though it must have had causes in the circumstances of his life, I am ignorant of them. From his own

conversation I was able to glean nothing. If I were writing a novel, rather than narrating such facts as I know

of a curious personality, I should have invented much to account for this change of heart. I think I should

have shown a strong vocation in boyhood, crushed by the will of his father or sacrificed to the necessity of

earning a living; I should have pictured him impatient of the restraints of life; and in the struggle between his

passion for art and the duties of his station I could have aroused sympathy for him. I should so have made

him a more imposing figure. Perhaps it would have been possible to see in him a new Prometheus. There was

here, maybe, the opportunity for a modern version of the hero who for the good of mankind exposes himself

On the other hand, I might have found his motives in the influence of the married relation. There are a dozen

ways in which this might be managed. A latent gift might reveal itself on acquaintance with the painters and

writers whose society his wife sought; or domestic incompatability might turn him upon himself; a love affair

might fan into bright flame a fire which I could have shown smouldering dimly in his heart. I think then I

should have drawn Mrs. Strickland quite differently. I should have abandoned the facts and made her a

nagging, tiresome woman, or else a bigoted one with no sympathy for the claims of the spirit. I should have

made Strickland's marriage a long torment from which escape was the only possible issue. I think I should

have emphasised his patience with the unsuitable mate, and the compassion which made him unwilling to

throw off the yoke that oppressed him. I should certainly have eliminated the children.

An effective story might also have been made by bringing him into contact with some old painter whom the

pressure of want or the desire for commercial success had made false to the genius of his youth, and who,

seeing in Strickland the possibilities which himself had wasted, influenced him to forsake all and follow the

divine tyranny of art. I think there would have been something ironic in the picture of the successful old man,

rich and honoured, living in another the life which he, though knowing it was the better part, had not had the

The facts are much duller. Strickland, a boy fresh from school, went into a broker's office without any feeling

of distaste. Until he married he led the ordinary life of his fellows, gambling mildly on the Exchange,

interested to the extent of a sovereign or two on the result of the Derby or the Oxford and Cambridge Race. I

think he boxed a little in his spare time. On his chimneypiece he had photographs of Mrs. Langtry and Mary

Anderson. He read Punch> and the Sporting Times>. He went to dances in Hampstead.

It matters less that for so long I should have lost sight of him. The years during which he was struggling to

acquire proficiency in a difficult art were monotonous, and I do not know that there was anything significant

in the shifts to which he was put to earn enough money to keep him. An account of them would be an account

of the things he had seen happen to other people. I do not think they had any effect on his own character. He

must have acquired experiences which would form abundant material for a picaresque novel of modern Paris,

but he remained aloof, and judging from his conversation there was nothing in those years that had made a

particular impression on him. Perhaps when he went to Paris he was too old to fall a victim to the glamour of

his environment. Strange as it may seem, he always appeared to me not only practical, but immensely

matteroffact. I suppose his life during this period was romantic, but he certainly saw no romance in it. It

may be that in order to realise the romance of life you must have something of the actor in you; and, capable

of standing outside yourself, you must be able to watch your actions with an interest at once detached and

absorbed. But no one was more singleminded than Strickland. I never knew anyone who was less

selfconscious. But it is unfortunate that I can give no description of the arduous steps by which he reached

such mastery over his art as he ever acquired; for if I could show him undaunted by failure, by an unceasing

effort of courage holding despair at bay, doggedly persistent in the face of selfdoubt, which is the artist's

bitterest enemy, I might excite some sympathy for a personality which, I am all too conscious, must appear

singularly devoid of charm. But I have nothing to go on. I never once saw Strickland at work, nor do I know

that anyone else did. He kept the secret of his struggles to himself. If in the loneliness of his studio he

wrestled desperately with the Angel of the Lord he never allowed a soul to divine his anguish.

When I come to his connection with Blanche Stroeve I am exasperated by the fragmentariness of the facts at

my disposal. To give my story coherence I should describe the progress of their tragic union, but I know

nothing of the three months during which they lived together. I do not know how they got on or what they

talked about. After all, there are twentyfour hours in the day, and the summits of emotion can only be

reached at rare intervals. I can only imagine how they passed the rest of the time. While the light lasted and

so long as Blanche's strength endured, I suppose that Strickland painted, and it must have irritated her when

she saw him absorbed in his work. As a mistress she did not then exist for him, but only as a model; and then

there were long hours in which they lived side by side in silence. It must have frightened her. When

Strickland suggested that in her surrender to him there was a sense of triumph over Dirk Stroeve, because he

had come to her help in her extremity, he opened the door to many a dark conjecture. I hope it was not true. It

seems to me rather horrible. But who can fathom the subtleties of the human heart? Certainly not those who

expect from it only decorous sentiments and normal emotions. When Blanche saw that, notwithstanding his

moments of passion, Strickland remained aloof, she must have been filled with dismay, and even in those

moments I surmise that she realised that to him she was not an individual, but an instrument of pleasure; he

was a stranger still, and she tried to bind him to herself with pathetic arts. She strove to ensnare him with

comfort and would not see that comfort meant nothing to him. She was at pains to get him the things to eat

that he liked, and would not see that he was indifferent to food. She was afraid to leave him alone. She

pursued him with attentions, and when his passion was dormant sought to excite it, for then at least she had

the illusion of holding him. Perhaps she knew with her intelligence that the chains she forged only aroused

his instinct of destruction, as the plateglass window makes your fingers itch for half a brick; but her heart,

incapable of reason, made her continue on a course she knew was fatal. She must have been very unhappy.

But the blindness of love led her to believe what she wanted to be true, and her love was so great that it

But my study of Strickland's character suffers from a greater defect than my ignorance of many facts.

Because they were obvious and striking, I have written of his relations to women; and yet they were but an

insignificant part of his life. It is an irony that they should so tragically have affected others. His real life

Here lies the unreality of fiction. For in men, as a rule, love is but an episode which takes its place among the

other affairs of the day, and the emphasis laid on it in novels gives it an importance which is untrue to life.

There are few men to whom it is the most important thing in the world, and they are not very interesting ones;

even women, with whom the subject is of paramount interest, have a contempt for them. They are flattered

and excited by them, but have an uneasy feeling that they are poor creatures. But even during the brief

intervals in which they are in love, men do other things which distract their mind; the trades by which they

earn their living engage their attention; they are absorbed in sport; they can interest themselves in art. For the

most part, they keep their various activities in various compartments, and they can pursue one to the

temporary exclusion of the other. They have a faculty of concentration on that which occupies them at the

moment, and it irks them if one encroaches on the other. As lovers, the difference between men and women is

With Strickland the sexual appetite took a very small place. It was unimportant. It was irksome. His soul

aimed elsewhither. He had violent passions, and on occasion desire seized his body so that he was driven to

an orgy of lust, but he hated the instincts that robbed him of his selfpossession. I think, even, he hated the

inevitable partner in his debauchery. When he had regained command over himself, he shuddered at the sight

of the woman he had enjoyed. His thoughts floated then serenely in the empyrean, and he felt towards her the

horror that perhaps the painted butterfly, hovering about the flowers, feels to the filthy chrysalis from which it

has triumphantly emerged. I suppose that art is a manifestation of the sexual instinct. It is the same emotion

which is excited in the human heart by the sight of a lovely woman, the Bay of Naples under the yellow

moon, and the Entombment> of Titian. It is possible that Strickland hated the normal release of sex because it

seemed to him brutal by comparison with the satisfaction of artistic creation. It seems strange even to myself,

when I have described a man who was cruel, selfish, brutal and sensual, to say that he was a great idealist.

He lived more poorly than an artisan. He worked harder. He cared nothing for those things which with most

people make life gracious and beautiful. He was indifferent to money. He cared nothing about fame. You

cannot praise him because he resisted the temptation to make any of those compromises with the world which

most of us yield to. He had no such temptation. It never entered his head that compromise was possible. He

lived in Paris more lonely than an anchorite in the deserts of Thebes. He asked nothing his fellows except that

they should leave him alone. He was singlehearted in his aim, and to pursue it he was willing to sacrifice not

A certain importance attaches to the views on art of painters, and this is the natural place for me to set down

what I know of Strickland's opinions of the great artists of the past. I am afraid I have very little worth noting.

Strickland was not a conversationalist, and he had no gift for putting what he had to say in the striking phrase

that the listener remembers. He had no wit. His humour, as will be seen if I have in any way succeeded in

reproducing the manner of his conversation, was sardonic. His repartee was rude. He made one laugh

sometimes by speaking the truth, but this is a form of humour which gains its force only by its unusualness; it

Strickland was not, I should say, a man of great intelligence, and his views on painting were by no means out

of the ordinary. I never heard him speak of those whose work had a certain analogy with his own of

Cezanne, for instance, or of Van Gogh; and I doubt very much if he had ever seen their pictures. He was not

greatly interested in the Impressionists. Their technique impressed him, but I fancy that he thought their

attitude commonplace. When Stroeve was holding forth at length on the excellence of Monet, he said: "I

prefer Winterhalter." But I dare say he said it to annoy, and if he did he certainly succeeded.

I am disappointed that I cannot report any extravagances in his opinions on the old masters. There is so much

in his character which is strange that I feel it would complete the picture if his views were outrageous. I feel

the need to ascribe to him fantastic theories about his predecessors, and it is with a certain sense of disillusion

that I confess he thought about them pretty much as does everybody else. I do not believe he knew El Greco.

He had a great but somewhat impatient admiration for Velasquez. Chardin delighted him, and Rembrandt

moved him to ecstasy. He described the impression that Rembrandt made on him with a coarseness I cannot

repeat. The only painter that interested him who was at all unexpected was Brueghel the Elder. I knew very

little about him at that time, and Strickland had no power to explain himself. I remember what he said about

When later, in Vienna, I saw several of Peter Brueghel's pictures, I thought I understood why he had attracted

Strickland's attention. Here, too, was a man with a vision of the world peculiar to himself. I made somewhat

copious notes at the time, intending to write something about him, but I have lost them, and have now only

the recollection of an emotion. He seemed to see his fellowcreatures grotesquely, and he was angry with

them because they were grotesque; life was a confusion of ridiculous, sordid happenings, a fit subject for

laughter, and yet it made him sorrowful to laugh. Brueghel gave me the impression of a man striving to

express in one medium feelings more appropriate to expression in another, and it may be that it was the

obscure consciousness of this that excited Strickland's sympathy. Perhaps both were trying to put down in

I have said already that but for the hazard of a journey to Tahiti I should doubtless never have written this

book. It is thither that after many wanderings Charles Strickland came, and it is there that he painted the

pictures on which his fame most securely rests. I suppose no artist achieves completely the realisation of the

dream that obsesses him, and Strickland, harassed incessantly by his struggle with technique, managed,

perhaps, less than others to express the vision that he saw with his mind's eye; but in Tahiti the circumstances

were favourable to him; he found in his surroundings the accidents necessary for his inspiration to become

effective, and his later pictures give at least a suggestion of what he sought. They offer the imagination

something new and strange. It is as though in this far country his spirit, that had wandered disembodied,

seeking a tenement, at last was able to clothe itself in flesh. To use the hackneyed phrase, here he found

It would seem that my visit to this remote island should immediately revive my interest in Strickland, but the

work I was engaged in occupied my attention to the exclusion of something that was irrelevant, and it was not

till I had been there some days that I even remembered his connection with it. After all, I had not seen him for

fifteen years, and it was nine since he died. But I think my arrival at Tahiti would have driven out of my head

matters of much more immediate importance to me, and even after a week I found it not easy to order myself

soberly. I remember that on my first morning I awoke early, and when I came on to the terrace of the hotel no

one was stirring. I wandered round to the kitchen, but it was locked, and on a bench outside it a native boy

was sleeping. There seemed no chance of breakfast for some time, so I sauntered down to the waterfront.

The Chinamen were already busy in their shops. The sky had still the pallor of dawn, and there was a ghostly

silence on the lagoon. Ten miles away the island of Murea, like some high fastness of the Holy Grail, guarded

I did not altogether believe my eyes. The days that had passed since I left Wellington seemed extraordinary

and unusual. Wellington is trim and neat and English; it reminds you of a seaport town on the South Coast.

And for three days afterwards the sea was stormy. Gray clouds chased one another across the sky. Then the

wind dropped, and the sea was calm and blue. The Pacific is more desolate than other seas; its spaces seem

more vast, and the most ordinary journey upon it has somehow the feeling of an adventure. The air you

breathe is an elixir which prepares you for the unexpected. Nor is it vouchsafed to man in the flesh to know

aught that more nearly suggests the approach to the golden realms of fancy than the approach to Tahiti.

Murea, the sister isle, comes into view in rocky splendour, rising from the desert sea mysteriously, like the

unsubstantial fabric of a magic wand. With its jagged outline it is like a Monseratt of the Pacific, and you

may imagine that there Polynesian knights guard with strange rites mysteries unholy for men to know. The

beauty of the island is unveiled as diminishing distance shows you in distincter shape its lovely peaks, but it

keeps its secret as you sail by, and, darkly inviolable, seems to fold itself together in a stony, inaccessible

grimness. It would not surprise you if, as you came near seeking for an opening in the reef, it vanished

suddenly from your view, and nothing met your gaze but the blue loneliness of the Pacific.

Tahiti is a lofty green island, with deep folds of a darker green, in which you divine silent valleys; there is

mystery in their sombre depths, down which murmur and plash cool streams, and you feel that in those

umbrageous places life from immemorial times has been led according to immemorial ways. Even here is

something sad and terrible. But the impression is fleeting, and serves only to give a greater acuteness to the

enjoyment of the moment. It is like the sadness which you may see in the jester's eyes when a merry company

is laughing at his sallies; his lips smile and his jokes are gayer because in the communion of laughter he finds

himself more intolerably alone. For Tahiti is smiling and friendly; it is like a lovely woman graciously

prodigal of her charm and beauty; and nothing can be more conciliatory than the entrance into the harbour at

Papeete. The schooners moored to the quay are trim and neat, the little town along the bay is white and

urbane, and the flamboyants, scarlet against the blue sky, flaunt their colour like a cry of passion. They are

sensual with an unashamed violence that leaves you breathless. And the crowd that throngs the wharf as the

steamer draws alongside is gay and debonair; it is a noisy, cheerful, gesticulating crowd. It is a sea of brown

faces. You have an impression of coloured movement against the flaming blue of the sky. Everything is done

with a great deal of bustle, the unloading of the baggage, the examination of the customs; and everyone

HAD not been in Tahiti long before I met Captain Nichols. He came in one morning when I was having

breakfast on the terrace of the hotel and introduced himself. He had heard that I was interested in Charles

Strickland, and announced that he was come to have a talk about him. They are as fond of gossip in Tahiti as

in an English village, and one or two enquiries I had made for pictures by Strickland had been quickly spread.

"Yes; I have my coffee early," he answered, "but I don't mind having a drop of whisky."

"I'm practically a teetotaller," he said, as he poured himself out a good halftumbler of Canadian Club.

When he smiled he showed broken and discoloured teeth. He was a very lean man, of no more than average

height, with gray hair cut short and a stubbly gray moustache. He had not shaved for a couple of days. His

face was deeply lined, burned brown by long exposure to the sun, and he had a pair of small blue eyes which

were astonishingly shifty. They moved quickly, following my smallest gesture, and they gave him the look of

a very thorough rogue. But at the moment he was all heartiness and goodfellowship. He was dressed in a

bedraggled suit of khaki, and his hands would have been all the better for a wash.

"I knew Strickland well," he said, as he leaned back in his chair and lit the cigar I had offered him. "It's

My friend's appearance suggested that he was now in the same predicament, and I prepared myself to

cultivate an agreeable acquaintance. The society of beachcombers always repays the small pains you need

be at to enjoy it. They are easy of approach and affable in conversation. They seldom put on airs, and the

offer of a drink is a sure way to their hearts. You need no laborious steps to enter upon familiarity with them,

and you can earn not only their confidence, but their gratitude, by turning an attentive ear to their discourse.

They look upon conversation as the great pleasure of life, thereby proving the excellence of their civilisation,

and for the most part they are entertaining talkers. The extent of their experience is pleasantly balanced by the

fertility of their imagination. It cannot be said that they are without guile, but they have a tolerant respect for

the law, when the law is supported by strength. It is hazardous to play poker with them, but their ingenuity

adds a peculiar excitement to the best game in the world. I came to know Captain Nichols very well before I

left Tahiti, and I am the richer for his acquaintance. I do not consider that the cigars and whisky he consumed

at my expense (he always refused cocktails, since he was practically a teetotaller), and the few dollars,

borrowed with a civil air of conferring a favour upon me, that passed from my pocket to his, were in any way

equivalent to the entertainment he afforded me. I remained his debtor. I should be sorry if my conscience,

insisting on a rigid attention to the matter in hand, forced me to dismiss him in a couple of lines.

I do not know why Captain Nichols first left England. It was a matter upon which he was reticent, and with

persons of his kind a direct question is never very discreet. He hinted at undeserved misfortune, and there is

no doubt that he looked upon himself as the victim of injustice. My fancy played with the various forms of

fraud and violence, and I agreed with him sympathetically when he remarked that the authorities in the old

country were so damned technical. But it was nice to see that any unpleasantness he had endured in his native

land had not impaired his ardent patriotism. He frequently declared that England was the finest country in the

world, sir, and he felt a lively superiority over Americans, Colonials, Dagos, Dutchmen, and Kanakas.

But I do not think he was a happy man. He suffered from dyspepsia, and he might often be seen sucking a

tablet of pepsin; in the morning his appetite was poor; but this affliction alone would hardly have impaired

his spirits. He had a greater cause of discontent with life than this. Eight years before he had rashly married a

wife. There are men whom a merciful Providence has undoubtedly ordained to a single life, but who from

wilfulness or through circumstances they could not cope with have flown in the face of its decrees. There is

no object more deserving of pity than the married bachelor. Of such was Captain Nichols. I met his wife. She

was a woman of twentyeight, I should think, though of a type whose age is always doubtful; for she cannot

have looked different when she was twenty, and at forty would look no older. She gave me an impression of

extraordinary tightness. Her plain face with its narrow lips was tight, her skin was stretched tightly over her

bones, her smile was tight, her hair was tight, her clothes were tight, and the white drill she wore had all the

effect of black bombazine. I could not imagine why Captain Nichols had married her, and having married her

why he had not deserted her. Perhaps he had, often, and his melancholy arose from the fact that he could

never succeed. However far he went and in howsoever secret a place he hid himself, I felt sure that Mrs.

Nichols, inexorable as fate and remorseless as conscience, would presently rejoin him. He could as little

The rogue, like the artist and perhaps the gentleman, belongs to no class. He is not embarrassed by the sans

gene> of the hobo, nor put out of countenance by the etiquette of the prince. But Mrs. Nichols belonged to

the welldefined class, of late become vocal, which is known as the lowermiddle. Her father, in fact, was a

policeman. I am certain that he was an efficient one. I do not know what her hold was on the Captain, but I do

not think it was love. I never heard her speak, but it may be that in private she had a copious conversation. At

any rate, Captain Nichols was frightened to death of her. Sometimes, sitting with me on the terrace of the

hotel, he would become conscious that she was walking in the road outside. She did not call him; she gave no

sign that she was aware of his existence; she merely walked up and down composedly. Then a strange

Neither wit nor whisky could detain him then. Yet he was a man who had faced undaunted hurricane and

typhoon, and would not have hesitated to fight a dozen unarmed niggers with nothing but a revolver to help

him. Sometimes Mrs. Nichols would send her daughter, a palefaced, sullen child of seven, to the hotel.

He rose to his feet at once, and accompanied his daughter along the road. I suppose it was a very pretty

example of the triumph of spirit over matter, and so my digression has at least the advantage of a moral.

I have tried to put some connection into the various things Captain Nichols told me about Strickland, and I

here set them down in the best order I can. They made one another's acquaintance during the latter part of the

winter following my last meeting with Strickland in Paris. How he had passed the intervening months I do

not know, but life must have been very hard, for Captain Nichols saw him first in the Asile de Nuit. There

was a strike at Marseilles at the time, and Strickland, having come to the end of his resources, had apparently

found it impossible to earn the small sum he needed to keep body and soul together.

The Asile de Nuit is a large stone building where pauper and vagabond may get a bed for a week, provided

their papers are in order and they can persuade the friars in charge that they are workingmen. Captain Nichols

noticed Strickland for his size and his singular appearance among the crowd that waited for the doors to open;

they waited listlessly, some walking to and fro, some leaning against the wall, and others seated on the curb

with their feet in the gutter; and when they filed into the office he heard the monk who read his papers

address him in English. But he did not have a chance to speak to him, since, as he entered the commonroom,

a monk came in with a huge Bible in his arms, mounted a pulpit which was at the end of the room, and began

the service which the wretched outcasts had to endure as the price of their lodging. He and Strickland were

assigned to different rooms, and when, thrown out of bed at five in the morning by a stalwart monk, he had

made his bed and washed his face, Strickland had already disappeared. Captain Nichols wandered about the

streets for an hour of bitter cold, and then made his way to the Place Victor Gelu, where the sailormen are

wont to congregate. Dozing against the pedestal of a statue, he saw Strickland again. He gave him a kick to

I recognised my friend's limited vocabulary, and I prepared to regard Captain Nichols as a trustworthy

After a moment's hesitation, Strickland scrambled to his feet, and together they went to the Bouchee de Pain,

where the hungry are given a wedge of bread, which they must eat there and then, for it is forbidden to take it

away; and then to the Cuillere de Soupe, where for a week, at eleven and four, you may get a bowl of thin,

salt soup. The two buildings are placed far apart, so that only the starving should be tempted to make use of

them. So they had breakfast, and so began the queer companionship of Charles Strickland and Captain

They must have spent something like four months at Marseilles in one another's society. Their career was

devoid of adventure, if by adventure you mean unexpected or thrilling incident, for their days were occupied

in the pursuit of enough money to get a night's lodging and such food as would stay the pangs of hunger. But

I wish I could give here the pictures, coloured and racy, which Captain Nichols' vivid narrative offered to the

imagination. His account of their discoveries in the low life of a seaport town would have made a charming

book, and in the various characters that came their way the student might easily have found matter for a very

complete dictionary of rogues. But I must content myself with a few paragraphs. I received the impression of

a life intense and brutal, savage, multicoloured, and vivacious. It made the Marseilles that I knew,

gesticulating and sunny, with its comfortable hotels and its restaurants crowded with the welltodo, tame

and commonplace. I envied men who had seen with their own eyes the sights that Captain Nichols described.

When the doors of the Asile de Nuit were closed to them, Strickland and Captain Nichols sought the

hospitality of Tough Bill. This was the master of a sailors' boardinghouse, a huge mulatto with a heavy fist,

who gave the stranded mariner food and shelter till he found him a berth. They lived with him a month,

sleeping with a dozen others, Swedes, negroes, Brazilians, on the floor of the two bare rooms in his house

which he assigned to his charges; and every day they went with him to the Place Victor Gelu, whither came

ships' captains in search of a man. He was married to an American woman, obese and slatternly, fallen to this

pass by Heaven knows what process of degradation, and every day the boarders took it in turns to help her

with the housework. Captain Nichols looked upon it as a smart piece of work on Strickland's part that he had

got out of this by painting a portrait of Tough Bill. Tough Bill not only paid for the canvas, colours, and

brushes, but gave Strickland a pound of smuggled tobacco into the bargain. For all I know, this picture may

still adorn the parlour of the tumbledown little house somewhere near the Quai de la Joliette, and I suppose it

could now be sold for fifteen hundred pounds. Strickland's idea was to ship on some vessel bound for

Australia or New Zealand, and from there make his way to Samoa or Tahiti. I do not know how he had come

upon the notion of going to the South Seas, though I remember that his imagination had long been haunted by

an island, all green and sunny, encircled by a sea more blue than is found in Northern latitudes. I suppose that

he clung to Captain Nichols because he was acquainted with those parts, and it was Captain Nichols who

"You see, Tahiti's French," he explained to me. "And the French aren't so damned technical."

Strickland had no papers, but that was not a matter to disconcert Tough Bill when he saw a profit (he took the

first month's wages of the sailor for whom he found a berth), and he provided Strickland with those of an

English stoker who had providentially died on his hands. But both Captain Nichols and Strickland were

bound East, and it chanced that the only opportunities for signing on were with ships sailing West. Twice

Strickland refused a berth on tramps sailing for the United States, and once on a collier going to Newcastle.

Tough Bill had no patience with an obstinacy which could only result in loss to himself, and on the last

occasion he flung both Strickland and Captain Nichols out of his house without more ado. They found

Tough Bill's fare was seldom extravagant, and you rose from his table almost as hungry as you sat down, but

for some days they had good reason to regret it. They learned what hunger was. The Cuillere de Soupe and

the Asile de Nuit were both closed to them, and their only sustenance was the wedge of bread which the

Bouchee de Pain provided. They slept where they could, sometimes in an empty truck on a siding near the

station, sometimes in a cart behind a warehouse; but it was bitterly cold, and after an hour or two of uneasy

dozing they would tramp the streets again. What they felt the lack of most bitterly was tobacco, and Captain

Nichols, for his part, could not do without it; he took to hunting the "Can o' Beer," for cigaretteends and the

"I've tasted worse smoking mixtures in a pipe," he added, with a philosophic shrug of his shoulders, as he

took a couple of cigars from the case I offered him, putting one in his mouth and the other in his pocket.

Now and then they made a bit of money. Sometimes a mail steamer would come in, and Captain Nichols,

having scraped acquaintance with the timekeeper, would succeed in getting the pair of them a job as

stevedores. When it was an English boat, they would dodge into the forecastle and get a hearty breakfast from

the crew. They took the risk of running against one of the ship's officers and being hustled down the gangway

"There's no harm in a kick in the hindquarters when your belly's full," said Captain Nichols, "and personally I

I had a lively picture of Captain Nichols flying headlong down a narrow gangway before the uplifted foot of

an angry mate, and, like a true Englishman, rejoicing in the spirit of the Mercantile Marine.

There were often odd jobs to be got about the fishmarket. Once they each of them earned a franc by loading

trucks with innumerable boxes of oranges that had been dumped down on the quay. One day they had a

stroke of luck: one of the boardingmasters got a contract to paint a tramp that had come in from Madagascar

round the Cape of Good Hope, and they spent several days on a plank hanging over the side, covering the

rusty hull with paint. It was a situation that must have appealed to Strickland's sardonic humour. I asked

"Never knew him say a cross word," answered the Captain. "He'd be a bit surly sometimes, but when we

hadn't had a bite since morning, and we hadn't even got the price of a lie down at the Chink's, he'd be as lively

I was not surprised at this. Strickland was just the man to rise superior to circumstances, when they were such

as to occasion despondency in most; but whether this was due to equanimity of soul or to contradictoriness it

The Chink's Head was a name the beachcombers gave to a wretched inn off the Rue Bouterie, kept by a

oneeyed Chinaman, where for six sous you could sleep in a cot and for three on the floor. Here they made

friends with others in as desperate condition as themselves, and when they were penniless and the night was

bitter cold, they were glad to borrow from anyone who had earned a stray franc during the day the price of a

roof over their heads. They were not niggardly, these tramps, and he who had money did not hesitate to share

it among the rest. They belonged to all the countries in the world, but this was no bar to goodfellowship; for

they felt themselves freemen of a country whose frontiers include them all, the great country of Cockaine.

"But I guess Strickland was an ugly customer when he was roused," said Captain Nichols, reflectively. "One

day we ran into Tough Bill in the Place, and he asked Charlie for the papers he'd given him."

"He was a powerful fellow, Tough Bill, but he didn't quite like the look of Charlie, so he began cursing him.

He called him pretty near every name he could lay hands on, and when Tough Bill began cursing it was worth

listening to him. Well, Charlie stuck it for a bit, then he stepped forward and he just said: `Get out, you

bloody swine.' It wasn't so much what he said, but the way he said it. Tough Bill never spoke another word;

you could see him go yellow, and he walked away as if he'd remembered he had a date."

Strickland, according to Captain Nichols, did not use exactly the words I have given, but since this book is

meant for family reading I have thought it better, at the expense of truth, to put into his mouth expressions

Now, Tough Bill was not the man to put up with humiliation at the hands of a common sailor. His power

depended on his prestige, and first one, then another, of the sailors who lived in his house told them that he

One night Captain Nichols and Strickland were sitting in one of the bars of the Rue Bouterie. The Rue

Bouterie is a narrow street of onestoreyed houses, each house consisting of but one room; they are like the

booths in a crowded fair or the cages of animals in a circus. At every door you see a woman. Some lean lazily

against the sideposts, humming to themselves or calling to the passerby in a raucous voice, and some

listlessly read. They are French. Italian, Spanish, Japanese, coloured; some are fat and some are thin; and

under the thick paint on their faces, the heavy smears on their eyebrows, and the scarlet of their lips, you see

the lines of age and the scars of dissipation. Some wear black shifts and fleshcoloured stockings; some with

curly hair, dyed yellow, are dressed like little girls in short muslin frocks. Through the open door you see a

redtiled floor, a large wooden bed, and on a deal table a ewer and a basin. A motley crowd saunters along

the streets Lascars off a P. and O., blond Northmen from a Swedish barque, Japanese from a manofwar,

English sailors, Spaniards, pleasantlooking fellows from a French cruiser, negroes off an American tramp.

By day it is merely sordid, but at night, lit only by the lamps in the little huts, the street has a sinister beauty.

The hideous lust that pervades the air is oppressive and horrible, and yet there is something mysterious in the

sight which haunts and troubles you. You feel I know not what primitive force which repels and yet

fascinates you. Here all the decencies of civilisation are swept away, and you feel that men are face to face

with a sombre reality. There is an atmosphere that is at once intense and tragic.

In the bar in which Strickland and Nichols sat a mechanical piano was loudly grinding out dance music.

Round the room people were sitting at table, here half a dozen sailors uproariously drunk, there a group of

soldiers; and in the middle, crowded together, couples were dancing. Bearded sailors with brown faces and

large horny hands clasped their partners in a tight embrace. The women wore nothing but a shift. Now and

then two sailors would get up and dance together. The noise was deafening. People were singing, shouting,

laughing; and when a man gave a long kiss to the girl sitting on his knees, catcalls from the English sailors

increased the din. The air was heavy with the dust beaten up by the heavy boots of the men, and gray with

smoke. It was very hot. Behind the bar was seated a woman nursing her baby. The waiter, an undersized

youth with a flat, spotty face, hurried to and fro carrying a tray laden with glasses of beer.

In a little while Tough Bill, accompanied by two huge negroes, came in, and it was easy to see that he was

already three parts drunk. He was looking for trouble. He lurched against a table at which three soldiers were

sitting and knocked over a glass of beer. There was an angry altercation, and the owner of the bar stepped

forward and ordered Tough Bill to go. He was a hefty fellow, in the habit of standing no nonsense from his

customers, and Tough Bill hesitated. The landlord was not a man he cared to tackle, for the police were on his

side, and with an oath he turned on his heel. Suddenly he caught sight of Strickland. He rolled up to him. He

did not speak. He gathered the spittle in his mouth and spat full in Strickland's face. Strickland seized his

glass and flung it at him. The dancers stopped suddenly still. There was an instant of complete silence, but

when Tough Bill threw himself on Strickland the lust of battle seized them all, and in a moment there was a

confused scrimmage. Tables were overturned, glasses crashed to the ground. There was a hellish row. The

women scattered to the door and behind the bar. Passersby surged in from the street. You heard curses in

every tongue the sound of blows, cries; and in the middle of the room a dozen men were fighting with all

their might. On a sudden the police rushed in, and everyone who could made for the door. When the bar was

more or less cleared, Tough Bill was lying insensible on the floor with a great gash in his head. Captain

Nichols dragged Strickland, bleeding from a wound in his arm, his clothes in rags, into the street. His own

"I guess you'd better get out of Marseilles before Tough Bill comes out of hospital," he said to Strickland,

Captain Nichols was anxious. He knew Tough Bill's vindictiveness. Strickland had downed the mulatto

twice, and the mulatto, sober, was a man to be reckoned with. He would bide his time stealthily. He would be

in no hurry, but one night Strickland would get a knifethrust in his back, and in a day or two the corpse of a

nameless beachcomber would be fished out of the dirty water of the harbour. Nichols went next evening to

Tough Bill's house and made enquiries. He was in hospital still, but his wife, who had been to see him, said

"That's what I always say," reflected Captain Nichols, "when you hurt a man, hurt him bad. It gives you a bit

Then Strickland had a bit of luck. A ship bound for Australia had sent to the Sailors' Home for a stoker in

place of one who had thrown himself overboard off Gibraltar in an attack of delirium tremens.

"You double down to the harbour, my lad," said the Captain to Strickland, "and sign on. You've got your

Strickland set off at once, and that was the last Captain Nichols saw of him. The ship was only in port for six

hours, and in the evening Captain Nichols watched the vanishing smoke from her funnels as she ploughed

I have narrated all this as best I could, because I like the contrast of these episodes with the life that I had

seen Strickland live in Ashley Gardens when he was occupied with stocks and shares; but I am aware that

Captain Nichols was an outrageous liar, and I dare say there is not a word of truth in anything he told me. I

should not be surprised to learn that he had never seen Strickland in his life, and owed his knowledge of

It is here that I purposed to end my book. My first idea was to begin it with the account of Strickland's last

years in Tahiti and with his horrible death, and then to go back and relate what I knew of his beginnings. This

I meant to do, not from wilfulness, but because I wished to leave Strickland setting out with I know not what

fancies in his lonely soul for the unknown islands which fired his imagination. I liked the picture of him

starting at the age of fortyseven, when most men have already settled comfortably in a groove, for a new

world. I saw him, the sea gray under the mistral and foamflecked, watching the vanishing coast of France,

which he was destined never to see again; and I thought there was something gallant in his bearing and

dauntless in his soul. I wished so to end on a note of hope. It seemed to emphasise the unconquerable spirit of

man. But I could not manage it. Somehow I could not get into my story, and after trying once or twice I had

to give it up; I started from the beginning in the usual way, and made up my mind I could only tell what I

Those that I have now are fragmentary. I am in the position of a biologist who from a single bone must

reconstruct not only the appearance of an extinct animal, but its habits. Strickland made no particular

impression on the people who came in contact with him in Tahiti. To them he was no more than a

beachcomber in constant need of money, remarkable only for the peculiarity that he painted pictures which

seemed to them absurd; and it was not till he had been dead for some years and agents came from the dealers

in Paris and Berlin to look for any pictures which might still remain on the island, that they had any idea that

among them had dwelt a man of consequence. They remembered then that they could have bought for a song

canvases which now were worth large sums, and they could not forgive themselves for the opportunity which

had escaped them. There was a Jewish trader called Cohen, who had come by one of Strickland's pictures in a

singular way. He was a little old Frenchman, with soft kind eyes and a pleasant smile, half trader and half

seaman, who owned a cutter in which he wandered boldly among the Paumotus and the Marquesas, taking

out trade goods and bringing back copra, shell, and pearls. I went to see him because I was told he had a large

black pearl which he was willing to sell cheaply, and when I discovered that it was beyond my means I began

"You see, I was interested in him because he was a painter," he told me. "We don't get many painters in the

islands, and I was sorry for him because he was such a bad one. I gave him his first job. I had a plantation on

the peninsula, and I wanted a white overseer. You never get any work out of the natives unless you have a

white man over them. I said to him: `You'll have plenty of time for painting, and you can earn a bit of

"I made allowances. I have always had a sympathy for artists. It is in our blood, you know. But he only

remained a few months. When he had enough money to buy paints and canvases he left me. The place had

got hold of him by then, and he wanted to get away into the bush. But I continued to see him now and then.

He would turn up in Papeete every few months and stay a little while; he'd get money out of someone or

other and then disappear again. It was on one of these visits that he came to me and asked for the loan of two

hundred francs. He looked as if he hadn't had a meal for a week, and I hadn't the heart to refuse him. Of

course, I never expected to see my money again. Well, a year later he came to see me once more, and he

brought a picture with him. He did not mention the money he owed me, but he said: `Here is a picture of your

plantation that I've painted for you.' I looked at it. I did not know what to say, but of course I thanked him,

"Do not ask me. I could not make head or tail of it. I never saw such a thing in my life. `What shall we do

with it?' I said to my wife. `We can never hang it up,' she said. `People would laugh at us.' So she took it into

an attic and put it away with all sorts of rubbish, for my wife can never throw anything away. It is her mania.

Then, imagine to yourself, just before the war my brother wrote to me from Paris, and said: `Do you know

anything about an English painter who lived in Tahiti? It appears that he was a genius, and his pictures fetch

large prices. See if you can lay your hands on anything and send it to me. There's money to be made.' So I

said to my wife. `What about that picture that Strickland gave me?' Is it possible that it is still in the attic?'

`Without doubt,' she answered, ` for you know that I never throw anything away. It is my mania.' We went up

to the attic, and there, among I know not what rubbish that had been gathered during the thirty years we have

inhabited that house, was the picture. I looked at it again, and I said: `Who would have thought that the

overseer of my plantation on the peninsula, to whom I lent two hundred francs, had genius? Do you see

anything in the picture?' `No,' she said, `it does not resemble the plantation and I have never seen cocoanuts

with blue leaves; but they are mad in Paris, and it may be that your brother will be able to sell it for the two

hundred francs you lent Strickland.' Well, we packed it up and we sent it to my brother. And at last I received

a letter from him. What do you think he said? `I received your picture,' he said, `and I confess I thought it was

a joke that you had played on me. I would not have given the cost of postage for the picture. I was half afraid

to show it to the gentleman who had spoken to me about it. Imagine my surprise when he said it was a

masterpiece, and offered me thirty thousand francs. I dare say he would have paid more, but frankly I was so

taken aback that I lost my head; I accepted the offer before I was able to collect myself.'"

"I wish that poor Strickland had been still alive. I wonder what he would have said when I gave him

I lived at the Hotel de la Fleur, and Mrs. Johnson, the proprietress, had a sad story to tell of lost opportunity.

After Strickland's death certain of his effects were sold by auction in the marketplace at Papeete, and she

went to it herself because there was among the truck an American stove she wanted. She paid twentyseven

"There were a dozen pictures," she told me, "but they were unframed, and nobody wanted them. Some of

them sold for as much as ten francs, but mostly they went for five or six. Just think, if I had bought them I

But Tiare Johnson would never under any circumstances have been rich. She could not keep money. The

daughter of a native and an English seacaptain settled in Tahiti, when I knew her she was a woman of fifty,

who looked older, and of enormous proportions. Tall and extremely stout, she would have been of imposing

presence if the great goodnature of her face had not made it impossible for her to express anything but

kindliness. Her arms were like legs of mutton, her breasts like giant cabbages; her face, broad and fleshy,

gave you an impression of almost indecent nakedness, and vast chin succeeded to vast chin. I do not know

how many of them there were. They fell away voluminously into the capaciousness of her bosom. She was

dressed usually in a pink Mother Hubbard, and she wore all day long a large straw hat. But when she let

down her hair, which she did now and then, for she was vain of it, you saw that it was long and dark and

curly; and her eyes had remained young and vivacious. Her laughter was the most catching I ever heard; it

would begin, a low peal in her throat, and would grow louder and louder till her whole vast body shook. She

loved three things a joke, a glass of wine, and a handsome man. To have known her is a privilege.

She was the best cook on the island, and she adored good food. From morning till night you saw her sitting

on a low chair in the kitchen, surrounded by a Chinese cook and two or three native girls, giving her orders,

chatting sociably with all and sundry, and tasting the savoury messes she devised. When she wished to do

honour to a friend she cooked the dinner with her own hands. Hospitality was a passion with her, and there

was no one on the island who need go without a dinner when there was anything to eat at the Hotel de la

Fleur. She never turned her customers out of her house because they did not pay their bills. She always hoped

they would pay when they could. There was one man there who had fallen on adversity, and to him she had

given board and lodging for several months. When the Chinese laundryman refused to wash for him without

payment she had sent his things to be washed with hers. She could not allow the poor fellow to go about in a

dirty shirt, she said, and since he was a man, and men must smoke, she gave him a franc a day for cigarettes.

She used him with the same affability as those of her clients who paid their bills once a week.

Age and obesity had made her inapt for love, but she took a keen interest in the amatory affairs of the young.

She looked upon venery as the natural occupation for men and women, and was ever ready with precept and

"I was not fifteen when my father found that I had a lover," she said. "He was third mate on the Tropic Bird>.

She sighed a little. They say a woman always remembers her first lover with affection; but perhaps she does

"He thrashed me within an inch of my life, and then he made me marry Captain Johnson. I did not mind. He

Tiare her father had called her by the name of the white, scented flower which, they tell you, if you have

once smelt, will always draw you back to Tahiti in the end, however far you may have roamed Tiare

"He used to come here sometimes, and I used to see him walking about Papeete. I was sorry for him, he was

so thin, and he never had any money. When I heard he was in town, I used to send a boy to find him and

make him come to dinner with me. I got him a job once or twice, but he couldn't stick to anything. After a

little while he wanted to get back to the bush, and one morning he would be gone."

Strickland reached Tahiti about six months after he left Marseilles. He worked his passage on a sailing vessel

that was making the trip from Auckland to San Francisco, and he arrived with a box of paints, an easel, and a

dozen canvases. He had a few pounds in his pocket, for he had found work in Sydney, and he took a small

room in a native house outside the town. I think the moment he reached Tahiti he felt himself at home. Tiare

"I'd been scrubbing the deck, and all at once a chap said to me: `Why, there it is.' And I looked up and I saw

the outline of the island. I knew right away that there was the place I'd been looking for all my life. Then we

came near, and I seemed to recognise it. Sometimes when I walk about it all seems familiar. I could swear

"Sometimes it takes them like that," said Tiare. "I've known men come on shore for a few hours while their

ship was taking in cargo, and never go back. And I've known men who came here to be in an office for a

year, and they cursed the place, and when they went away they took their dying oath they'd hang themselves

before they came back again, and in six months you'd see them land once more, and they'd tell you they

I have an idea that some men are born out of their due place. Accident has cast them amid certain

surroundings, but they have always a nostalgia for a home they know not. They are strangers in their

birthplace, and the leafy lanes they have known from childhood or the populous streets in which they have

played, remain but a place of passage. They may spend their whole lives aliens among their kindred and

remain aloof among the only scenes they have ever known. Perhaps it is this sense of strangeness that sends

men far and wide in the search for something permanent, to which they may attach themselves. Perhaps some

deeprooted atavism urges the wanderer back to lands which his ancestors left in the dim beginnings of

history. Sometimes a man hits upon a place to which he mysteriously feels that he belongs. Here is the home

he sought, and he will settle amid scenes that he has never seen before, among men he has never known, as

I told Tiare the story of a man I had known at St. Thomas's Hospital. He was a Jew named Abraham, a blond,

rather stout young man, shy and very unassuming; but he had remarkable gifts. He entered the hospital with a

scholarship, and during the five years of the curriculum gained every prize that was open to him. He was

made housephysician and housesurgeon. His brilliance was allowed by all. Finally he was elected to a

position on the staff, and his career was assured. So far as human things can be predicted, it was certain that

he would rise to the greatest heights of his profession. Honours and wealth awaited him. Before he entered

upon his new duties he wished to take a holiday, and, having no private means, he went as surgeon on a

tramp steamer to the Levant. It did not generally carry a doctor, but one of the senior surgeons at the hospital

In a few weeks the authorities received his resignation of the coveted position on the staff. It created profound

astonishment, and wild rumours were current. Whenever a man does anything unexpected, his fellows ascribe

it to the most discreditable motives. But there was a man ready to step into Abraham's shoes, and Abraham

It was perhaps ten years later that one morning on board ship, about to land at Alexandria, I was bidden to

line up with the other passengers for the doctor's examination. The doctor was a stout man in shabby clothes,

and when he took off his hat I noticed that he was very bald. I had an idea that I had seen him before.

He turned to me with a puzzled look, and then, recognizing me, seized my hand. After expressions of surprise

on either side, hearing that I meant to spend the night in Alexandria, he asked me to dine with him at the

English Club. When we met again I declared my astonishment at finding him there. It was a very modest

position that he occupied, and there was about him an air of straitened circumstance. Then he told me his

story. When he set out on his holiday in the Mediterranean he had every intention of returning to London and

his appointment at St. Thomas's. One morning the tramp docked at Alexandria, and from the deck he looked

at the city, white in the sunlight, and the crowd on the wharf; he saw the natives in their shabby gabardines,

the blacks from the Soudan, the noisy throng of Greeks and Italians, the grave Turks in tarbooshes, the

sunshine and the blue sky; and something happened to him. He could not describe it. It was like a

thunderclap, he said, and then, dissatisfied with this, he said it was like a revelation. Something seemed to

twist his heart, and suddenly he felt an exultation, a sense of wonderful freedom. He felt himself at home, and

he made up his mind there and then, in a minute, that he would live the rest of his life in Alexandria. He had

no great difficulty in leaving the ship, and in twentyfour hours, with all his belongings, he was on shore.

"I didn't care what anybody thought. It wasn't I that acted, but something stronger within me. I thought I

would go to a little Greek hotel, while I looked about, and I felt I knew where to find one. And do you know,

"Never, not for a minute. I earn just enough to live upon, and I'm satisfied. I ask nothing more than to remain

I left Alexandria next day, and I forgot about Abraham till a little while ago, when I was dining with another

old friend in the profession, Alec Carmichael, who was in England on short leave. I ran across him in the

street and congratulated him on the knighthood with which his eminent services during the war had been

rewarded. We arranged to spend an evening together for old time's sake, and when I agreed to dine with him,

he proposed that he should ask nobody else, so that we could chat without interruption. He had a beautiful old

house in Queen Anne Street, and being a man of taste he had furnished it admirably. On the walls of the

diningroom I saw a charming Bellotto, and there was a pair of Zoffanys that I envied. When his wife, a tall,

lovely creature in cloth of gold, had left us, I remarked laughingly on the change in his present circumstances

from those when we had both been medical students. We had looked upon it then as an extravagance to dine

in a shabby Italian restaurant in the Westminster Bridge Road. Now Alec Carmichael was on the staff of half

a dozen hospitals. I should think he earned ten thousand a year, and his knighthood was but the first of the

"I've done pretty well," he said, "but the strange thing is that I owe it all to one piece of luck."

"Well, do you remember Abraham? He was the man who had the future. When we were students he beat me

all along the line. He got the prizes and the scholarships that I went in for. I always played second fiddle to

him. If he'd kept on he'd be in the position I'm in now. That man had a genius for surgery. No one had a look

in with him. When he was appointed Registrar at Thomas's I hadn't a chance of getting on the staff. I should

have had to become a G.P., and you know what likelihood there is for a G.P. ever to get out of the common

"It was just luck. I suppose there was some kink in Abraham. Poor devil, he's gone to the dogs altogether.

He's got some twopennyhalfpenny job in the medical at Alexandria sanitary officer or something like

that. I'm told he lives with an ugly old Greek woman and has half a dozen scrofulous kids. The fact is, I

suppose, that it's not enough to have brains. The thing that counts is character. Abraham hadn't got character."

Character? I should have thought it needed a good deal of character to throw up a career after half an hour's

meditation, because you saw in another way of living a more intense significance. And it required still more

character never to regret the sudden step. But I said nothing, and Alec Carmichael proceeded reflectively:

"Of course it would be hypocritical for me to pretend that I regret what Abraham did. After all, I've scored by

it." He puffed luxuriously at the long Corona he was smoking. "But if I weren't personally concerned I should

be sorry at the waste. It seems a rotten thing that a man should make such a hash of life."

I wondered if Abraham really had made a hash of life. Is to do what you most want, to live under the

conditions that please you, in peace with yourself, to make a hash of life; and is it success to be an eminent

surgeon with ten thousand a year and a beautiful wife? I suppose it depends on what meaning you attach to

life, the claim which you acknowledge to society, and the claim of the individual. But again I held my

Tiare, when I told her this story, praised my prudence, and for a few minutes we worked in silence, for we

were shelling peas. Then her eyes, always alert for the affairs of her kitchen, fell on some action of the

Chinese cook which aroused her violent disapproval. She turned on him with a torrent of abuse. The Chink

was not backward to defend himself, and a very lively quarrel ensued. They spoke in the native language, of

which I had learnt but half a dozen words, and it sounded as though the world would shortly come to an end;

but presently peace was restored and Tiare gave the cook a cigarette. They both smoked comfortably.

"Do you know, it was I who found him his wife?" said Tiare suddenly, with a smile that spread all over her

"That is what he said, but I told him she was in England, and England is at the other end of the world."

"He would come to Papeete every two or three months, when he wanted paints or tobacco or money, and then

he would wander about like a lost dog. I was sorry for him. I had a girl here then called Ata to do the rooms;

she was some sort of a relation of mine, and her father and mother were dead, so I had her to live with me.

Strickland used to come here now and then to have a square meal or to play chess with one of the boys. I

noticed that she looked at him when he came, and I asked her if she liked him. She said she liked him well

enough. You know what these girls are; they're always pleased to go with a white man."

"Yes; she hadn't a drop of white blood in her. Well, after I'd talked to her I sent for Strickland, and I said to

him: `Strickland, it's time for you to settle down. A man of your age shouldn't go playing about with the girls

down at the front. They're bad lots, and you'll come to no good with them. You've got no money, and you can

never keep a job for more than a month or two. No one will employ you now. You say you can always live in

the bush with one or other of the natives, and they're glad to have you because you're a white man, but it's not

Tiare mingled French with English in her conversation, for she used both languages with equal facility. She

spoke them with a singing accent which was not unpleasing. You felt that a bird would speak in these tones if

"'Now, what do you say to marrying Ata? She's a good girl and she's only seventeen. She's never been

promiscuous like some of these girls a captain or a first mate, yes, but she's never been touched by a

native. Elle se respecte, voistu>. The purser of the Oahu> told me last journey that he hadn't met a nicer girl

in the islands. It's time she settled down too, and besides, the captains and the first mates like a change now

and then. I don't keep my girls too long. She has a bit of property down by Taravao, just before you come to

the peninsula, and with copra at the price it is now you could live quite comfortably. There's a house, and

"It was then he told me of his wife in England. 'My poor Strickland,' I said to him, 'they've all got a wife

somewhere; that is generally why they come to the islands. Ata is a sensible girl, and she doesn't expect any

ceremony before the Mayor. She's a Protestant, and you know they don't look upon these things like the

"Then he said: `But what does Ata say to it?' `It appears that she has a beguin> for you,' I said. `She's willing

if you are. Shall I call her?' He chuckled in a funny, dry way he had, and I called her. She knew what I was

talking about, the hussy, and I saw her out of the corner of my eyes listening with all her ears, while she

pretended to iron a blouse that she had been washing for me. She came. She was laughing, but I could see

"Not bad. But you must have seen pictures of her. He painted her over and over again, sometimes with a

pareo> on and sometimes with nothing at all. Yes, she was pretty enough. And she knew how to cook. I

taught her myself. I saw Strickland was thinking of it, so I said to him: 'I've given her good wages and she's

saved them, and the captains and the first mates she's known have given her a little something now and then.

"My first husband, Captain Johnson, used to thrash me regularly. He was a man. He was handsome, six foot

three, and when he was drunk there was no holding him. I would be black and blue all over for days at a time.

Oh, I cried when he died. I thought I should never get over it. But it wasn't till I married George Rainey that I

knew what I'd lost. You can never tell what a man is like till you live with him. I've never been so deceived in

a man as I was in George Rainey. He was a fine, upstanding fellow too. He was nearly as tall as Captain

Johnson, and he looked strong enough. But it was all on the surface. He never drank. He never raised his

hand to me. He might have been a missionary. I made love with the officers of every ship that touched the

island, and George Rainey never saw anything. At last I was disgusted with him, and I got a divorce. What

was the good of a husband like that? It's a terrible thing the way some men treat women."

I condoled with Tiare, and remarked feelingly that men were deceivers ever, then asked her to go on with her

"`Well,' I said to him, `there's no hurry about it. Take your time and think it over. Ata has a very nice room in

the annexe. Live with her for a month, and see how you like her. You can have your meals here. And at the

end of a month, if you decide you want to marry her, you can just go and settle down on her property.'

"Well, he agreed to that. Ata continued to do the housework, and I gave him his meals as I said I would. I

taught Ata to make one or two dishes I knew he was fond of. He did not paint much. He wandered about the

hills and bathed in the stream. And he sat about the front looking at the lagoon, and at sunset he would go

down and look at Murea. He used to go fishing on the reef. He loved to moon about the harbour talking to the

natives. He was a nice, quiet fellow. And every evening after dinner he would go down to the annexe with

Ata. I saw he was longing to get away to the bush, and at the end of the month I asked him what he intended

to do. He said if Ata was willing to go, he was willing to go with her. So I gave them a wedding dinner. I

cooked it with my own hands. I gave them a pea soup and lobster a la portugaise,> and a curry, and a

cocoanut salad you've never had one of my cocoanut salads, have you? I must make you one before

you go and then I made them an ice. We had all the champagne we could drink and liqueurs to follow.

Oh, I'd made up my mind to do things well. And afterwards we danced in the drawingroom. I was not so fat,

The drawingroom at the Hotel de la Fleur was a small room, with a cottage piano, and a suite of mahogany

furniture, covered in stamped velvet, neatly arranged around the walls. On round tables were photograph

albums, and on the walls enlarged photographs of Tiare and her first husband, Captain Johnson. Still, though

Tiare was old and fat, on occasion we rolled back the Brussels carpet, brought in the maids and one or two

friends of Tiare's, and danced, though now to the wheezy music of a gramaphone. On the verandah the air

was scented with the heavy perfume of the tiare, and overhead the Southern Cross shone in a cloudless sky.

"We kept it up till three, and when we went to bed I don't think anyone was very sober. I had told them they

could have my trap to take them as far as the road went, because after that they had a long walk. Ata's

property was right away in a fold of the mountain. They started at dawn, and the boy I sent with them didn't

I suppose the next three years were the happiest of Strickland's life. Ata's house stood about eight kilometres

from the road that runs round the island, and you went to it along a winding pathway shaded by the luxuriant

trees of the tropics. It was a bungalow of unpainted wood, consisting of two small rooms, and outside was a

small shed that served as a kitchen. There was no furniture except the mats they used as beds, and a

rockingchair, which stood on the verandah. Bananas with their great ragged leaves, like the tattered

habiliments of an empress in adversity, grew close up to the house. There was a tree just behind which bore

alligator pears, and all about were the cocoanuts which gave the land its revenue. Ata's father had planted

crotons round his property, and they grew in coloured profusion, gay and brilliant; they fenced the land with

flame. A mango grew in front of the house, and at the edge of the clearing were two flamboyants, twin trees,

Here Strickland lived, coming seldom to Papeete, on the produce of the land. There was a little stream that

ran not far away, in which he bathed, and down this on occasion would come a shoal of fish. Then the natives

would assemble with spears, and with much shouting would transfix the great startled things as they hurried

down to the sea. Sometimes Strickland would go down to the reef, and come back with a basket of small,

coloured fish that Ata would fry in cocoanut oil, or with a lobster; and sometimes she would make a savoury

dish of the great landcrabs that scuttled away under your feet. Up the mountain were wildorange trees, and

now and then Ata would go with two or three women from the village and return laden with the green, sweet,

luscious fruit. Then the cocoanuts would be ripe for picking, and her cousins (like all the natives, Ata had a

host of relatives) would swarm up the trees and throw down the big ripe nuts. They split them open and put

them in the sun to dry. Then they cut out the copra and put it into sacks, and the women would carry it down

to the trader at the village by the lagoon, and he would give in exchange for it rice and soap and tinned meat

and a little money. Sometimes there would be a feast in the neighbourhood, and a pig would be killed. Then

But the house was a long way from the village, and the Tahitians are lazy. They love to travel and they love

to gossip, but they do not care to walk, and for weeks at a time Strickland and Ata lived alone. He painted and

he read, and in the evening, when it was dark, they sat together on the verandah, smoking and looking at the

night. Then Ata had a baby, and the old woman who came up to help her through her trouble stayed on.

Presently the granddaughter of the old woman came to stay with her, and then a youth appeared no one

quite knew where from or to whom he belonged but he settled down with them in a happygolucky way,

Tenez, voila le Capitaine Brunot>," said Tiare, one day when I was fitting together what she could tell me of

I saw a middleaged Frenchman with a big black beard, streaked with gray, a sunburned face, and large,

shining eyes. He was dressed in a neat suit of ducks. I had noticed him at luncheon, and Ah Lin, the Chinese

boy, told me he had come from the Paumotus on the boat that had that day arrived. Tiare introduced me to

him, and he handed me his card, a large card on which was printed Rene Brunot>, and underneath, Capitaine

au Long Cours.> We were sitting on a little verandah outside the kitchen, and Tiare was cutting out a dress

"Yes; I knew Strickland well," he said. "I am very fond of chess, and he was always glad of a game. I come to

Tahiti three or four times a year for my business, and when he was at Papeete he would come here and we

would play. When he married" Captain Brunot smiled and shrugged his shoulders " enfin>, when he

went to live with the girl that Tiare gave him, he asked me to go and see him. I was one of the guests at the

wedding feast." He looked at Tiare, and they both laughed. "He did not come much to Papeete after that, and

about a year later it chanced that I had to go to that part of the island for I forgot what business, and when I

had finished it I said to myself: ` Voyons>, why should I not go and see that poor Strickland?' I asked one or

two natives if they knew anything about him, and I discovered that he lived not more than five kilometres

from where I was. So I went. I shall never forget the impression my visit made on me. I live on an atoll, a low

island, it is a strip of land surrounding a lagoon, and its beauty is the beauty of the sea and sky and the varied

colour of the lagoon and the grace of the cocoanut trees; but the place where Strickland lived had the beauty

of the Garden of Eden. Ah, I wish I could make you see the enchantment of that spot, a corner hidden away

from all the world, with the blue sky overhead and the rich, luxuriant trees. It was a feast of colour. And it

was fragrant and cool. Words cannot describe that paradise. And here he lived, unmindful of the world and by

the world forgotten. I suppose to European eyes it would have seemed astonishingly sordid. The house was

dilapidated and none too clean. Three or four natives were lying on the verandah. You know how natives love

to herd together. There was a young man lying full length, smoking a cigarette, and he wore nothing but a

The pareo> is a long strip of trade cotton, red or blue, stamped with a white pattern. It is worn round the waist

"A girl of fifteen, perhaps, was plaiting pandanusleaf to make a hat, and an old woman was sitting on her

haunches smoking a pipe. Then I saw Ata. She was suckling a newborn child, and another child, stark

naked, was playing at her feet. When she saw me she called out to Strickland, and he came to the door. He,

too, wore nothing but a pareo>. He was an extraordinary figure, with his red beard and matted hair, and his

great hairy chest. His feet were horny and scarred, so that I knew he went always bare foot. He had gone

native with a vengeance. He seemed pleased to see me, and told Ata to kill a chicken for our dinner. He took

me into the house to show me the picture he was at work on when I came in. In one corner of the room was

the bed, and in the middle was an easel with the canvas upon it. Because I was sorry for him, I had bought a

couple of his pictures for small sums, and I had sent others to friends of mine in France. And though I had

bought them out of compassion, after living with them I began to like them. Indeed, I found a strange beauty

in them. Everyone thought I was mad, but it turns out that I was right. I was his first admirer in the islands."

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 twentyseven francs.

"Yes; I am keeping them till my daughter is of marriageable age, and then I shall sell them. They will be her

"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

"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 musichalls 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

landcrabs. 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

Then she caught sight of a cat trying to get at a dish of prawns on the kitchen table, and with a dexterous

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

"`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, que saisje?> for theatres and newspapers, and the

"` Mon pauvre ami>,' 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

We were all silent for a while, and Tiare fished out of her capacious pocket a handful of cigarettes. She

"Since ce monsieur> is interested in Strickland, why do you not take him to see Dr. Coutras? He can tell him

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 peppertrees, and on each side were the plantations, cocoanut 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

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

I tried to tell Captain Brunot something of the astonishment with which this filled me, and for a little while he

"It is not strange that I, at all events, should have had sympathy for him," he said at last, "for, though perhaps

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

"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

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

"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

"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

"Did I not tell you that I, too, in my way was an artist? I realised in myself the same desire as animated him.

Then Captain Brunot told me a story which I must repeat, since, if only by way of contrast, it adds something

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 cocoanuts. 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

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

"Some day, when my daughter is married and my son has a wife and is able to take my place on the island,

" Evidemment>, 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, mon cher

monsieur>, they talk of the blessedness of labour, and it is a meaningless phrase, but to me it has the most

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

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

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 goodnatured, rested now and then with selfsatisfaction 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 Madame et les enfants>. 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

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

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 darkskinned retainers. When he had seen her he was taken into another room and given dinner

raw fish, fried bananas, and chicken que saisje>, the typical dinner of the indigene> 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 hundredfranc note.

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. Mon Dieu>, 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

His temper was certainly no better when he arrived, perspiring freely and thirsty. Ata was on the lookout for

"Before I see anyone give me something to drink or I shall die of thirst," he cried out. " Pour l'amour de

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

"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

pareo>, 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

The doctor recovered himself, but it required quite an effort for him to find his voice. All his irritation was

"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

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

"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 lionfaced. Mon pauvre ami>, must I tell you that you have a

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

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,

"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.

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

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

hundredfranc 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,

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

"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,

"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."

For a moment Strickland's fortitude was shaken, and a tear filled each of his eyes and trickled slowly down

"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

"What is it that thou art saying to the doctor?" asked Ata suspiciously. "Thou wilt not go?"

Ata flung herself on her knees before him, and clasped his legs with her arms and kissed them. Strickland

"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

"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

"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

" 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

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 cocoanuts, 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 leanto 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.

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.

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.

Then at last she smiled, and there was in her eyes a look of superhuman love. Dr. Coutras was startled by it,

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

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 hornetnests that hung on the trees over his head.

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.

A slight movement attracted his attention, and he saw that Ata was lying on the floor, sobbing quietly.

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

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.

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 straightfronted 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 evidently a copious talker, and now poured forth a breathless stream of anecdote and comment. She

"I still have in my bureau> the picture that Strickland gave me," he said. "Would you like to see it?"

We got up, and he led me on to the verandah which surrounded his house. We paused to look at the gay

"For a long time I could not get out of my head the recollection of the extraordinary decoration with which

I had been thinking of it, too. It seemed to me that here Strickland had finally put the whole expression of

himself. Working silently, knowing that it was his last chance, I fancied that here he must have said all that he

knew of life and all that he divined. And I fancied that perhaps here he had at last found peace. The demon

which possessed him was exorcised at last, and with the completion of the work, for which all his life had

been a painful preparation, rest descended on his remote and tortured soul. He was willing to die, for he had

"I scarcely know. It was strange and fantastic. It was a vision of the beginnings of the world, the Garden of

Eden, with Adam and Eve que saisje?> it was a hymn to the beauty of the human form, male and

female, and the praise of Nature, sublime, indifferent, lovely, and cruel. It gave you an awful sense of the

infinity of space and of the endlessness of time. Because he painted the trees I see about me every day, the

cocoanuts, the banyans, the flamboyants, the alligatorpears, I have seen them ever since differently, as

though there were in them a spirit and a mystery which I am ever on the point of seizing and which forever

escapes me. The colours were the colours familiar to me, and yet they were different. They had a significance

which was all their own. And those nude men and women. They were of the earth, and yet apart from it. They

seemed to possess something of the clay of which they were created, and at the same time something divine.

You saw man in the nakedness of his primeval instincts, and you were afraid, for you saw yourself."

"You will laugh at me. I am a materialist, and I am a gross, fat man Falstaff, eh? the lyrical mode does

not become me. I make myself ridiculous. But I have never seen painting which made so deep an impression

upon me. Tenez>, I had just the same feeling as when I went to the Sistine Chapel in Rome. There too I was

awed by the greatness of the man who had painted that ceiling. It was genius, and it was stupendous and

overwhelming. I felt small and insignificant. But you are prepared for the greatness of Michael Angelo.

Nothing had prepared me for the immense surprise of these pictures in a native hut, far away from

civilisation, in a fold of the mountain above Taravao. And Michael Angelo is sane and healthy. Those great

works of his have the calm of the sublime; but here, notwithstanding beauty, was something troubling. I do

not know what it was. It made me uneasy. It gave me the impression you get when you are sitting next door

to a room that you know is empty, but in which, you know not why, you have a dreadful consciousness that

notwithstanding there is someone. You scold yourself; you know it is only your nerves and yet, and yet...

In a little while it is impossible to resist the terror that seizes you, and you are helpless in the clutch of an

unseen horror. Yes; I confess I was not altogether sorry when I heard that those strange masterpieces had

"How should I know? It is true I had never heard of this work; but I thought perhaps it had fallen into the

hands of a private owner. Even now there is no certain list of Strickland's paintings."

"When he grew blind he would sit hour after hour in those two rooms that he had painted, looking at his

works with sightless eyes, and seeing, perhaps, more than he had ever seen in his life before. Ata told me that

he never complained of his fate, he never lost courage. To the end his mind remained serene and undisturbed.

But he made her promise that when she had buried him did I tell you that I dug his grave with my own

hands, for none of the natives would approach the infected house, and we buried him, she and I, sewn up in

three pareos> joined together, under the mangotree he made her promise that she would set fire to the

house and not leave it till it was burned to the ground and not a stick remained."

"Yes; for I knew that here was a work of genius, and I did not think we had the right to deprive the world of

it. But Ata would not listen to me. She had promised. I would not stay to witness the barbarous deed, and it

was only afterwards that I heard what she had done. She poured paraffin on the dry floors and on the

pandanusmats, and then she set fire. In a little while nothing remained but smouldering embers, and a great

"I think Strickland knew it was a masterpiece. He had achieved what he wanted. His life was complete. He

had made a world and saw that it was good. Then, in pride and contempt, he destroyed, it."

They went to the Marquesas. She had relations there. I have heard that the boy works on one of Cameron's

At the door that led from the verandah to the doctor's consultingroom, he paused and smiled.

"It is a fruitpiece. You would think it not a very suitable picture for a doctor's consultingroom, but my wife

We entered the room, and my eyes fell at once on the picture. I looked at it for a long time.

It was a pile of mangoes, bananas, oranges, and I know not what. and at first sight it was an innocent picture

enough. It would have been passed in an exhibition of the Post Impressionists by a careless person as an

excellent but not very remarkable example of the school; but perhaps afterwards it would come back to his

recollection, and he would wonder why. I do not think then he could ever entirely forget it.

The colours were so strange that words can hardly tell what a troubling emotion they gave. They were sombre

blues, opaque like a delicately carved bowl in lapis lazuli, and yet with a quivering lustre that suggested the

palpitation of mysterious life; there were purples, horrible like raw and putrid flesh, and yet with a glowing,

sensual passion that called up vague memories of the Roman Empire of Heliogabalus; there were reds, shrill

like the berries of holly one thought of Christmas in England, and the snow, the good cheer, and the

pleasure of children and yet by some magic softened till they had the swooning tenderness of a dove's

breast; there were deep yellows that died with an unnatural passion into a green as fragrant as the spring and

as pure as the sparkling water of a mountain brook. Who can tell what anguished fancy made these fruits?

They belonged to a Polynesian garden of the Hesperides. There was something strangely alive in them, as

though they were created in a stage of the earth's dark history when things were not irrevocably fixed to their

forms. They were extravagantly luxurious. They were heavy with tropical odours. They seemed to possess a

sombre passion of their own. It was enchanted fruit, to taste which might open the gateway to God knows

what secrets of the soul and to mysterious palaces of the imagination. They were sullen with unawaited

dangers, and to eat them might turn a man to beast or god. All that was healthy and natural, all that clung to

happy relationships and the simple joys of simple men, shrunk from them in dismay; and yet a fearful

attraction was in them, and, like the fruit on the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil they were terrible

" Voyons, Rene, mon ami>," came the loud, cheerful voice of Madame Coutras, "what are you doing all this

time? Here are the aperitifs>. Ask Monsieur> if he will not drink a little glass of Quinquina Dubonnet."

The time came for my departure from Tahiti. According to the gracious custom of the island, presents were

given me by the persons with whom I had been thrown in contact baskets made of the leaves of the

cocoanut tree, mats of pandanus, fans; and Tiare gave me three little pearls and three jars of guavajelly

made with her own plump hands. When the mailboat, stopping for twentyfour hours on its way from

Wellington to San Francisco, blew the whistle that warned the passengers to get on board, Tiare clasped me

to her vast bosom, so that I seemed to sink into a billowy sea, and pressed her red lips to mine. Tears

glistened in her eyes. And when we steamed slowly out of the lagoon, making our way gingerly through the

opening in the reef, and then steered for the open sea, a certain melancholy fell upon me. The breeze was

laden still with the pleasant odours of the land. Tahiti is very far away, and I knew that I should never see it

again. A chapter of my life was closed, and I felt a little nearer to inevitable death.

Not much more than a month later I was in London; and after I had arranged certain matters which claimed

my immediate attention, thinking Mrs. Strickland might like to hear what I knew of her husband's last years, I

wrote to her. I had not seen her since long before the war, and I had to look out her address in the

telephonebook. She made an appointment, and I went to the trim little house on Campden Hill which she

now inhabited. She was by this time a woman of hard on sixty, but she bore her years well, and no one would

have taken her for more than fifty. Her face, thin and not much lined, was of the sort that ages gracefully, so

that you thought in youth she must have been a much handsomer woman than in fact she was. Her hair, not

yet very gray, was becomingly arranged, and her black gown was modish. I remembered having heard that

her sister, Mrs. MacAndrew, outliving her husband but a couple of years, had left money to Mrs. Strickland;

and by the look of the house and the trim maid who opened the door I judged that it was a sum adequate to

When I was ushered into the drawingroom I found that Mrs. Strickland had a visitor, and when I discovered

who he was, I guessed that I had been asked to come at just that time not without intention. The caller was

Mr. Van Busche Taylor, an American, and Mrs. Strickland gave me particulars with a charming smile of

"You know, we English are so dreadfully ignorant. You must forgive me if it's necessary to explain." Then

she turned to me. "Mr. Van Busche Taylor is the distinguished American critic. If you haven't read his book

your education has been shamefully neglected, and you must repair the omission at once. He's writing

Mr. Van Busche Taylor was a very thin man with a large, bald head, bony and shining; and under the great

dome of his skull his face, yellow, with deep lines in it, looked very small. He was quiet and exceedingly

polite. He spoke with the accent of New England, and there was about his demeanour a bloodless frigidity

which made me ask myself why on earth he was busying himself with Charles Strickland. I had been slightly

tickled at the gentleness which Mrs. Strickland put into her mention of her husband's name, and while the pair

conversed I took stock of the room in which we sat. Mrs. Strickland had moved with the times. Gone were

the Morris papers and gone the severe cretonnes, gone were the Arundel prints that had adorned the walls of

her drawingroom in Ashley Gardens; the room blazed with fantastic colour, and I wondered if she knew that

those varied hues, which fashion had imposed upon her, were due to the dreams of a poor painter in a South

And yet on the walls were coloured reproductions of several of Strickland's best pictures, due to the

"You're looking at my pictures," she said, following my eyes. "Of course, the originals are out of my reach,

but it's a comfort to have these. The publisher sent them to me himself. They're a great consolation to me."

"That is one of my profoundest convictions," said Mr. Van Busche Taylor. "Great art is always decorative."

Their eyes rested on a nude woman suckling a baby, while a girl was kneeling by their side holding out a

flower to the indifferent child. Looking over them was a wrinkled, scraggy hag. It was Strickland's version of

the Holy Family. I suspected that for the figures had sat his household above Taravao, and the woman and the

baby were Ata and his first son. I asked myself if Mrs. Strickland had any inkling of the facts.

The conversation proceeded, and I marvelled at the tact with which Mr. Van Busche Taylor avoided all

subjects that might have been in the least embarrassing, and at the ingenuity with which Mrs. Strickland,

without saying a word that was untrue, insinuated that her relations with her husband had always been

perfect. At last Mr. Van Busche Taylor rose to go. Holding his hostess' hand, he made her a graceful, though

"I hope he didn't bore you," she said, when the door closed behind him. "Of course it's a nuisance sometimes,

but I feel it's only right to give people any information I can about Charlie. There's a certain responsibility

She looked at me with those pleasant eyes of hers, which had remained as candid and as sympathetic as they

had been more than twenty years before. I wondered if she was making a fool of me.

"Oh, yes," she answered airily. "I ran it more by way of a hobby than for any other reason, and my children

I saw that Mrs. Strickland had forgotten that she had ever done anything so disgraceful as to work for her

living. She had the true instinct of the nice woman that it is only really decent for her to live on other people's

"They're here now," she said. "I thought they'd, like to hear what you had to say about their father. You

remember Robert, don't you? I'm glad to say he's been recommended for the Military Cross."

She went to the door and called them. There entered a tall man in khaki, with the parson's collar, handsome in

a somewhat heavy fashion, but with the frank eyes that I remembered in him as a boy. He was followed by

his sister. She must have been the same age as was her mother when first I knew her, and she was very like

her. She too gave one the impression that as a girl she must have been prettier than indeed she was.

"I suppose you don't remember them in the least," said Mrs. Strickland, proud and smiling. "My daughter is

"He's by way of being a pukka soldier, you know," said Mrs. Ronaldson gaily. "That's why he's only a

I remembered my anticipation long ago that she would marry a soldier. It was inevitable. She had all the

graces of the soldier's wife. She was civil and affable, but she could hardly conceal her intimate conviction

"It's a bit of luck that I should be in London when you turned up," he said. "I've only got three days' leave."

"Well, I don't mind confessing it, I have a rattling good time at the front. I've made a lot of good pals. It's a

firstrate life. Of course war's terrible, and all that sort of thing; but it does bring out the best qualities in a

Then I told them what I had learned about Charles Strickland in Tahiti. I thought it unnecessary to say

anything of Ata and her boy, but for the rest I was as accurate as I could be. When I had narrated his

lamentable death I ceased. For a minute or two we were all silent. Then Robert Strickland struck a match and

"The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small," he said, somewhat impressively.

Mrs. Strickland and Mrs. Ronaldson looked down with a slightly pious expression which indicated, I felt

sure, that they thought the quotation was from Holy Writ. Indeed, I was unconvinced that Robert Strickland

did not share their illusion. I do not know why I suddenly thought of Strickland's son by Ata. They had told

me he was a merry, lighthearted youth. I saw him, with my mind's eye, on the schooner on which he

worked, wearing nothing but a pair of dungarees; and at night, when the boat sailed along easily before a light

breeze, and the sailors were gathered on the upper deck, while the captain and the supercargo lolled in

deckchairs, smoking their pipes, I saw him dance with another lad, dance wildly, to the wheezy music of the

concertina. Above was the blue sky, and the stars, and all about the desert of the Pacific Ocean.

A quotation from the Bible came to my lips, but I held my tongue, for I know that clergymen think it a little

blasphemous when the laity poach upon their preserves. My Uncle Henry, for twentyseven years Vicar of

Whitstable, was on these occasions in the habit of saying that the devil could always quote scripture to his

purpose. He remembered the days when you could get thirteen Royal Natives for a shilling.