 CHAPTER 43 looking back I realized 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 to the agonies of the damned. It is always a moving subject. 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 incompatibility 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 strength to pursue. 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 chimney-piece he had photographs of Mrs. Langtree 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 matter of fact. I suppose his life during this period was romantic, but he certainly saw no romance in it. It may be that in order to realize 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 single-minded than Strickland. I never knew anyone who was less self-conscious, 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 self-doubt, which is the artist's bitterest enemy, I might excite some sympathy for a personality which, I'm 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 Strover 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 twenty-four 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 Derrick Strover, 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 the tensions, 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 change she forged only aroused his instinct of destruction as the plate-glass window makes your fingers itch for half a break. 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 seemed impossible to her that it should not in return awake an equal love. 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 consisted of dreams and of tremendously hard work. 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 subjectors 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 that women can love all day long, but men only at times. With Strickland the sexual appetite took a very small place. It was unimportant. It was irksome. His soul aimed elsewhere. 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 self-possession. 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. The fact remains. 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 of his fellows except that they should leave him alone. He was single-hearted in his aim, and to pursue it he was willing to sacrifice not only himself. Many can do that, but others. He had a vision. Strickland was an odious man, but I still think he was a great one. End of Chapter 43. Chapter 44. 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 would cease to amuse if it were commonly practised. Strickland was not, I should say, a man of great intelligence, and his views of 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 very greatly interested in the impressionists. Their technique impressed him, but I fancied that he thought their attitude commonplace. When Strover was holding forth at Leng on the excellence of Monet, he said, I prefer winter halter. 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. Chardon delighted him, and Rembrandt moved him to ecstasy. He described the impression that Rembrandt made on him with a caustness I cannot repeat. The only painter that interested him, who was at all unexpected, was Broigle 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 him because it was so unsatisfactory. He's all right, said Strickland. I bet he found it hell to paint. When later in Vienna I saw several of Peter Broigle'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 fellow creatures 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. Broigle 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 paint ideas which were more suitable to literature. Strickland, at this time, must have been nearly forty-seven. End of Chapter 44 Chapter 45 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 offered 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 himself. 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 onto 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 Chinaman were already busy in their shops. The skies had still the pallor of dawn, and there was a ghostly silence on the lagoon. Ten miles away the island of Morea, like some high fastness of the Holy Grail, guarded its mystery. 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, great clouds chased one another over 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 a man in the flesh to know ought that more nearly suggests the approach to the golden realms of fancy than the approach to Tahiti. Morea, 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 Montserrat of the Pacific, and you may imagine that their 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 somber depths, down which merman and plash cool streams, and you feel that in those unbridled 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 salleys, his lips smile, and his jokes are gayer because in the communion of laughter he finds himself more intolerably alone. But 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 harbor at Papite. 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 seems to smile at you. It is very hot. The colour dazzles you. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. I 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 inquiries I had made for pictures by Strickland had been quickly spread. I asked the stranger if he had breakfasted. Yes, I have my coffee early, he answered, but I don't mind having a drop of whiskey. I called the Chinese boy. You don't think it's too early? Said the captain. You and your liver must decide that between you. I replied. I'm practically a tea-totaler, he said, as he poured himself out a good half-tumbler 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 grey hair, cut short, and a stubbly grey 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 good fellowship. He was dressed in a bid-draggled suit of khaki, and his hands would have been all the better for a wash. Now he knew Strickland well, he said, as he lent back in his chair and lit the cigar I had offered him. It was through me he came out the islands. Where did you meet him? I asked. In Marseilles. What were you doing there? He gave me an ingratiating smile. Well, I guess I was on the beach. 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 replace the small pains you need be at to enjoy it. They're 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 respectful 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 tea-totaler, and the few dollars borrowed with the 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 damn tangle. 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 Canuckers. 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 twenty-eight, 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 how so ever 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 escape her as the cause can escape effect. The rogue, like the artist, and perhaps the gentleman, belongs to no class. He is not embarrassed by the son's gene of the hobo, nor put out of countenance by the etiquette of the prince. But Mrs. Nichols belongs to the well-defined class of late-become vocal, which is known as the lower middle. 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 uneasiness would seize the captain. He would look at his watch and sigh. Well, he must be off, he said. Neither wit nor whiskey 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 pale-faced, sullen child of seven, to the hotel. Mother wants you, she said, in a winding tone. Very well, my dear, said Captain Nichols. 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. End of Chapter 46 Chapter 47 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 Marseille 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, providing their papers are in order, and they can persuade the friars in charge that they are working men. 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 common room, 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 Gélu, where the sailor men all want to congregate. Dosing against the pedestal of a statue, he saw Strickland again, he gave him a kick to awaken him. "'Come and have breakfast, mate,' he said. "'Go to hell,' answered Strickland. I recognized my friends limited for Cadillac, and I prepared to regard Captain Nichols as a trustworthy witness. "'Busted,' asked the captain. "'Blast you,' answered Strickland. "'Come along with me, I'll get you some breakfast.' After a moment's hesitation, Strickland scrambled to his feet, and together they went to the Boucher-de-Pas, 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 Cuié de Soupe, where, for a week at eleven and four, you make it 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 Cuié companionship of Charles Strickland and Captain Nichols. They must have spent something like four months at Marseille 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's 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 Marseille that I knew, gesticulating and sunny, with its comfortable hotels, and its restaurants crowded with the well-to-do, 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 close to them, Strickland and Captain Nichols saw the hospitality of Tough Bill. This was the master of a sailor's boarding-house, a huge mulatto with a heavy fist, who gave the stranded mariner food and shelter till he found him a birth. They lived with him a month, sleeping with a dozen others, Swedes, Negroes, Brazilians, on the floor of the two barred rooms in his house which he assigned to his charges, and every day they went with him to the place Victor Gélu, with her came ship's captains in search of a man. He was married to an American woman, obese and slattenly, fallen to this past 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, colors and brushes, but gave Strickland a pound of smuggled tobacco into the bargain. For all I know the picture may still adorn the parlor of the tumbledown little house somewhere near the Cade de la Joliet, 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 persuaded him that he would be more comfortable in Tahiti. You see, Tahiti's French, he explained to me, and the French aren't so damn technical. I thought I saw his point. 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 birth, 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 birth 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 themselves once more adrift. 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 learnt what hunger was. The cuillère de soupe and the assil de nuit were both closed to them, and their only sustenance was the wedge of bread which the Bouchier-de-Pin 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 dosing they would trump 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 cannabia for cigarette ends and the butt-end of cigars which the promenaders of the night before had thrown away. Oh, you'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 male 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 folksal 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 with the tow of a boot to speed their going. There's no arm in a kick in nine-quarters when your bell is full, said Captain Nichols, and personally, or you never take it in bad part, an officer's got a thing about the splin. 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 fish market. 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 boarding-masters 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 Captain Nichols how he bore himself during those hardships. Never knew him, say, across word. Answered the Captain, he'd be a bit surly sometimes, but when we hadn't had a boy since morning and we hadn't even got the price of a lie down at the Jinx, he'd be as lively as a cricket. 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 would be difficult to say. The Jinx Head was a name the beachcombers gave to a wretched Ian off the Drew Buttery, kept by a one-eyed Chinaman, where for six Sue 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 frank 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 good fellowships, for they felt themselves freemen of a country whose frontiers included them all, the great country of cocaine. But I guess Strickland was an ugly customer when he was aroused, 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. You'd better come and take them if you want them, says Charlie. He was a powerful fellow, Tough Bill, but he didn't quite like the look of Charlie, so he began cursing them. He called him pretty near every name he could lay hands on, and when Tough Bill began cursing it was 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 yell, and he walked away as if he'd remembered he had a date. Strickland, according to Captain Nichols, didn't 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 familiar to the domestic circle. 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, and then another of the sailors who lived in his house, told them that he had sworn to do Strickland in. 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 one-storied houses, each house consisting of but one room. They're 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 passer-by 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 flesh-coloured stockings, some with curly hair, dyed yellow, or dressed like little girls in short muslin frocks. Through the open door you see a red-tiled floor, a large wooden bed, and on a deal-table a ewer and a basin. A motley crowd saunters along the streets. Laska's off a P&O, Blonde Northman from a Swedish bark, Japanese from a man of war, English sailors, Spaniards, pleasant-looking 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 somber reality. There is an atmosphere that is at once intense and tragic. In the bar in which Strickland and Nicholl 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, cat-calls from the English sailors increased the din. The air was heavy with the dust beaten up by the heavy boots of the men, and grey with smoke. It was very hot. Behind the bar was seated a woman nursing her baby, the waiter and 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 a spittle in his mouth and spat full in Strickland's face. Strickland seized his glass and flung it at him. The dancer 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. Passers-by 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 face was covered with blood from a blow on the nose. I guess you'd better get out of Marseille or Tough Bill comes out of hospital," he said to Strickland, when they had got back to the chink's head and were cleaning themselves. This beats cock-fighting," said Strickland. I could see his sardonic smile. 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 knife thrust in his back, and in a day or two the corpse of a nameless beach-comber would be fished out of the dirty water of the harbor. Nichols went next evening to Tough Bill's house and made inquiries. He was in hospital still, but his wife, who had been to see him, said he was swearing hard to kill Strickland when they let him out. A week passed. That's what I always say, reflected Captain Nichols. When you hurt a man, hurt him bad, gives you a bit of time to look about and think what you'll do next. Then Strickland had a bit of luck. A ship bound for Australia had sent 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 harbor, my lad, said the Captain to Strickland and sign on. You got your papers? 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 plowed east through the Wintery Sea. I have narrated all this as best I could, because I like the contrast of these episodes, with the life that I've seen Strickland live in Ashley Gardens when he was occupied with stocks and chairs. But I am aware that Captain Nichols was an outrageous liar, and I dare say there's 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 Marseille to the pages of a magazine. End of Chapter 47 Chapter 48 It is here that I purpose to end my book. The 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 willfulness, but because I wish 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 47, when most men have already settled comfortably into a groove for a new world. I saw him, the sea gray under the mistral and foam flicked, 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 knew of Strickland's life in the ordering which I learnt the facts. 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 until he had been dead for some years, 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 were now worth large sums, and they could not forgive themselves for the opportunity which had escaped them. There was a Jewish trader named 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 seamen, who earned a cutter in which he wandered boldly among the palmutus and the marquesas, taking out trade goods and bringing back copper, shell and pearls. I went to see him because I was told he had a large black pearl that he was willing to sell cheaply, and when I discovered that it was beyond my means, I began to talk to him about Strickland. He had known him well. 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 money. I knew he was starving, but I offered him good wages. I can't imagine that he was a very satisfactory overseer, I said, smiling. I made allowances. I've always had a sympathy for artists 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 Pappete every few months and stay a little while. He'd get money out of some one or other, and then disappear again. It was on one of those 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's 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, and when he had gone away I showed it to my wife. What was it like? I asked. Do not ask me. I could not make head or tail of it. I never saw such a thing in my life. What shall I do with it? I said to my wife. We can never hang it up, she said. People would laugh at us. Though she took it into an attic, and put it away with all sorts of rubbish, for my wife could 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 fetched 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 no water-ubbush 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 are genius? Do you see anything in the picture? No, she said. He does not resemble the plantation, and I have never seen coconuts with blue leaves, but they are mad in Paris, and he 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. 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 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, and I accepted the offer before I was able to collect myself. Then Monsieur Cohen said an admirable thing. I wish that poor Strickland had been still alive. I wonder what he would have said when I gave him twenty-nine thousand eight hundred francs for his picture. End of chapter forty-eight. Chapters forty-nine fifty and fifty-one of The Moon and Sixpence This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Reading by Termin Diane The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset-Morm Chapter forty-nine 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 market place at Pebité, and she went to it herself, because there was among the truck an American stove she wanted. She paid twenty-seven francs for it. 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'd bought them, I should be a rich woman now. But Thierry Johnson would never under any circumstances have been rich. She could not keep money. The daughter of a native and an English sea-captain 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 good nature 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 her 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 launderman 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 franker 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 inept for love, but she took a keen interest in the amateury affairs of the young. She looked upon venery as the natural occupation for men and women, and was ever ready with precept and example from her own wide experience. I was not fifteen when my father found that I had a lover, she said. He was the third mate on the Tropic Bird, a good-looking boy. She sighed a little. They say a woman always remembers her first lover with affection, but perhaps she does not always remember him. My father was a sensible man. What did he do? I asked. He thrashed me with an inch of my life, and then he made me marry Captain Johnson. I didn't mind. He was older, of course, but he was good-looking too. 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 remembered Strickland very well. He used to come here sometimes, and I used to see him walking about Pabite. 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 sneak 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 Marseille. He worked his passage on a sailing vessel that was making a 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 told me that he said to her once, I'd been scrubbing the deck, and all at once a chap said to me, Why, the hair it is, and I looked up and I saw the outline of the island. I knew right away 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 I've lived here before. 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 ever came back again. And in six months you'd see them land once more, and they'd tell you they couldn't live anywhere else. End of Chapter 49 Chapter 50 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're strangers in their birthplace, and the leafy lanes they have known from childhood, or the popular 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 deep-rooted 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 though they were familiar to him from his birth. Here at last he finds rest. I told Tiare the story of a man I had known at St Thomas's Hospital. He was a Jew named Abraham, a blonde, 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 house physician and house surgeon. 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 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. He did not generally carry a doctor, but one of the senior surgeons at the hospital knew a director of the line, and Abraham was taken on as a favour. In a few weeks the authorities received his resignation of the coveted position on the staff. He 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 was forgotten. Nothing more was heard of him. He vanished. It was perhaps ten years later, that one morning on board ship about to land at Alexandria, I was bitten 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. Suddenly I remembered. Abraham, I said. He turned to me with a puzzled look, and then, recognising 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 straightened 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 Sudan, the noisy throng of Greeks and Italians, the grave turks in tabooshes, 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 exaltation, 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 twenty-four hours, with all his belongings, he was on shore. The captain must have thought he was mad as a hatter, I smiled. I didn't care what anybody thought. It wasn't either that acted, but something stronger within me. I thought I would go to a little Greek hotel, while I looked about. Now I felt I knew where to find one, and do you know I walked straight there, and when I saw it, I recognized it at once. Had you been to Alexandria before? No, I had never been out of England in my life. Presently he entered the Government service, and there he had been ever since. Have you never regretted it? Never, not for a minute. I am just enough to live on, and I am satisfied. There is nothing more than to remain as I am till I die. I have had a wonderful life. I left Alexandria the 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 dining room, I saw a charming Bellotto, and there was a pair of Zofanese 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 the 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 honours which must inevitably fall to his lot. I had done pretty well, he said, but the strange thing is that I owe it all to one piece of luck. What do you mean by that? 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 to Thomas's, I hadn't a chance of getting on the staff. I should have had to become a GP. And you know what likelihood there is for a GP ever to get out of the common rut. But Abraham fell out and I got the job. That gave me my opportunity. I dare say that's true. It was just luck. I suppose there was some kink in Abraham. Poor devil, he'd gone to the dogs altogether. He's got some topny-hapey job in the medical at Alexandria. Sanitary officer or something like that. I'm told he lived with an ugly old Greek woman and has half a dozen scruffy-less kids. In fact, yes, I suppose that it's not enough to have brains. The thing that counts is character. Abraham hasn'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. An Alec Carmichael proceeded reflectively. Of course it would be hypocritical for me to pretend that I regret what Abraham did. After all, I 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 want most, 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 attached to life. The claim which you acknowledged a society and the claim of the individual. But again I held my tongue. For who am I to argue with a knight? End of Chapter 50 Chapter 51 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 immense face. The cook? No, Strickland. But he had one already. Yes, that's what he said, but I told him she was in England, and England is at the other end of the world. True, I replied. He would come to Papiti 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 Atta to do the rooms. She was some sort of 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. Was she a native? I asked. 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 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 decent for a white man. Now listen to me, Strickland. 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 it could speak English. 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. Oh, Captain, you're a first mage, yes, but she's never been touched by a native. 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 I could change now and then. I don't keep my girls too long. She has a bit of property down by Tarawao, just before you come to the peninsula. With copper, the price it is now, you could live quite comfortably. There's a house, and you'd have all the time you wanted for your painting. What do you say to it? Tiare paused to take breath. It was then that he told me of his wife in England. My poor Strickland, I said to him, they've all got a wife somewhere. That's 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 Catholics. Then he said, but what does Ata say to it? It appears that she has a begin 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 Hussie, 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'd been washing for me. She came, she was laughing, but I could see she was a little shy, and Strickland looked at her without speaking. Was she pretty? I asked. Not bad. But you must have seen pictures of her. He painted her over and over again. Sometimes with the Pareo one, sometimes with nothing at all. Yes, she was pretty enough. And she knew how to caulk. 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 first mates she's known have given her a little something now and then. She's saved several hundred francs. He pulled his great red beard and smiled. Well, Ata, he said, do you fancy me for a husband? She didn't say anything, but just giggled. But I tell you, my poor Strickland, the girl has a begin for you, I said. I shall beat you, he said, looking at her. How else should I know you loved me? she answered. Tiare broke off her narrative, and addressed herself to me reflectively. 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 could 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 Tiari, and remarked fleetingly that men were deceivers ever, and then asked her to go on with her story of Strickland. Well, I said to him, there's no hurry about it. Take your time and think it over. Outer has a very nice room in the annex. Live with her for a month, and see how you like her. You can have your meals here. 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. Outer continued to do the housework, and I gave him his meals, as I said I would. I taught Outer 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 up Moreaia. He used to go fishing on the reef. He loved to moan about the harbour, talking to the natives. He was a nice quiet fellow. And every evening after dinner he would go down to the annex with Outer. And 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 Outer 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 pea soup, and lobster a la portugues, and a curry, and a coconut salad. You never had one of my coconut 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 drawing-room. I was not so fat then, and I always loved dancing. The drawing-room 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 round 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 her gramophone. On the veranda the air was scented with the heavy perfume of the Tiare, and overhead the southern cross shone in a cloudless sky. Tiare smiled indulgently as she remembered the gaiety of a time long past. We kept it up till three. And when we went to bed I don't think anyone was very sober. I'd told them they could have my trap to take them as far as the road went, because after that they had a long walk. Arta's property was right away in a fold of the mountain. They started at dawn, and the boy I sent with them didn't come back till next day. Yes, that's how Strickland was married. End of Chapter 51. Chapters 52, 53 and 54 of The Moon and Sixpence. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Reading by Termin Diane. The Moon and Sixpence. By W. Somerset-Morm. Chapter 52. I suppose the next three years were the happiest of Strickland's life. Arta's house stood about eight kilometers 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 rocking chair which stood on the veranda. Bananas with their great ragged leaves, like the tattered heavy elements of an empress in adversity, grew close up to the house. There was a tree just behind which bore alligator pairs, and all about were the coconuts which gave the land its revenue. Arta's father had planted crotons round his property, and they grew in colored 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 that challenged the gold of the coconuts with their scarlet flowers. Here Strickland lived, coming seldom to Papete, 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 colored fish that Arta would fry in coconut oil or with a lobster, and sometimes she would make a savoury dish of the great land-crabs that scuttled away under your feet. Up the mountain were wild orange trees, and now and then Arta would go with two or three women from the village and return laden with the green sweet luscious fruit. Then the coconuts would be ripe for picking, and her cousins, like all the natives Arta 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 copter 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 neighborhood and a pig would be killed. Then they would go and eat themselves sick and dance and sing hymns. But the house was a long way from the village, and 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 Arta lived alone. He painted and he read, and in the evening when it was dark they sat together on the veranda, smoking and looking at the night. Then Arta 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 happy-go-lucky way, and they all lived together. End of Chapter 52 Chapter 53 Tene, voilà la capitaine Bruno! said Thiaré, one day when I was fitting together what she could tell me of Strickland, he knew Strickland well. He visited him at his house. I saw a middle-aged Frenchman with a big black beard streaked with grey, a sunburnt face, and large shining eyes. He was dressed in a neat suit of ducks. I had noticed him at luncheon, and Arlin, the Chinese boy, told me he had come from the Pamotos on the boat that had that day arrived. Thiaré introduced me to him, and he handed me his card, a large card on which was printed Rene Bruno, and underneath Capitaine au Longour. We were sitting on a little veranda outside the kitchen, and Thiaré was cutting out a dress that she was making for one of the girls about the house. He sat down with us. Yes, I knew Strickland well. He said, I am very fond of chess, and he was always glad of a game. I come to Tharité three or four times a year for my business, and when he was out perpite, he would come here and we would play. When he married, Captain Bruno smiled and shrugged his shoulders. When he went to live with the girl that Thiaré gave him, he asked me to go and see him. I was one of the guests at the wedding feast. He looked at Thiaré, and they both laughed. He did not come to papité after that, and about a year later, he had the chance that I had to go to that part of the island for, I forget what, business. And when I had finished, I said to myself, well, 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 kilometers from where I was. So I went, but I shall never forget the impression my visit made on me. I live on a nottle, a low island. It is a strip of land surrounding a lagoon, and its beauty is the beauty of the sea and the sky, the very color of the lagoon, and the grace of the coconut trees. But the place where Strickland lived had the beauty of the garden of Eden. Ah, I wish I could make you see such an 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 color, 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 you appear in eyes it should have seemed astonishingly sordid. The house was dilapidated, and not too clean. Three or four natives were lying on the veranda. You know how natives love to word together. There was a young man lying full length, smoking a cigarette, and even nothing but a pareo. The pareo is a long strip of trade cotton, red or blue, stamped with a white pattern. It is worn round the waist, and hangs to the knees. Oh, girl of fifteen perhaps was a plating pandanus leaf to make a hat. And an old woman was sitting on her own, she was smoking a pipe. Then I saw her there. She was circling a newborn child, and another child, stuck naked, was playing at her feet. And 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 I knew he always went barefoot. He had gone native with vengeance. He seemed pleased to see me, and told her to kill the 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 so 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 he tells us how that I was right. I was his first admirer in the islands. He smiled maliciously at Tiare, and with lamentations she told us again of the story of how, at the sale of Strickland's effects, she had neglected the pictures, but bought an American stove for twenty-seven francs. Have you the pictures still? I asked. Yes, I am keeping them till my daughter is of negligible age, and then I shall sell them. They will be our dot. Then he went on with the account of his visit to Strickland. I shall never forget the evening I spent with him. I had not intended to stay more than an hour, but he insisted that I shall spend the night. I hesitated for, I confess, I did not much like the look of the mats on which he proposed that I shall sleep, but I shoved my shoulders. When I was building my house in the Palmochus, I had slept out for weeks on harder beds than that, with nothing to shelter me but vile shrubs, and as for vermin, my tough skin should be proof against their malice. We went down to the stream to bathe, while Atta was preparing the dinner, and after we had eaten it, we sat on the veranda. We smoked and chatted. The young man had a concertina, and he played the tunes popular on the musicals a dozen years before. They sounded strangely in the tropical night, thousands of miles from civilization. I asked Strickland if he did not urge him to live in that promiscuity. No, he said he liked to have his models under his hand. Presently, after loud yonings, the natives went away to sleep, Strickland and I were left alone. I cannot describe to you the intense silence of the night. On my island in the Palmochus there is never at night the complete stillness that was here. There is the rustle of the myriad animals on the beach, all the little shell things are called about ceaselessly, and there is the noisy scurrying of the land crabs. Now and then in the lagoon you hear the dipping of a fish, and sometimes a hurried and noisy splashing as a brown shark sends all the other fish scampering for their lives. And above all, ceaseless like thyme is the dull roar of the breakers on the reef. But here, so was not the sound, and the air was scented with the vile flowers of the night. It was a night so beautiful that your soul seemed hardly able to bear the prison of somebody. You felt it was ready to be rafted away on sa imratira e alea, and death bore all the aspect of a beloved friend. Te are aside. Ah, I wish I were fifteen again. Then she caught sight of a cat trying to get at a dish of prawns on the kitchen table, and with a dexterous gesture and a lively volley of abuse flung a book at its scampering tail. I asked him if he was happy with Hatha. She leaves me alone, he said. She cooks my food and looks after my babies. She does what they tell her. She gives me what I want from a woman. And do you never regret your love? Do you not yearn sometimes for the light of the streets in Paris or London, the companionship of your friends and equals, um, c'est-je? Or théâtre, newspapers, the rumble of omnibusses on the cobbled pavements? For a long time, if a silent, then, he said, I shall stay here till I die. But are you never bored or lonely? I asked. He chuckled. M'am pauvre à mi, he said. It is, if he don't, you do not know what it is to be an artist. Captain Bruno 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 do know what it is to have the creams. I have my visions, too. In my way I also am an artist. We were all silent for a while, and théâtre fished out of her capacious pocket a handful of cigarettes. She handed one to each of us, and we all three smoked. At last, she said, since monsieur is interested in Strickland, why do you not take him to see Dr. Kutra? He can tell him something about his illness and death. Von Lontier, said the captain, looking at me, I thanked him, and he looked at his watch. It is past six o'clock, a visual signed him at all, if you care to come now. I got up without further ado, and we walked along the road that led to the doctor's house. He lived out of the town, but the Hotel de la Fleur was on the edge of it, and we were quickly in the country. The broad road was shaded by pepper trees, and on each side were the plantations, coconut, and vanilla. The pirate birds were screeching among the leaves of the palms. We came to a stone bridge over a shallow river, and we stopped for a few minutes to see the native boys bathing. They chased one another with shrill cries and laughter, and their bodies, brown and wet, gleamed in the sunlight. End of Chapter 53 Chapter 54 As we walked along, I had reflected on the 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 a miss. I do not think he was any gentler here, less selfish or less brutal, but the circumstances were more favourable. If he had spent his life amid these surroundings, he might have passed for no worse a man than another. He received here what he neither expected nor wanted among his own people. Sympathy. I tried to tell Captain Bruno something of the astonishment with which this filled me, and for a little while he did not answer. It is not strange that I, after all events, should have had the sympathy for him, he said at last, for so perhaps the nicer of us knew it we were both aiming at the same thing. What on earth can it be that two people so dissimilar as you and Strickland could aim at? I asked, smiling. Beauty. The large order, I murmured. Do you know how men can be so obsessed by love that they are deaf and blind to everything else in the world? They are as little as their own masters as the slaves chained to the benches of a galley. The passion that held Strickland in bondage for snow less tyrannical than love. How strange you should say that, I answered. For long ago I had the idea that he was possessed of a devil, and the passion that held Strickland was a passion to crave beauty. He gave him no peace. It urged him his own scissor. He was eternally a pilgrim, haunted by a divine nostalgia, and the demon within him was ruthless. There are men who desire for truth is so great that to attain it they will shatter the very foundation of the world. Of such was Strickland. Only beauty with him took the place of truth. I could only feel for him a profound compassion. That is strange also. A man whom he had deeply wronged told me that he felt a great pity for him. I was silent for a moment. I wonder if there you have found the explanation of a character which has always seemed to me inexplicable. How did you hit on it? He turned to me with a smile. Did I not tell you that I too, in my ways, was an artist? I realised in myself the same desire as animated him. But whereas his medium was paint, mine has been life. Then Captain Bruno told me a story which I must repeat since, if only by way of contrast, it adds something to my impression of Strickland. It has also, to my mind, a beauty of its own. Captain Bruno 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 Campe, 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 seafaring days he had cruised the South Seas, and he determined now to seek his fortune there. He spent some months in Papita to make his plans and gain experience, then, on money borrowed from a friend in France, he bought an island on the Pamoutous. 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 coconuts. 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 he worked strenuously, most of us. Every day I was up at dawn, clearing, planting, working on my house, and at night when I threw myself on the 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, then a daughter. My wife and I have taught them all they know. They 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 the boat, they can swim as well as the natives, there is nothing about the land always they are ignorant. Our trees have prospered, and there is shell on my reef. I have come to the Haiti now to buy a schooner. I can get enough shell to make it worth far to fish for it, and who knows? I may find pearls. I have made something versus nothing. I too have made beauty. You do not know what it is to look at those tall, healthy trees, and think that everyone I plant in myself. Let me ask you the question that you asked Strickland. Do you never regret France and your old home in Brittany? Some day when my daughter is married and my son has a wife and is able to take my place on the island, we shall go back and finish our days in the old house in which I was born. You will look back on a happy life, I said. Every day more. It is not exciting on my island, and we are very far from the world. Imagine, it takes me four days to come to the Haiti, but we are happy there. It is given to few men to attempt to work and to achieve it. Our life is simple and innocent. We are untouched by ambition and the pride we have is due only to our contemplation of the work of our hands. Malice cannot touch us. Nor is the attack. Ah, Monsieur Monsieur, say talk of the blessedness of labour. And it is a meaningless phrase, but to me it has the most intense significance. I am a happy man. I am sure you deserve to be, I smiled. Ah, I wish I could think so. I do not know how I have deserved to have a wife who was the perfect friend and helpmate, the perfect mistress and the perfect mother. I reflected for a while on the life that the captain suggested to my imagination. It is obvious that to lead such an existence and to make so great a success of it, you must both have needed a strong will and a determined character. Perhaps, but without one other factor, we could have achieved nothing. And what was that? He stopped somewhat dramatically and stretched out his arm. Belief is God. Besides that, we should have been lost. Then we arrived at the house of Dr. Kutra. End of Chapter 54