“Sometimes I’ve thought of an island lost in a boundless sea, where I could live in some hidden valley, among strange trees, in silence. There I think I could find what I want.”
He did not express himself quite like this. He used gestures instead of adjectives, and he halted. I have put into my own words what I think he wanted to say.
“Looking back on the last five years, do you think it was worth it?” I asked.
He looked at me, and I saw that he did not know what I meant. I explained.
“You gave up a comfortable home and a life as happy as the average. You were fairly prosperous. You seem to have had a rotten time in Paris. If you had your time over again would you do what you did?”
“Rather.”
“Do you know that you haven’t asked anything about your wife and children? Do you never think of them?”
“No.”
“I wish you weren’t so damned monosyllabic. Have you never had a moment’s regret for all the unhappiness you caused them?”
His lips broke into a smile, and he shook his head.
“I should have thought sometimes you couldn’t help thinking of the past. I don’t mean the past of seven or eight years ago, but further back still, when you first met your wife, and loved her, and married her. Don’t you remember the joy with which you first took her in your arms?”
“I don’t think of the past. The only thing that matters is the everlasting present.”
I thought for a moment over this reply. It was obscure, perhaps, but I thought that I saw dimly his meaning.
“Are you happy?” I asked.
“Yes.”
I was silent. I looked at him reflectively. He held my stare, and presently a sardonic twinkle lit up his eyes.
“I’m afraid you disapprove of me?”
“Nonsense,” I answered promptly; “I don’t disapprove of the boa-constrictor; on the contrary, I’m interested in his mental processes.”
“It’s a purely professional interest you take in me?”
“Purely.”
“It’s only right that you shouldn’t disapprove of me. You have a despicable character.”
“Perhaps that’s why you feel at home with me,” I retorted.
He smiled dryly, but said nothing. I wish I knew how to describe his smile. I do not know that it was attractive, but it lit up his face, changing the expression, which was generally sombre, and gave it a look of not ill-natured malice. It was a slow smile, starting and sometimes ending in the eyes; it was very sensual, neither cruel nor kindly, but suggested rather the inhuman glee of the satyr. It was his smile that made me ask him:
“Haven’t you been in love since you came to Paris?”
“I haven’t got time for that sort of nonsense. Life isn’t long enough for love and art.”
“Your appearance doesn’t suggest the anchorite.”
“All that business fills me with disgust.”
“Human nature is a nuisance, isn’t it?” I said.
“Why are you sniggering at me?”
“Because I don’t believe you.”
“Then you’re a damned fool.”
I paused, and I looked at him searchingly.
“What’s the good of trying to humbug me?” I said.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
I smiled.
“Let me tell you. I imagine that for months the matter never comes into your head, and you’re able to persuade yourself that you’ve finished with it for good and all. You rejoice in your freedom, and you feel that at last you can call your soul your own. You seem to walk with your head among the stars. And then, all of a sudden you can’t stand it any more, and you notice that all the time your feet have been walking in the mud. And you want to roll yourself in it. And you find some woman, coarse and low and vulgar, some beastly creature in whom all the horror of sex is blatant, and you fall upon her like a wild animal. You drink till you’re blind with rage.”
He stared at me without the slightest movement. I held his eyes with mine. I spoke very slowly.
“I’ll tell you what must seem strange, that when it’s over you feel so extraordinarily pure. You feel like a disembodied spirit, immaterial; and you seem to be able to touch beauty as though it were a palpable thing; and you feel an intimate communion with the breeze, and with the trees breaking into leaf, and with the iridescence of the river. You feel like God. Can you explain that to me?”
He kept his eyes fixed on mine till I had finished, and then he turned away. There was on his face a strange look, and I thought that so might a man look when he had died under the torture. He was silent. I knew that our conversation was ended.
XXII
I SETTLED DOWN in Paris and began to write a play. I led a very regular life, working in the morning, and in the afternoon lounging about the gardens of the Luxembourg or sauntering through the streets. I spent long hours in the Louvre, the most friendly of all galleries and the most convenient for meditation; or idled on the quays, fingering second-hand books that I never meant to buy. I read a page here and there, and made acquaintance with a great many authors whom I was content to know thus desultorily. In the evenings I went to see my friends. I looked in often on the Stroeves, and sometimes shared their modest fare. Dirk Stroeve flattered himself on his skill in cooking Italian dishes, and I confess that his spaghetti were very much better than his pictures. It was a dinner for a King when he brought in a huge dish of it, succulent with tomatoes, and we ate it together with the good household bread and a bottle of red wine. I grew more intimate with Blanche Stroeve, and I think, because I was English and she knew few English people, she was glad to see me. She was pleasant and simple, but she remained always rather silent, and I knew not why, gave me the impression that she was concealing something. But I thought that was perhaps no more than a natural reserve accentuated by the verbose frankness of her husband. Dirk never concealed anything. He discussed the most intimate matters with a complete lack of self-consciousness. Sometimes he embarrassed his wife, and the only time I saw her put out of countenance was when he insisted on telling me that he had taken a purge, and went into somewhat realistic details on the subject. The perfect seriousness with which he narrated his misfortunes convulsed me with laughter, and this added to Mrs. Stroeve’s irritation.
“You seem to like making a fool of yourself,” she said.
His round eyes grew rounder still, and his brow puckered in dismay as he saw that she was angry.
“Sweetheart, have I vexed you? I’ll never take another. It was only because I was bilious. I lead a sedentary life. I don’t take enough exercise. For three days I hadn’t…”
“For goodness sake, hold your tongue,” she interrupted, tears of annoyance in her eyes.
His face fell, and he pouted his lips like a scolded child. He gave me a look of appeal, so that I might put things right, but, unable to control myself, I shook with helpless laughter.
We went one day to the picture-dealer in whose shop Stroeve thought he could show me at least two or three of Strickland’s pictures, but when we arrived were told that Strickland himself had taken them away. The dealer did not know why.
“But don’t imagine to yourself that I make myself bad blood on that account. I took them to oblige Monsieur Stroeve, and I said I would sell them if I could. But really—” He shrugged his shoulders. “I’m interested in the young men, but voyons, you yourself, Monsieur Stroeve, you don’t think there’s any talent there.”
“I give you my word of honour, there’s no one painting to-day in whose talent I am more convinced. Take my word for it, you are missing a good affair. Some day those pictures will be worth more than all you have in your shop. Remember Monet, who could not get anyone to buy his pictures for a hundred francs. What are they worth now?”
“True. But there were a hundred as good painters as Monet who couldn’t sell their pictures at that time, and their pictures are worth nothing still. How can one tell? Is merit enough to bring
success? Don’t believe it. Du reste, it has still to be proved that this friend of yours has merit. No one claims it for him but Monsieur Stroeve.”
“And how, then, will you recognise merit?” asked Dirk, red in the face with anger.
“There is only one way—by success.”
“Philistine,” cried Dirk.
“But think of the great artists of the past—Raphael, Michael Angelo, Ingres, Delacroix—they were all successful.”
“Let us go,” said Stroeve to me, “or I shall kill this man.”
XXIII
I SAW STRICKLAND not infrequently, and now and then played chess with him. He was of uncertain temper. Sometimes he would sit silent and abstracted, taking no notice of anyone; and at others, when he was in a good humour, he would talk in his own halting way. He never said a clever thing, but he had a vein of brutal sarcasm which was not ineffective, and he always said exactly what he thought. He was indifferent to the susceptibilities of others, and when he wounded them was amused. He was constantly offending Dirk Stroeve so bitterly that he flung away, vowing he would never speak to him again; but there was a solid force in Strickland that attracted the fat Dutchman against his will, so that he came back, fawning like a clumsy dog, though he knew that his only greeting would be the blow he dreaded.
I do not know why Strickland put up with me. Our relations were peculiar. One day he asked me to lend him fifty francs.
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” I replied.
“Why not?”
“It wouldn’t amuse me.”
“I’m frightfully hard up, you know.”
“I don’t care.”
“You don’t care if I starve?”
“Why on earth should I?” I asked in my turn.
He looked at me for a minute or two, pulling his untidy beard. I smiled at him.
“What are you amused at?” he said, with a gleam of anger in his eyes.
“You’re so simple. You recognise no obligations. No one is under any obligation to you.”
“Wouldn’t it make you uncomfortable if I went and hanged myself because I’d been turned out of my room as I couldn’t pay the rent?”
“Not a bit.”
He chuckled.
“You’re bragging. If I really did you’d be overwhelmed with remorse.”
“Try it, and we’ll see,” I retorted.
A smile flickered in his eyes, and he stirred his absinthe in silence.
“Would you like to play chess?” I asked.
“I don’t mind.”
We set up the pieces, and when the board was ready he considered it with a comfortable eye. There is a sense of satisfaction in looking at your men all ready for the fray.
“Did you really think I’d lend you money?” I asked.
“I didn’t see why you shouldn’t.”
“You surprise me.”
“Why?”
“It’s disappointing to find that at heart you are sentimental. I should have liked you better if you hadn’t made that ingenuous appeal to my sympathies.”
“I should have despised you if you’d been moved by it,” he answered.
“That’s better,” I laughed.
We began to play. We were both absorbed in the game. When it was finished I said to him:
“Look here, if you’re hard up, let me see your pictures. If there’s anything I like I’ll buy it.”
“Go to hell,” he answered.
He got up and was about to go away. I stopped him.
“You haven’t paid for your absinthe,” I said, smiling.
He cursed me, flung down the money and left.
I did not see him for several days after that, but one evening, when I was sitting in the cafe, reading a paper, he came up and sat beside me.
“You haven’t hanged yourself after all,” I remarked.
“No. I’ve got a commission. I’m painting the portrait of a retired plumber for two hundred francs.”5
“How did you manage that?”
“The woman where I get my bread recommended me. He’d told her he was looking out for someone to paint him. I’ve got to give her twenty francs.”
“What’s he like?”
“Splendid. He’s got a great red face like a leg of mutton, and on his right cheek there’s an enormous mole with long hairs growing out of it.”
Strickland was in a good humour, and when Dirk Stroeve came up and sat down with us he attacked him with ferocious banter. He showed a skill I should never have credited him with in finding the places where the unhappy Dutchman was most sensitive. Strickland employed not the rapier of sarcasm but the bludgeon of invective. The attack was so unprovoked that Stroeve, taken unawares, was defenceless. He reminded you of a frightened sheep running aimlessly hither and thither. He was startled and amazed. At last the tears ran from his eyes. And the worst of it was that, though you hated Strickland, and the exhibition was horrible, it was impossible not to laugh. Dirk Stroeve was one of those unlucky persons whose most sincere emotions are ridiculous.
But after all when I look back upon that winter in Paris, my pleasantest recollection is of Dirk Stroeve. There was something very charming in his little household. He and his wife made a picture which the imagination gratefully dwelt upon, and the simplicity of his love for her had a deliberate grace. He remained absurd, but the sincerity of his passion excited one’s sympathy. I could understand how his wife must feel for him, and I was glad that her affection was so tender. If she had any sense of humour, it must amuse her that he should place her on a pedestal and worship her with such an honest idolatry, but even while she laughed she must have been pleased and touched. He was the constant lover, and though she grew old, losing her rounded lines and her fair comeliness, to him she would certainly never alter. To him she would always be the loveliest woman in the world. There was a pleasing grace in the orderliness of their lives. They had but the studio, a bedroom, and a tiny kitchen. Mrs. Stroeve did all the housework herself; and while Dirk painted bad pictures, she went marketing, cooked the luncheon, sewed, occupied herself like a busy ant all the day; and in the evening sat in the studio, sewing again, while Dirk played music which I am sure was far beyond her comprehension. He played with taste, but with more feeling than was always justified, and into his music poured all his honest, sentimental, exuberant soul.
Their life in its own way was an idyl, and it managed to achieve a singular beauty. The absurdity that clung to everything connected with Dirk Stroeve gave it a curious note, like an unresolved discord, but made it somehow more modern, more human; like a rough joke thrown into a serious scene, it heightened the poignancy which all beauty has.
XXIV
SHORTLY BEFORE CHRISTMAS Dirk Stroeve came to ask me to spend the holiday with him. He had a characteristic sentimentality about the day and wanted to pass it among his friends with suitable ceremonies. Neither of us had seen Strickland for two or three weeks—I because I had been busy with friends who were spending a little while in Paris, and Stroeve because, having quarreled with him more violently than usual, he had made up his mind to have nothing more to do with him. Strickland was impossible, and he swore never to speak to him again. But the season touched him with gentle feeling, and he hated the thought of Strickland spending Christmas Day by himself; he ascribed his own emotions to him, and could not bear that on an occasion given up to good-fellowship the lonely painter should be abandoned to his own melancholy. Stroeve had set up a Christmas-tree in his studio, and I suspected that we should both find absurd little presents hanging on its festive branches; but he was shy about seeing Strickland again; it was a little humiliating to forgive so easily insults so outrageous, and he wished me to be present at the reconciliation on which he was determined.
We walked together down the Avenue de Clichy, but Strickland was not in the cafe. It was too cold to sit outside, and we took our places on leather benches within. It was hot and stuffy, and the air was gray with smoke. Strickland did not come, but presently we saw
the French painter who occasionally played chess with him. I had formed a casual acquaintance with him, and he sat down at our table. Stroeve asked him if he had seen Strickland.
“He’s ill,” he said. “Didn’t you know?”
“Seriously?”
“Very, I understand.”
Stroeve’s face grew white.
“Why didn’t he write and tell me? How stupid of me to quarrel with him. We must go to him at once. He can have no one to look after him. Where does he live?”
“I have no idea,” said the Frenchman.
We discovered that none of us knew how to find him. Stroeve grew more and more distressed.
“He might die, and not a soul would know anything about it. It’s dreadful. I can’t bear the thought. We must find him at once.”
I tried to make Stroeve understand that it was absurd to hunt vaguely about Paris. We must first think of some plan.
“Yes; but all this time he may be dying, and when we get there it may be too late to do anything.”
“Sit still and let us think,” I said impatiently.
The only address I knew was the Hotel des Belges, but Strickland had long left that, and they would have no recollection of him. With that queer idea of his to keep his whereabouts secret, it was unlikely that, on leaving, he had said where he was going. Besides, it was more than five years ago. I felt pretty sure that he had not moved far. If he continued to frequent the same cafe as when he had stayed at the hotel, it was probably because it was the most convenient. Suddenly I remembered that he had got his commission to paint a portrait through the baker from whom he bought his bread, and it struck me that there one might find his address. I called for a directory and looked out the bakers. There were five in the immediate neighbourhood, and the only thing was to go to all of them. Stroeve accompanied me unwillingly. His own plan was to run up and down the streets that led out of the Avenue de Clichy and ask at every house if Strickland lived there. My commonplace scheme was, after all, effective, for in the second shop we asked at the woman behind the counter acknowledged that she knew him. She was not certain where he lived, but it was in one of the three houses opposite. Luck favoured us, and in the first we tried the concierge told us that we should find him on the top floor.