________________________________________________
_ I let him take me to a restaurant of his choice, but on the
way I bought a paper. When we had ordered our dinner,
I propped it against a bottle of St. Galmier and began to read.
We ate in silence. I felt him looking at me now and again,
but I took no notice. I meant to force him to conversation.
"Is there anything in the paper?" he said, as we approached
the end of our silent meal.
I fancied there was in his tone a slight note of exasperation.
"I always like to read the feuilleton on the drama," I said.
I folded the paper and put it down beside me.
"I've enjoyed my dinner," he remarked.
"I think we might have our coffee here, don't you?"
"Yes."
We lit our cigars. I smoked in silence. I noticed that now
and then his eyes rested on me with a faint smile of amusement.
I waited patiently.
"What have you been up to since I saw you last?" he asked at
length.
I had not very much to say. It was a record of hard work and of
little adventure; of experiments in this direction and in that;
of the gradual acquisition of the knowledge of books and of men.
I took care to ask Strickland nothing about his own doings.
I showed not the least interest in him, and at last I
was rewarded. He began to talk of himself. But with his poor
gift of expression he gave but indications of what he had gone
through, and I had to fill up the gaps with my own imagination.
It was tantalising to get no more than hints
into a character that interested me so much. It was like
making one's way through a mutilated manuscript. I received
the impression of a life which was a bitter struggle against
every sort of difficulty; but I realised that much which would
have seemed horrible to most people did not in the least
affect him. Strickland was distinguished from most Englishmen
by his perfect indifference to comfort; it did not irk him to
live always in one shabby room; he had no need to be
surrounded by beautiful things. I do not suppose he had ever
noticed how dingy was the paper on the wall of the room in
which on my first visit I found him. He did not want arm-chairs
to sit in; he really felt more at his ease on a kitchen chair.
He ate with appetite, but was indifferent to what he ate;
to him it was only food that he devoured to still the
pangs of hunger; and when no food was to be had he seemed
capable of doing without. I learned that for six months he
had lived on a loaf of bread and a bottle of milk a day.
He was a sensual man, and yet was indifferent to sensual things.
He looked upon privation as no hardship. There was something
impressive in the manner in which he lived a life wholly of
the spirit.
When the small sum of money which he brought with him from
London came to an end he suffered from no dismay. He sold no
pictures; I think he made little attempt to sell any; he set
about finding some way to make a bit of money. He told me
with grim humour of the time he had spent acting as guide to
Cockneys who wanted to see the night side of life in Paris;
it was an occupation that appealed to his sardonic temper and
somehow or other he had acquired a wide acquaintance with the
more disreputable quarters of the city. He told me of the
long hours he spent walking about the Boulevard de la
Madeleine on the look-out for Englishmen, preferably the worse
for liquor, who desired to see things which the law forbade.
When in luck he was able to make a tidy sum; but the
shabbiness of his clothes at last frightened the sight-seers,
and he could not find people adventurous enough to trust
themselves to him. Then he happened on a job to translate the
advertisements of patent medicines which were sent broadcast
to the medical profession in England. During a strike he had
been employed as a house-painter.
Meanwhile he had never ceased to work at his art; but, soon
tiring of the studios, entirely by himself. He had never been
so poor that he could not buy canvas and paint, and really he
needed nothing else. So far as I could make out, he painted
with great difficulty, and in his unwillingness to accept help
from anyone lost much time in finding out for himself the
solution of technical problems which preceding generations had
already worked out one by one. He was aiming at something,
I knew not what, and perhaps he hardly knew himself; and I got
again more strongly the impression of a man possessed. He did
not seem quite sane. It seemed to me that he would not show
his pictures because he was really not interested in them.
He lived in a dream, and the reality meant nothing to him.
I had the feeling that he worked on a canvas with all the force
of his violent personality, oblivious of everything in his effort
to get what he saw with the mind's eye; and then, having
finished, not the picture perhaps, for I had an idea that he
seldom brought anything to completion, but the passion that
fired him, he lost all care for it. He was never satisfied
with what he had done; it seemed to him of no consequence
compared with the vision that obsessed his mind.
"Why don't you ever send your work to exhibitions?" I asked.
"I should have thought you'd like to know what people thought
about it."
"Would you?"
I cannot describe the unmeasurable contempt he put into the
two words.
"Don't you want fame? It's something that most artists
haven't been indifferent to."
"Children. How can you care for the opinion of the crowd,
when you don't care twopence for the opinion of the individual?"
"We're not all reasonable beings," I laughed.
"Who makes fame? Critics, writers, stockbrokers, women."
"Wouldn't it give you a rather pleasing sensation to think of
people you didn't know and had never seen receiving emotions,
subtle and passionate, from the work of your hands? Everyone
likes power. I can't imagine a more wonderful exercise of it
than to move the souls of men to pity or terror."
"Melodrama."
"Why do you mind if you paint well or badly?"
"I don't. I only want to paint what I see."
"I wonder if I could write on a desert island, with the
certainty that no eyes but mine would ever see what I had
written."
Strickland did not speak for a long time, but his eyes shone
strangely, as though he saw something that kindled his soul to
ecstasy.
"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. _
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