The Moon and Sixpence, W. Somerset Maugham [beach books .txt] 📗

been my misfortune to meet. Why do you seek the society of someone who hates and despises you?”

“My dear fellow, what the hell do you suppose I care what you think of me?”

“Damn it all,” I said, more violently because I had an inkling my motive was none too creditable, “I don’t want to know you.”

“Are you afraid I shall corrupt you?”

His tone made me feel not a little ridiculous. I knew that he was looking at me sideways, with a sardonic smile.

“I suppose you are hard up,” I remarked insolently.

“I should be a damned fool if I thought I had any chance of borrowing money from you.”

“You’ve come down in the world if you can bring yourself to flatter.”

He grinned.

“You’ll never really dislike me so long as I give you the opportunity to get off a good thing now and then.”

I had to bite my lip to prevent myself from laughing. What he said had a hateful truth in it, and another defect of my character is that I enjoy the company of those, however depraved, who can give me a Roland for my Oliver. I began to feel that my abhorrence for Strickland could only be sustained by an effort on my part. I recognised my moral weakness, but saw that my disapprobation had in it already something of a pose; and I knew that if I felt it, his own keen instinct had discovered it, too. He was certainly laughing at me up his sleeve. I left him the last word, and sought refuge in a shrug of the shoulders and taciturnity.

XLI

We arrived at the house in which I lived. I would not ask him to come in with me, but walked up the stairs without a word. He followed me, and entered the apartment on my heels. He had not been in it before, but he never gave a glance at the room I had been at pains to make pleasing to the eye. There was a tin of tobacco on the table, and, taking out his pipe, he filled it. He sat down on the only chair that had no arms and tilted himself on the back legs.

“If you’re going to make yourself at home, why don’t you sit in an armchair?” I asked irritably.

“Why are you concerned about my comfort?”

“I’m not,” I retorted, “but only about my own. It makes me uncomfortable to see someone sit on an uncomfortable chair.”

He chuckled, but did not move. He smoked on in silence, taking no further notice of me, and apparently was absorbed in thought. I wondered why he had come.

Until long habit has blunted the sensibility, there is something disconcerting to the writer in the instinct which causes him to take an interest in the singularities of human nature so absorbing that his moral sense is powerless against it. He recognises in himself an artistic satisfaction in the contemplation of evil which a little startles him; but sincerity forces him to confess that the disapproval he feels for certain actions is not nearly so strong as his curiosity in their reasons. The character of a scoundrel, logical and complete, has a fascination for his creator which is an outrage to law and order. I expect that Shakespeare devised Iago with a gusto which he never knew when, weaving moonbeams with his fancy, he imagined Desdemona. It may be that in his rogues the writer gratifies instincts deep-rooted in him, which the manners and customs of a civilised world have forced back to the mysterious recesses of the subconscious. In giving to the character of his invention flesh and bones he is giving life to that part of himself which finds no other means of expression. His satisfaction is a sense of liberation.

The writer is more concerned to know than to judge.

There was in my soul a perfectly genuine horror of Strickland, and side by side with it a cold curiosity to discover his motives. I was puzzled by him, and I was eager to see how he regarded the tragedy he had caused in the lives of people who had used him with so much kindness. I applied the scalpel boldly.

“Stroeve told me that picture you painted of his wife was the best thing you’ve ever done.”

Strickland took his pipe out of his mouth, and a smile lit up his eyes.

“It was great fun to do.”

“Why did you give it him?”

“I’d finished it. It wasn’t any good to me.”

“Do you know that Stroeve nearly destroyed it?”

“It wasn’t altogether satisfactory.”

He was quiet for a moment or two, then he took his pipe out of his mouth again, and chuckled.

“Do you know that the little man came to see me?”

“Weren’t you rather touched by what he had to say?”

“No; I thought it damned silly and sentimental.”

“I suppose it escaped your memory that you’d ruined his life?” I remarked.

He rubbed his bearded chin reflectively.

“He’s a very bad painter.”

“But a very good man.”

“And an excellent cook,” Strickland added derisively.

His callousness was inhuman, and in my indignation I was not inclined to mince my words.

“As a mere matter of curiosity I wish you’d tell me, have you felt the smallest twinge of remorse for Blanche Stroeve’s death?”

I watched his face for some change of expression, but it remained impassive.

“Why should I?” he asked.

“Let me put the facts before you. You were dying, and Dirk Stroeve took you into his own house. He nursed you like a mother. He sacrificed his time and his comfort and his money for you. He snatched you from the jaws of death.”

Strickland shrugged his shoulders.

“The absurd little man enjoys doing things for other people. That’s his life.”

“Granting that you owed him no gratitude, were you obliged to go out of your way to take his wife from him? Until you came on the scene they were happy. Why couldn’t you leave them alone?”

“What makes you think they were happy?”

“It was evident.”

“You are a discerning fellow. Do you think she could